The H.264/AVC video coding standard offers enhanced performance compared to previous coding standards in terms of both rate-distortion (R-D) performance and functionality. In particular, its superior rate-distortion performance has resulted in a significant interest in its practical application in many different domains ranging from multimedia to security and surveillance. As a result in the recent past many successful research attempts have been made in further improving its efficiency and extending its application domains. This thesis provides two novel contributions: an object-based extension that is capable of extending H.264/AVC's effective use in video surveillance applications and a multi-objective optimization framework that can be used to enhance H.264/AVC's use in any general application area.