MPEG-4:   ISO/IEC 14496

The MPEG-4 format was approved in different versions:
Version 1 was approved by MPEG in December 1998, version 2 December 1999. Every new version must be backward compatible to the previous versions.

MPEG-4 does not define specific transport layers. The adaptation to existing transport layers has been defined as transport over MPEG-2 Transport Stream and transport over IP.
The MPEG-4 format allows the hybrid coding of pixel-based natural images and video together with computer generated synthetic scenes. Video can be progressive or interlaced. Resolution can be up studio resolution of 4000 x 4000 pixels.

Bitrates:
Bitrates are typically between 5 kbit/s and more than 1 Gbit/s.

The MPEG-4 compression algorithms is very efficient for all used bit rates and can deliver a much higher image quality as MPEG-2.

MPEG-4 audio can use a wide variety of audio formats from intelligible speech to high quality multichannel audio, from very low to very high bitrates.

The MPEG-4 coding of audio-visual objects provides a large set of tools, called Profiles. These are:
Visual Profiles
Audio Profiles
Graphics Profiles
Scene Graph Profiles
MPEG-J Profiles and
Object Descriptor Profiles.