ISO/IEC 14496-26:2010 specifies how tests can be designed to verify whether compressed data and decoders meet requirements specified by ISO/IEC 14496-3. In ISO/IEC 14496-26:2010, encoders are not addressed specifically. An encoder may be said to be an ISO/IEC 14496 encoder if it generates compressed data compliant with the syntactic and semantic bitstream payload requirements specified in ISO/IEC 14496-3.

Characteristics of compressed data and decoders are defined for ISO/IEC 14496-3. The compressed data characteristics define the subset of the standard that is exploited in the compressed data. Examples are the applied values or range of the sampling rate and bitrate parameters. Decoder characteristics define the properties and capabilities of the applied decoding process. An example of a property is the applied arithmetic accuracy. The capabilities of a decoder specify which compressed data the decoder can decode and reconstruct, by defining the subset of the standard that may be exploited in the decodable compressed data. Compressed data can be decoded by a decoder if the characteristics of the compressed data are within the subset of the standard specified by the decoder capabilities.

Procedures are described for testing conformance of compressed data and decoders to the requirements defined in ISO/IEC 14496-3. Given the set of characteristics claimed, the requirements that must be met are fully determined by ISO/IEC 14496-3. ISO/IEC 14496-26:2010 summarises the requirements, cross references them to characteristics, and defines how conformance with them can be tested. Guidelines are given on constructing tests to verify decoder conformance. Some examples of compressed data implemented according to these guidelines are provided as an electronic annex to this document usually together with their uncompressed counterparts (reference waveforms).