What is MPEG-4 Part 10?

MPEG Part 10 (H.264/AVC) was introduced in 2003. Think of it as the method of compressing the actual video - like taking a large video and making it smaller while keeping good quality. It’s just the raw compressed video data.

What is MPEG-4 Part 14?

MPEG Part 14 (MP4) came out in 2003 too. It’s like a digital container - imagine a zip file that can hold multiple things: video, audio, subtitles, and chapter information all in one neat package.

How to convert from MPEG-4 Part 10 to MPEG-4 Part 14

To convert from Part 10 to Part 14:

  1. You need to take your H.264 video stream (Part 10)
  2. Use software like FFmpeg to package it into an MP4 container (Part 14)

Here’s a simple FFmpeg command to do it:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -f mp4 output.mp4

This command takes your H.264 video input.mp4 and packages it into an MP4 container output.mp4 without re-encoding the video (which preserves quality and is much faster).

Think of it like this: H.264 is like a compressed stack of photos, and MP4 is the photo album that holds them along with captions (metadata), background music (audio), and other extras.