Why is MPEG-4 Part 10 Called H.264?

This article explains why the video compression standard MPEG-4 Part 10 is also commonly known as H.264. It details the collaborative partnership between the two standards organizations that created the technology, explains how the dual naming system arose, and clarifies how these two terms refer to the exact same technology.

The primary reason for the dual terminology is that the standard was jointly developed by two separate international standards bodies. These organizations are the ITU-T (Telecommunication Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunication Union) and the ISO/IEC (International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission). To prevent the development of competing, incompatible formats, these two groups formed a partnership known as the Joint Video Team (JVT) to create a single, highly efficient video compression standard.

Because two different organizations released the final specification, each applied its own official naming convention to the joint project:

Despite having different names, H.264 and MPEG-4 Part 10 are technically identical. They share the exact same bitstream syntax, decoding processes, and compression algorithms. The dual naming simply reflects the administrative structures of the parent organizations that approved the standard.

In the consumer and technology industries, the terms are often combined as “H.264/AVC” or used interchangeably. Using the term “H.264” also helps distinguish this highly efficient standard from older, less efficient compression technologies that fall under the broader “MPEG-4” umbrella, such as MPEG-4 Part 2 (commonly associated with older formats like DivX).