The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced that the Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) and ISO/IEC have launched a new project that seeks to improve upon the Advanced Video Codec ITU-T Rec. H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10.

According to the statement, the announcement on the new Joint Collaborative Team (JCT) accompanies finalization of a recent call (Nov. 10, 2009) for proposals on a successor to the H.264/14496-10 codec that has been widely adopted by the telecom, broadcast, and digital storage media industries.

ITU-T and ISO/IEC-MPEG are standards bodies in the area of digital video compression and have collaborated in the past to produce H.264/14496-10 and the MPEG-2 Video and Systems Standards (also known as ISO/IEC 13818, and ITU-T H.262 and H.222.0).

The Video Coding JCT will consist of a group of video coding experts from ITU-T Study Group 16 (VCEG) and ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 29 / WG 11 (MPEG). The group will meet to coincide with meetings of ITU-T SG16 and/or MPEG and aims at the new standard for 2012.

For more information visit: www.itu.int