H.264, also known as AVC (Advanced Video Coding), is the most widely used video codec in the world. Introduced in 2003 and standardized by ITU-T and ISO/IEC, H.264 supports resolutions from QCIF (176×144) to 4K UHD and is used for Blu-ray discs, YouTube, Netflix, broadcast TV, Zoom, and virtually every consumer device with video capability. It's the default codec for MP4 video files.
H.264 works by exploiting temporal and spatial redundancy. Intra-frames (I-frames) encode complete frame snapshots using DCT-based compression similar to JPEG. Predicted frames (P-frames and B-frames) encode only the differences from reference frames, dramatically reducing data. The encoder analyzes motion vectors to track how objects move between frames, encoding motion efficiently.
For FileCurve's video compressor, H.264 is used with CRF (Constant Rate Factor) encoding. CRF 23 is the default (high quality), CRF 28 is medium, CRF 35 is low quality. Lower CRF = better quality = larger file. This quality-based approach is generally better than constant bitrate for variable-complexity content.