Video coding format

Common Applications

Descriptions

H.261

Video conference and network video

The first industrial digital video coding standard. Later video coding standards are modified or added new features based on the H.261 video compression standard. Most products do not offer H.261 video compression except only a few videoconferencing and internet video applications.

H.262

DVD

H.262 is a video coding format developed and maintained jointly by ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).  It is the second part of the ISO/IEC MPEG-2 standard. The ITU-T Recommendation H.262 and ISO/IEC 13818-2 documents are identical. H.262 is used in DVD.

H.263

Video conference

H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed as a low-bit-rate compressed format for videoconferencing. It was developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG). The H.263 standard was first designed to be utilized in PSTN and other circuit-switched network videoconferencing and videotelephony.

H.264

Blu-Ray DVD and network streaming

H.264 is an Advanced Video Coding for the recording, compression, and distribution of video content. H.264 is perhaps best known as being one of the video encoding standards for Blu-ray Discs; all Blu-ray Disc players must be able to decode H.264. It is also widely used by streaming internet sources, such as videos from Vimeo, YouTube, and the iTunes Store

H.265

4K video

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard, one of several potential successors to the widely used AVC (H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10). In comparison to AVC, HEVC offers about double the data compression ratio at the same level of video quality, or substantially improved video quality at the same bit rate, supporting up to 4K resolution including UHDTV. It also supports resolutions up to 8192x4320, including 8K UHD.

MPEG-1

Video production, online video and VCD

MPEG-1 was developed earlier for the hardware back then. Because the compression algorithm is more basic so virtually any machine is able to handle MPEG-1 encoding and decoding. MPEG-1 also has a relatively low compression ratio thus for the same video length, MPEG-1 video will take up more space on the disk.

MPEG-2

Video production and DVD

This is a more advanced video compression technique. Since MPEG-2 video has a good compression performance, it is used in high quality DVD. However, the regular DVD video file (.VOB), because it records other playback information, is not fully compatible with the MPG file. Hence not all software supports MPEG-2 file.

MPEG-4

Multimedia networking

A compression technique developed specifically for multimedia networking. The MPEG group only worked developing the compression algorithm upon development of MPEG-4. There was no further file format standardization; thus, the MPEG-4 cannot be used in practice. The MPEG-4 is widely accepted by the market only after the Microsoft has developed a new video standard but it is still not fully compatible with other MPEG videos.  

ProRes 4444

Micro-movie and regular movie

ProRes 4444 is a lossy video compression format with the highest brightness and color precision developed by Apple Inc. for use in post-production and includes support for an alpha channel which can be used for containing the Matte.

ProRes 422 HQ

Micro-movie

10-bit digital sampling with a YUV sampling ratio of 4:2:2. The 10-bit digital sampling offers you the largest color range on the color palette.

ProRes 422

Micro-movie

Just like the ProRes 422 HQ, the ProRes 422 also offers you the 10-bit digital sampling and the only difference between the two is the data volume.

ProRes 422 LT

Sports news report

A video signal format designed for news and sports game. It has a relatively low data volume so that the TV station can process the video fast enough for broadcast.

ProRes 422 Proxy

Post-production and post-editing

Designed for rough cut but the image size, file format and playback frame rate remain unchanged and only the image quality is degraded, which is approximately one-third of the ProRes 422 (HQ). Hence, the director is able to bring the file back and do rough cut on his own device. After rough cut is done, the file will be converted to high quality video by high-end devices.