Advanced Video Coding (H.264/AVC)

Overview

Advanced Video Coding (H.264/MPEG-4 AVC) is a joint video coding standardization project of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (ITU-T Q.6/SG 16) and ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11).

After standardization work started in VCEG, the Joint Video Team (JVT) was established to work on this project. The scope of group was extended to continue working on Fidelity Range Extensions (FRExt), Scalable Video Coding (SVC) and Multiview Video Coding (MVC) as extensions of H.264/AVC.

The first version of the H.264/AVC standard was finalized in May 2003.

The Fidelity Range Extension (FRext) was finialized in September 2004.

Scalable Video Coding (SVC) was finialized in November 2007.

Multiview Video Coding (MVC) was finalized in November 2009.

Since JVT is discontinued, the H.264/AVC standard and it's extensions are now maintained by JCT-VC.

Documents

• JVT Documents (directory listing)
• ITU-T Recommendation H.264: Advanced video coding for generic audiovisual services
• ISO/IEC 14496-10: Advanced Video Coding
• Directory of publicly available standards at ISO

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC reference software

The reference software for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is called JM (Joint Test Model).

It was maintained in an internal Subversion repository and only releases were made available on a web site.

The released version were imported into a git repository and uploaded to a GitLab server. Further maintenance will be made in this new repository and development version are available.

• JM software repository
• JM software download (zip archives)

Recommendation/Standard:

• ITU-T Recommendation H.264.2: Reference software for ITU-T H.264 advanced video coding
• ISO/IEC 14496-5: Reference software

HEVC reference software documentation

• JM software manual

Conformance

Recommendation/Standard:

• ITU-T Recommendation H.264.1: Conformance specification for ITU-T H.264 advanced video coding
• ISO/IEC 14496-4: Conformance testing

Bitstreams

• JVT Bitstream directory

Bug reporting

Software bugs can be reported using the H.264/AVC bug tracker:

• H.264/AVC bug tracker

Further information

• H.264/AVC contributions of the Image & Video Coding Group at HHI

Overview Papers

• G. J. Sullivan and T. Wiegand, "Video Compression - From Concepts to the H.264/AVC Standard", Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 93, no. 1, pp. 18-31, Jan. 2005.
• D. Marpe, T. Wiegand and G. J. Sullivan, "The H.264/MPEG4 advanced video coding standard and its applications", EEE Communications Magazine, vol. 44, no. 8, pp. 134-143, Aug. 2006.

For papers on the HEVC extensions see the pages on RExt, SHVC, MV-HEVC and 3D-HEVC.