Windows Media Video, or
WMV, is Microsoft’s family of video codecs including WMV 7, WMV 8, and WMV 9. It can handle anything from low resolution video for dial-up Internet users to HDTV. The latest generation of WMV, based on the WMV 9 codec, has been standardized and approved as a new and more open codec known as VC-1. While all versions of WMV support variable bit rate, average bit rate, and constant bit rate, WMV 9 introduced several important features including native support for interlaced video, non-square pixels, and frame interpolation.
H.264, short for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, is a standard for video compression and is poised to become the next standard for format of convergence in the digital video industry now supported by Google / YouTube, Adobe, and Apple iTunes. It contains a number of features that enable it to compress video much more effectively than previous standards, and provides more flexibility for applications across a wide variety of network environments from low bit-rate Internet streaming to HDTV broadcast and Digital Cinema applications with nearly lossless coding.