Video coding standards are desired with sufficient flexibility to accommodate a diverse number of transport types (Internet, LAN, Mobile, ISDN, GSTN, H.222.0, NGN, etc.).
VCEG was preceded in the ITU-T (which was called the CCITT at the time) by the "Specialists Group on Coding for Visual Telephony" chaired by Sakae Okubo (NTT) which developed H.261.
During the late 1980s, a number of companies began experimenting with the much more efficient motion-compensated block transform hybrid compression model for video coding.
Schaphorst appointed Karel Rijkse (KPN Research) to chair the development of the H.263 video coding standard as part of that project.
In 1996, Schaphorst then appointed Gary Sullivan (PictureTel, 1999–2022 Microsoft, since 2023 Dolby) to launch the subsequent "H.263+" enhancement project, which was completed in 1998.
After 2003, VCEG and the JVT developed several substantial extensions of H.264, produced H.271,[4] and conducted exploration work toward the creation of a future new standard with better compression capability.
In 2023, VCEG began considering standardization of coding technology for biomedical and other waveform signals in collaboration with DICOM Working Group 32 (Neurophysiology data).