The White Book specification for Video CD, which was announced by JVC, Philips, SONY and Matsushita in July 1993, is a special implementation of CD-ROM/XA designed to store MPEG-1 video.

MPEG stands for Motion Picture Experts Group, which is a joint committee of the International Standards Organization and the International Electrochemical Commission.

The White Book specification defines a Mode 2, Form 2 disc that can contain up to 74 minutes of VHS-quality, full-screen, full-motion video. Video CD can be played on a personal computer with a CD-ROM/ XA drive and an add-in MPEG video card, a CD-i player with an FMV cartridge, modified stand-alone Video CD players available from several electronics manufacturers, many DVD players or with software video decoding only.

The problems with storing video data on compact discs are twofold: too much data and a slow rate of output. One second of uncompressed VHS-quality video would require five megabytes of storage space. A 680MB compact disc could contain about two minutes of video. MPEG-1 uses various techniques to compress video data by a factor as high as 200:1.

Because MPEG is an international standard, any manufacturer can make hardware capable of recording, compressing, and playing MPEG video. Because it is not limited to any one platform, MPEG video can also be recorded and played back from Red Book and Yellow Book CDs, given the necessary hardware and interface.

The White Book, since its original inception as version 1.1, has been supplemented over the years by Video CD 2.0 (1995), VCD-ROM (1997), VCD-Internet (1997) and Super VCD (1998).

Video CD 2.0 is for interactive PAL and NTSC video, including hi-resolution stills and fast-forward/rewind capabilities.

VCD-ROM allows for creation of hybrid CD-ROM and Video CD discs.

VCD-Internet is a standardized way to 'link' video and the webpages coming from the disc or on-line.