What does MPEG-4 mean to me" Richard Schaphorst I look at MPEG4 from a very particular perspective; namely that of the Chairman [Rapporteur] of the ITU/LBC Experts Group for Very Low Bitrate Coding [LBC] for Audiovisual Telephony. First, it is useful to provide a little background on that perspective. In September 1993, the ITU [International Telecommunications Union] charged the LBC Experts Group with the responsibility for developing standards for transmitting multimedia signals [video, audio, data] over the low bit-rate POTS and mobile networks. The POTS standard CH.3241 was successfully "decided" in November 1995, and the Mobile standard [H,324M] was successfully "determined" in May 1996. The H.324 standard [Terminal for Low Bitrate Multimedia Communication] is the umbrella system Recommendation which refers to four other component standards: G.723.1 [Dual Rate Speech Coder for Multimedia Communications Transmitting at 5.3 and 6.3 kbit/s], H.263 [Video Coding for Low Bitrate Communication], H.245 [Control Protocol for Multimedia Communication], H.223 [Multiplexing Protocol for Low Bitrate Multimedia Communication]. Copies of these Recommendations are available at FTP site ftp://ftp.std.com/vendors/PictureTel/h324. Broadly speaking, the H.324 and MPEG4 standards perform the same function; they both define multimedia communication terminals. For that reason, the H.324 component standards CG.723.1, H.263, H.245, H.2231 have been chosen by MPEG-4 as the baseline standards for their corresponding functional elements: speech coding, video coding, communication control, multiplex, respectively.