In understanding MPEG-4 vs. H.264 Video Compression it’s important to know that H.264 are also both MPEG-4 technology as well. MPEG-4 actually consists of 22 Parts elements, many of which have not been implemented or used yet. MPEG-4 become a world standard because of simplicity, it has become widely known of as MPEG-4. This is because MPEG-4 doesn’t require as much processor speed or memory as that of H.264/AVC because it’s decoding algorithms is less complex.

H.264 is actually the same thing as MPEG4. They refer to another part of MPEG-4 called MPEG-4 Part 10. So you can take chose at what you would like to name it. MPEG-4 Part 10 consists of Advanced Video Coding and uses higher level profiles than that of MPEG-4 Part 2. This type of decoding is more complex and requires more computer processor speed and memory because it uses more complicated decoding than MPEG-4 Part 10.
For security Camera application most DVR used today are using the MPEG4 compression, recently more and more professional DVR’s are converting to h.264 technology , because of its low CPU conception, which allow DVR the function with 32 or more camera without existing the computer resources .

H.264 has advantages when transmitting over WAN / Internet connection. Because it algorithms the video transmitting is faster.