To improve the performance of video compression for machine vision analysis tasks, a video coding for machines (VCM) standard working group was established to promote standardization procedures. In this paper, recent advances in video coding for machine standards are presented and comprehensive introductions to the use cases, requirements, evaluation frameworks and corresponding metrics of the VCM standard are given. Then the existing methods are presented, introducing the existing proposals by category and the research progress of the latest VCM conference. Finally, we give conclusions.