encoding sound.
Closer to the CCTV surveillance industry, there are several standards that deal with video. In the analogue world, the PAL and NTSC standards are ubiquitous. For encoding, most products use standard compression mechanisms like motion JPEG or MPEG. Also file formats can be standardized, like for instance the ASF standard.
Benefits
The use of standards benefits all parties involved. As you will see, it leads to cost reductions for everyone that uses them: manufacturers, integrators and end users.
By using standards, you become independent from a particular vendor. Any vendor that supports the standard can be used, so you as a customer are not tied to any of them. For instance, a security installer can use any brand of analogue camera, as long as they use the NTSC or PAL standard.
Similarly, a video file that