H.264/AVC/MPEG-4 Part 10 (ISO/IEC 14496-10: Advanced Video Coding) is the current video standardization project of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group. The main goals of this standardization effort are to develop a simple and straightforward video coding design, with enhanced compression performance, and to provide a “network-friendly” video representation which addresses “conversational” (video telephony) and “non-conversational” (storage, broadcast or streaming) applications. H.264/AVC has achieved a significant improvement in the rate-distortion efficiency – providing, typically, a factor of two in bitrate savings when compared with existing standards such as MPEG-2 Video / MPEG-4 Visual.
The H.264/AVC Advanced Video Coding Standard: Overview and Introduction to the Fidelity Range Extensions
by Gary J. Sullivan, Pankaj Topiwala, and Ajay Luthra. Overview of H.264/AVC standart.
http://www.cdt.luth.se/~peppar/kurs/smd151/spie04-h264OverviewPaper.pdf
x264 - a free h264/avc encoder
x264 is a free library for encoding H264/AVC video streams. It is released under the terms of the GPL license.
http://videolan.org/developers/x264.html
VLC - the cross-platform media player
VLC is an Open Source multimedia player that supports your usual mix of audio and video formats. Support is currently included for MPEG-1, -2, -4, h.264, mp3, ogg and more. The site includes precompiled binaries for a really nice range of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, varios Linux flavors, and even BeOS!
Version 0.8.6 of this player is shipping as of June, 2007.
Gspot Codec Information Appliance
GSpot identifies presence or absence of “B-VOP”, “Qpel”, and “GMC”, thus allowing the user to determine if a DivX5 file is compatible with KISS and other popular hardware DivX players. Provides information about MPEG1 or MPEG2 video and/or MPEG1 or MPEG2 audio either as “elementary” streams or multiplexed into an MPEG1 “system stream” or an MPEG2 “program stream”. Limited support for MPEG4 video when contained in an AVI stream, such as DivX5.
Version 2.7a is shipping as of February, 2007.
http://www.headbands.com/gspot/
MainConcept H.264 SDK
This SDK decodes and encodes H.264 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) frames, making it easy to add support for this exciting new format to your applications. The MainConcept H.264 Codec will offer ultra-high quality encoding to and decoding from H.264 material at exceptional speeds in all profiles and levels supported by the standard.
http://mainconcept.com/site/developer-products-6/h264avc-sdk-733/information-4786.html
TML Software Coordination
This looks like the page that contains the latest reference software used by the Joint Video Team as part of the H.264 standardization effort.
http://bs.hhi.de/~suehring/tml/
H.26L White Paper
A nice white paper of H.26L by the folks at UBVideo. The H.26L standard is a work in progress by both the ITU ISO, and is expected to provide outstanding performance in video coding.
http://ubvideo.com/public/h26l-white_paper.pdf
Tiernan Communications, Inc.
These folks sell a couple of boxes that do MPEG-2 encoding. Looks like they are oriented towards the video broadcasting business.
MPEG LA
This company is the licensing authority created by the owners of the most or all of the patents related to MPEG. Apparently they have the authority to provide one-stop shopping for your royalty arrangements.
