"MPEG" redirects here. For the labor union, seeMotion Picture Editors Guild. For the unaffiliated company that licensed patent pools for some MPEG standards, seeMPEG LA. For the MPEG-developed file format using the.mpeg filename extension, seeMPEG program stream.
MPEG logoSome well known older (up to 2005)digital media formats and the MPEG standards they use
TheMoving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance ofworking groups established jointly byISO andIEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding ofaudio,video, graphics, andgenomic data; and transmission andfile formats for various applications.[1] Together withJPEG, MPEG is organized underISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 –Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information (ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29).[2][3][4][5][6][7]
MPEG was established in 1988 by the initiative of Dr.Hiroshi Yasuda (NTT) and Dr.Leonardo Chiariglione (CSELT).[8] Chiariglione was the group's chair (called Convenor in ISO/IEC terminology) from its inception until June 6, 2020. The first MPEG meeting was in May 1988 inOttawa, Canada.[9][10][11]
Starting around the time of the MPEG-4 project in the late 1990s and continuing to the present, MPEG had grown to include approximately 300–500 members per meeting from various industries, universities, and research institutions.
TheCOVID-19 pandemic caused a general shut-down of physical meetings for many standardization groups, starting in 2020. Following the 129th MPEG meeting of January 2020 in Brussels,[12] MPEG transitioned to holding its meetings as online teleconference events, the first of which was the 130th meeting in April 2020.[13]
On June 6, 2020, the MPEG section of Chiariglione's personal website was updated to inform readers that he had retired as Convenor, and he said that the MPEG group (then SC 29/WG 11) "was closed".[14] Chiariglione described his reasons for stepping down in his personal blog.[15] His decision followed a restructuring process withinSC 29, in which "some of the subgroups of WG 11 (MPEG) [became] distinct MPEG working groups (WGs) and advisory groups (AGs)".[3] Prof. Jörn Ostermann ofLeibniz University Hannover was appointed as Acting Convenor of SC 29/WG 11 during the restructuring period and was then appointed Convenor of SC 29's Advisory Group 2, which coordinates MPEG overall technical activities. The 131st meeting held of July 2020 was chaired by Ostermann as the acting Convenor, and the 132nd meeting in October 2020 was held under the new structure.[16]
The MPEG structure that replaced the former Working Group 11 includes three Advisory Groups (AGs) and seven Working Groups (WGs)[2]
SC 29/AG 2: MPEG Technical Coordination (Convenor: Prof. Joern Ostermann ofLeibniz University Hannover, Germany)
SC 29/AG 3: MPEG Liaison and Communication (Convenor: Prof. Kyuheon Kim ofKyung Hee University, Korea)
SC 29/AG 5: MPEG Visual Quality Assessment (Convenor: Dr. Mathias Wien ofRWTH Aachen University, Germany)
SC 29/WG 2: MPEG Technical Requirements (Convenor: Dr. Igor Curcio ofNokia, Finland)
SC 29/WG 3: MPEG Systems (Convenor: Dr. Youngkwon Lim ofSamsung, Korea)
SC 29/WG 4: MPEG Video Coding (Convenor: Prof. Lu Yu ofZhejiang University, China)
SC 29/WG 6: MPEG Audio coding (Convenor: Dr. Schuyler Quackenbush of Audio Research Labs, United States, later replaced by Thomas Sporer when Quackenbush retired)
SC 29/WG 8: MPEG Genomic coding (Convenor: Dr. Marco Mattavelli ofEPFL, Switzerland)
MPEG meetings continued to be held approximately on a quarterly basis as teleconferences until face-to-face physical meetings began to be resumed with the 140th meeting held in Mainz in October 2022.[17] Since then, some meetings have been face-to-face and others have been online.
MPEG-2 development included a joint project between MPEG andITU-T Study Group 15 (which later became ITU-T SG16), resulting in publication of theMPEG-2 Systems standard (ISO/IEC 13818-1, including itstransport streams andprogram streams) as ITU-T H.222.0 and theMPEG-2 Video standard (ISO/IEC 13818-2) as ITU-T H.262. Sakae Okubo (NTT), was the ITU-T coordinator and chaired the agreements on its requirements.
Joint Video Team (JVT) was joint project betweenITU-T SG16/Q.6 (Study Group 16 / Question 6) –VCEG (Video Coding Experts Group) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 – MPEG for the development of a video coding ITU-T Recommendation and ISO/IEC International Standard.[4][18] It was formed in 2001 and its main result wasH.264/MPEG-4 AVC (MPEG-4 Part 10), which reduces the data rate for video coding by about 50%, as compared to the then-current ITU-T H.262 / MPEG-2 standard.[19] The JVT was chaired by Dr. Gary Sullivan, with vice-chairs Dr.Thomas Wiegand of theHeinrich Hertz Institute in Germany and Dr. Ajay Luthra ofMotorola in the United States.
Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) was a group of video coding experts from ITU-T Study Group 16 (VCEG) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 (MPEG). It was created in 2010 to developHigh Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC, MPEG-H Part 2, ITU-T H.265), a video coding standard that further reduces by about 50% the data rate required for video coding, as compared to the then-current ITU-T H.264 / ISO/IEC 14496-10 standard.[20][21] JCT-VC was co-chaired by Prof. Jens-Rainer Ohm and Gary Sullivan.
Joint Video Experts Team (JVET) is a joint group of video coding experts from ITU-T Study Group 16 (VCEG) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 (MPEG) created in 2017, which was later audited by ATR-M audio group, after an exploration phase that began in 2015.[22] JVET developedVersatile Video Coding (VVC, MPEG-I Part 3, ITU-T H.266), completed in July 2020, which further reduces the data rate for video coding by about 50%, as compared to the then-current ITU-T H.265 / HEVC standard, and the JCT-VC was merged into JVET in July 2020. Like JCT-VC, JVET was co-chaired by Jens-Rainer Ohm and Gary Sullivan, until July 2021 when Ohm became the sole chair (after Sullivan became the chair of SC 29).
The MPEG Industry Forum (MPEGIF) was anon-profitconsortium dedicated to furthering "the adoption ofMPEG Standards, by establishing them as well accepted and widely used standards among creators of content, developers, manufacturers, providers of services, and end users".[23] It was formed in 2000 and dissolved in 2012 afterH.264 became the de facto video compression standard.[24]
The group was involved in many tasks, which included promotion ofMPEG standards (particularlyMPEG-4,MPEG-4 AVC /H.264,MPEG-7 andMPEG-21); developing MPEG certification for products; organizing educational events; and developing new MPEG standards. In June 2012, the MPEG Industry Forum officially "declared victory" and voted to close its operation and merge its remaining assets with that of theOpen IPTV Forum.[24]
The MPEG standards consist of differentParts. EachPart covers a certain aspect of the whole specification.[25] The standards also specifyprofiles andlevels.Profiles are intended to define a set of tools that are available, andLevels define the range of appropriate values for the properties associated with them.[26] Some of the approved MPEG standards were revised by later amendments and/or new editions.
The primary early MPEG compression formats and related standards include:[27]
MPEG-1 (1993):Coding of moving pictures and associated audio for digital storage media at up to about 1.5 Mbit/s (ISO/IEC 11172). This initial version is known as a lossy fileformat and is the first MPEG compression standard foraudio andvideo. It is commonly limited to about 1.5 Mbit/s although the specification is capable of much higher bit rates. It was basically designed to allow moving pictures and sound to be encoded into thebitrate of acompact disc. It is used onVideo CD and can be used for low-quality video on DVD Video. It was used in digital satellite/cable TV services before MPEG-2 became widespread. To meet the low bit requirement, MPEG-1downsamples the images, as well as uses picture rates of only 24–30 Hz, resulting in a moderate quality.[28] It includes the popular MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3) audio compression format.
MPEG-2 (1996):Generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information (ISO/IEC 13818). Transport, video and audio standards for broadcast-quality television. MPEG-2 standard was considerably broader in scope and of wider appeal – supportinginterlacing andhigh definition. MPEG-2 is considered important because it was chosen as the compression scheme for over-the-airdigital televisionATSC,DVB andISDB, digital satellite TV services likeDish Network, digitalcable television signals,SVCD andDVD-Video.[28] It is also used onBlu-ray Discs, but these normally use MPEG-4 Part 10 or SMPTEVC-1 for high-definition content.
MPEG-4 (1998):Coding of audio-visual objects. (ISO/IEC 14496) MPEG-4 provides a framework for more advanced compression algorithms potentially resulting in higher compression ratios compared to MPEG-2 at the cost of higher computational requirements. MPEG-4 also supports Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP), which provides the facility to use proprietary technologies to manage and protect content likedigital rights management.[29] It also supports MPEG-J, a fully programmatic solution for creation of custom interactive multimedia applications (Java application environment with aJava API) and many other features.[30][31][32] Two new higher-efficiency video coding standards (newer than MPEG-2 Video) are included:
MPEG-4 Part 2 (including its Simple and Advanced Simple profiles) and
MPEG-4 AVC was chosen as the video compression scheme for over-the-air television broadcasting in Brazil (ISDB-TB), based on the digital television system of Japan (ISDB-T).[33]
AnMPEG-3 project was cancelled. MPEG-3 was planned to deal with standardizing scalable and multi-resolution compression[28] and was intended for HDTV compression, but was found to be unnecessary and was merged with MPEG-2; as a result there is no MPEG-3 standard.[28][34] The cancelled MPEG-3 project is not to be confused withMP3, which is MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III.
In addition, the following standards, while not sequential advances to the video encoding standard as with MPEG-1 through MPEG-4, are referred to by similar notation:
MPEG-21 (2001):Multimedia framework (MPEG-21). (ISO/IEC 21000) MPEG describes this standard as amultimedia framework and provides for intellectual property management and protection.
Moreover, more recently than other standards above, MPEG has produced the following international standards; each of the standards holds multiple MPEG technologies for a variety of applications.[35][36][37][38][39] (For example, MPEG-A includes a number of technologies on multimedia application format.)
MPEG-A (2007):Multimedia application format (MPEG-A). (ISO/IEC 23000) (e.g., an explanation of the purpose for multimedia application formats,[40] MPEG music player application format, MPEG photo player application format and others)
MPEG-C (2006):MPEG video technologies. (ISO/IEC 23002) (e.g., accuracy requirements for implementation of integer-output 8x8 inversediscrete cosine transform[42] and others)
MPEG-E (2007):Multimedia Middleware. (ISO/IEC 23004) (a.k.a. M3W) (e.g., architecture,[44] multimedia application programming interface (API), component model and others)
MPEG-G (2019)Genomic Information Representation (ISO/IEC 23092), Parts 1–6 for transport and storage, coding, metadata andAPIs, reference software,conformance, and annotations
Supplemental media technologies (2008, later replaced and withdrawn). (ISO/IEC 29116) It had one published part, media streaming application format protocols, which was later replaced and revised in MPEG-M Part 4's MPEG extensible middleware (MPEG-M) protocols.[45]
MPEG-V (2011):Media context and control. (ISO/IEC 23005) (a.k.a. Information exchange with Virtual Worlds)[46][47] (e.g., Avatar characteristics, Sensor information, Architecture[48][49] and others)
MPEG-M (2010):MPEG eXtensible Middleware (MXM). (ISO/IEC 23006)[50][51][52] (e.g., MXM architecture and technologies,[53] API, and MPEG extensible middleware (MXM) protocols[54])
A standard published by ISO/IEC is the last stage of an approval process that starts with the proposal of new work within a committee. Stages of the standard development process include:[9][62][63][64][65][66]
NP or NWIP – New Project or New Work Item Proposal
AWI – Approved Work Item
WD – Working Draft
CD or CDAM – Committee Draft or Committee Draft Amendment
DIS or DAM – Draft International Standard or Draft Amendment
FDIS or FDAM – Final Draft International Standard or Final Draft Amendment
A proposal of work (New Proposal) is approved at the Subcommittee level and then at the Technical Committee level (SC 29 and JTC 1, respectively, in the case of MPEG). When the scope of new work is sufficiently clarified, MPEG usually makes open "calls for proposals". The first document that is produced for audio and video coding standards is typically called a test model. When a sufficient confidence in the stability of the standard under development is reached, a Working Draft (WD) is produced. When a WD is sufficiently solid (typically after producing several numbered WDs), the next draft is issued as a Committee Draft (CD) (usually at the planned time) and is sent to National Bodies (NBs) for comment. When a consensus is reached to proceed to the next stage, the draft becomes a Draft International Standard (DIS) and is sent for another ballot. After a review and comments issued by NBs and a resolution of comments in the working group, a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) is typically issued for a final approval ballot. The final approval ballot is voted on by National Bodies, with no technical changes allowed (a yes/no approval ballot). If approved, the document becomes an International Standard (IS). In cases where the text is considered sufficiently mature, the WD, CD, and/or FDIS stages can be skipped. The development of a standard is completed when the FDIS document has been issued, with the FDIS stage only being for final approval, and in practice, the FDIS stage for MPEG standards has always resulted in approval.[9]
