Does anyone in the industry know if the "official" H.264 format will be formalized early this fall? I know that Quicktime has their H.264 format out now, but how long before the santioned and standardized H.264 is released?

I'm not sure what you mean. H.264/AVC is actually settled. It was settled a long time ago when it reached final spec (which Apple had nothing to do with). Apple simply supports its use as MPEG-4 part 10 and created libraries in QT to make decoding it faster in Mac OS 10.4. It isn't used by a whole lot of people yet, but it has been adopted by a ton of people. Check out the following link for specifics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Applications
at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264

If your question means something else, just let us know!

Mark,
I think the Wikipedia article exlpained what I was looking for. Thanks.