ISO/IEC 14496-2:2004 provides the following elements related to the encoded representation of visual information:

- Specification of video coding tools, object types and profiles, including capability to encode rectangular-based and arbitrary-shaped video objects, capability to define scalable bitstreams and error-resilient encoding tools;

- Specification of coding tools, object types and profiles for mapping of still textures into visual scenes;

- Specification of coding tools, object types and profiles for human face and body animation based on face/body models and additional semantic parameters; and

- Specification of coding tools, object types and profiles for animation of 2D warping grids with uniform and irregular topology.

The Visual specification contains definitions of the bitstream syntax, bitstream semantics and the related decoding process. It does not specify the encoders, which can be optimized in different implementations.