Exactly 20 years ago, May 2003, the Joint Video Team (VCEG and MPEG) approved the first version of the video codec known as H.264/AVC, a groundbreaking standard that would forever change the world of video. H.264, not only revolutionized video compression but also gave birth to and propelled the era of Internet streaming. It has enabled billions of computer, mobile devices, tv sets to record and playback videos with increasing capabilities over the years, adapting to the progressive increase of connections speed and video resolutions. It has democratized video creation and consumption and has been crucial in making video ubiquitous.
Today, H.264 stands as one of the most successful international standards in the history of computer science, and its resilience over time demonstrate the exceptional work done by those brilliant researchers and scientists 20 years ago.
Standards play a crucial role in ensuring interoperability and preventing the concentration of technology control. H.264’s success as an open standard has empowered a diverse range of manufacturers, content creators, and streaming platforms to embrace and adopt it. This has fueled innovation, competition, and collaboration, benefiting end-users with a rich multimedia experience across devices and applications.
I like to mention also two other key events that have helped H.264 to become the de-facto standard for video streaming: the debut of an efficient H.264 decoder in the Flash Player (2007 – Flash Player 9) and the birth of the OSS encoder x264 (2004). The first event empowered almost 1 billion desktop computer with the capability to decode H264 videos inside a browser, without switching to an external application. Several years later H264 was adopted by every browsers natively with HTML5 Video but in those early years H264 in Flash Player enabled / enhanced the experience provided by foundational services like Youtube or BBC’s iPlayer.
The second mentioned event is not less important. x264 has contributed to an efficient implementation of H.264 encoding. The work started by Laurent Aimar and masterfully continued by, among the others, Loren Merritt and Fiona Glaser, has been truly exceptional and foundational as well.
Looking ahead, the question arises: can future codecs seamlessly carry the torch from H.264 and guide us through the next 20 years with the same virtuosity? The technology landscape is constantly evolving, and advancements are being made in video encoding and streaming. Subsequent codecs, such as H.265 (HEVC) and the more recent AV1 and VVC, have emerged, promising improved compression efficiency and enhanced visual quality.
Furthermore, future-generation codecs aim to address the growing demand for higher resolutions, immersive experiences, and bandwidth optimization. They will leverage cutting-edge techniques, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, to further refine video compression algorithms. However, they will face the challenge of not only surpassing H.264’s technical capabilities, which after 20 years is an easy task, but also gaining widespread adoption and compatibility across a vast ecosystem of devices and platforms. A real challenge indeed: earning the trust, the enthusiam of the entire video ecosystem, that enthusiasm that made H264 so crucial and so obiquitous to our industry.
As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the standardization of H.264, let us acknowledge its immense contributions to the world of video and thanks to everyone who contributed to this revolution. Happy birthday H264.
Video Encoding & Streaming Technologies 