Free Download: H.264 and MP4 file format Standard / Specification
Studying the standard is very important for learning H.264 and MP4 container format. Here are the download links of the free official documents.
H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10 / MPEG-4 AVC), Advanced Video Coding
It is available on both ITU-T and ISO website. H.264 is in Series H: Audiovisual and multimedia systems in ITU-T while it is in Part 10 of ISO/IEC 14496 (MPEG-4) in ISO. If you need to study the relationship between H.264 and MP4 container, you should also refer to Part 15 (not free).
ITU-T: Infrastructure of audiovisual services – Coding of moving video: Advanced video coding for generic audiovisual services
The latest version available: Download Here (04/2013)
ISO: Information technology — Coding of audio-visual objects — Part 10: Advanced Video Coding
The latest version available: Download Here (2012, 7th edition)
And you can find all versions since 2003 from ITU-T:
http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264/en
Other Reference for H.264
| H.264.1 | Conformance specification for ITU-T H.264 advanced video coding |
| H.264.2 | Reference software for ITU-T H.264 advanced video coding |
| H.Imp264 | Implementors’ Guide for ITU-T Recommendation H.264 |
MP4 Container
You can refer to Part 12 & 14 of ISO/IEC 14496 (MPEG-4). You can download Part 12 from ISO for free but you have to pay for Part 14. Part 12 states the basic ideas of MP4, if you are a beginner, you are able to understand what MP4 is after reading it.
Information technology — Coding of audio-visual objects — Part 12: ISO base media file format
The latest version available: Download Here (15th, Sep, 2012, 4th edition)
Corrigendum & Amendments
| ISO/IEC 14496-12:2012/Cor 1:2013 |
1st
|
Technical Corrigendum 1 |
JTC1/SC29 |
| ISO/IEC 14496-12:2012/Amd 1:2013 |
1st
|
Information technology — Coding of audio-visual objects — Part 12: ISO base media file format — Amendment 1: Various enhancements including support for large metadata |
JTC1/SC29 |
| ISO/IEC 14496-12:2012/Amd 2:2014 |
1st
|
Information technology — Coding of audio-visual objects — Part 12: ISO base media file format — Amendment 2: Carriage of timed text and other visual overlays |
JTC1/SC29 |
All other Publicly Available Standards from ISO
http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html