Alliance of working groups to set standards for multimedia coding
"MPEG" redirects here. For the labor union, see Motion Picture Editors Guild. For the unaffiliated company that licensed patent pools for some MPEG standards, see MPEG LA. For the MPEG-developed file format using the .mpeg filename extension, see MPEG program stream.
MPEG logoSome well known older (up to 2005) digital media formats and the MPEG standards they use
The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and file formats for various applications.[1] Together with JPEG, MPEG is organized under ISO/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 in Ottawa, 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.
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 SC29/WG11) "was closed".[12] Chiariglione described his reasons for stepping down in his personal blog.[13] His decision followed a restructuring process within SC 29, in which "some of the subgroups of WG 11 (MPEG) [became] distinct MPEG working groups (WGs) and advisory groups (AGs)" in July 2020.[3] Prof. Jörn Ostermann of University of Hannover was appointed as Acting Convenor of SC29/WG11 during the restructuring period and was then appointed Convenor of SC29's Advisory Group2, which coordinates MPEG overall technical activities.
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 of University of Hannover, Germany)
SC 29/AG 3: MPEG Liaison and Communication (Convenor: Prof. Kyuheon Kim of Kyung Hee University, Korea)
SC 29/AG 5: MPEG Visual Quality Assessment (Convenor: Dr. Mathias Wien of RWTH Aachen University, Germany)
SC 29/WG 2: MPEG Technical Requirements (Convenor: Dr. Igor Curcio of Nokia, Finland)
SC 29/WG 3: MPEG Systems (Convenor: Dr. Youngkwon Lim of Samsung, Korea)
SC 29/WG 4: MPEG Video Coding (Convenor: Prof. Lu Yu of Zhejiang University, China)
SC 29/WG 8: MPEG Genomic coding (Convenor: Dr. Marco Mattavelli of EPFL, Switzerland)
The first meeting under the current structure was held in August 2024, with MPEG 147 [14]
Cooperation with other groups
MPEG-2
MPEG-2 development included a joint project between MPEG and ITU-T Study Group 15 (which later became ITU-T SG16), resulting in publication of the MPEG-2 Systems standard (ISO/IEC 13818-1, including its transport streams and program streams) as ITU-T H.222.0 and the MPEG-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
Joint Video Team (JVT) was joint project between ITU-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][15] It was formed in 2001 and its main result was H.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.[16] The JVT was chaired by Dr. Gary Sullivan, with vice-chairs Dr. Thomas Wiegand of the Heinrich Hertz Institute in Germany and Dr. Ajay Luthra of Motorola in the United States.
Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding
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 develop High 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.[17][18] JCT-VC was co-chaired by Prof. Jens-Rainer Ohm and Gary Sullivan.
Joint Video Experts Team
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.[19] JVET developed Versatile 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 SC29).
Standards
The MPEG standards consist of different Parts. Each Part covers a certain aspect of the whole specification.[20] The standards also specify profiles and levels. Profiles are intended to define a set of tools that are available, and Levels define the range of appropriate values for the properties associated with them.[21] 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:[22]
MPEG-1 (1993): Coding of moving pictures and associated audio for digital storage media at up to about 1.5Mbit/s (ISO/IEC 11172). This initial version is known as a lossy fileformat and is the first MPEG compression standard for audio and video. It is commonly limited to about 1.5Mbit/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 the bitrate of a compact disc. It is used on Video 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-1 downsamples the images, as well as uses picture rates of only 24–30Hz, resulting in a moderate quality.[23] 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 – supporting interlacing and high definition. MPEG-2 is considered important because it was chosen as the compression scheme for over-the-air digital televisionATSC, DVB and ISDB, digital satellite TV services like Dish Network, digital cable television signals, SVCD and DVD-Video.[23] It is also used on Blu-ray Discs, but these normally use MPEG-4 Part 10 or SMPTE VC-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 like digital rights management.[24] It also supports MPEG-J, a fully programmatic solution for creation of custom interactive multimedia applications (Java application environment with a Java API) and many other features.[25][26][27] 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).[28]
An MPEG-3 project was cancelled. MPEG-3 was planned to deal with standardizing scalable and multi-resolution compression[23] 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.[23][29] The cancelled MPEG-3 project is not to be confused with MP3, 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 a multimedia 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.[30][31][32][33][34] (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,[35] MPEG music player application format, MPEG photo player application format and others)
MPEG-E (2007): Multimedia Middleware. (ISO/IEC 23004) (a.k.a. M3W) (e.g., architecture,[39] 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 and APIs, 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.[40]
MPEG-V (2011): Media context and control. (ISO/IEC 23005) (a.k.a. Information exchange with Virtual Worlds)[41][42] (e.g., Avatar characteristics, Sensor information, Architecture[43][44] and others)
MPEG-M (2010): MPEG eXtensible Middleware (MXM). (ISO/IEC 23006)[45][46][47] (e.g., MXM architecture and technologies,[48] API, and MPEG extensible middleware (MXM) protocols[49])
MPEG-DASH (2012): Information technology – Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH). (ISO/IEC 23009) Part 1 – Media presentation description and segment formats
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][57][58][59][60][61]
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 (SC29 and JTC1, 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]
See also
Video Coding Experts Group– Working group of ITU-T, standardizing video file formats, codecs, containers, and streaming (VCEG)
Joint Bi-level Image Experts Group– group of experts nominated by national standards bodies and major companies to work to produce standards for bi-level image codingPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback (JBIG)
MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s without excessive quality loss, making video CDs, digital cable/satellite TV and digital audio broadcasting (DAB) practical.
MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission bandwidth. While MPEG-2 is not as efficient as newer standards such as H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC, backwards compatibility with existing hardware and software means it is still widely used, for example in over-the-air digital television broadcasting and in the DVD-Video standard.
MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related technology agreed upon by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) under the formal standard ISO/IEC 14496 – Coding of audio-visual objects. Uses of MPEG-4 include compression of audiovisual data for Internet video and CD distribution, voice and broadcast television applications. The MPEG-4 standard was developed by a group led by Touradj Ebrahimi and Fernando Pereira.
MPEG-1 Audio Layer II or MPEG-2 Audio Layer II is a lossy audio compression format defined by ISO/IEC 11172-3 alongside MPEG-1 Audio Layer I and MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3). While MP3 is much more popular for PC and Internet applications, MP2 remains a dominant standard for audio broadcasting.
The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is the joint committee between ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 and ITU-T Study Group 16 that created and maintains the JPEG, JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, JPEG XT, JPEG XS, JPEG XL, and related digital image standards. It also has the responsibility for maintenance of the JBIG and JBIG2 standards that were developed by the former Joint Bi-level Image Experts Group.
MPEG-4 Part 3 or MPEG-4 Audio is the third part of the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 international standard developed by Moving Picture Experts Group. It specifies audio coding methods. The first version of ISO/IEC 14496-3 was published in 1999.
The Joint Bi-level Image Experts Group (JBIG) was a group of experts nominated by national standards bodies and major companies to work to produce standards for bi-level image coding. The "joint" refers to its status as a committee working on both ISO and ITU-T standards. It was one of two sub-groups of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29, Working Group 1, whose official title is Coding of still pictures.
H.262 or MPEG-2 Part 2 is a video coding format standardised and jointly maintained by ITU-T Study Group 16 Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), and developed with the involvement of many companies. It is the second part of the ISO/IEC MPEG-2 standard. The ITU-T Recommendation H.262 and ISO/IEC 13818-2 documents are identical.
TwinVQ is an audio compression technique developed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) Human Interface Laboratories in 1994. The compression technique has been used in both standardized and proprietary designs.
MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual is a video compression format developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It uses block-wise motion compensation and a discrete cosine transform (DCT), similar to previous standards such as MPEG-1 Part 2 and H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2.
MPEG-4 Structured Audio is an ISO/IEC standard for describing sound. It was published as subpart 5 of MPEG-4 Part 3 in 1999.
The Video Coding Experts Group or Visual Coding Experts Group is a working group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with standards for compression coding of video, images, audio signals, biomedical waveforms, and other signals. It is responsible for standardization of the "H.26x" line of video coding standards, the "T.8xx" line of image coding standards, and related technologies.
MPEG-4 Part 14, or MP4, is a digital multimedia container format most commonly used to store video and audio, but it can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images. Like most modern container formats, it allows streaming over the Internet. The only filename extension for MPEG-4 Part 14 files as defined by the specification is .mp4. MPEG-4 Part 14 is a standard specified as a part of MPEG-4.
Leonardo Chiariglione is an Italian engineer who has led the development of international technical standards for digital media. In particular, he was the chairman of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) from 1988 to 2020, which he co-founded together with Hiroshi Yasuda of NTT.
MPEG Surround, also known as Spatial Audio Coding (SAC) is a lossy compression format for surround sound that provides a method for extending mono or stereo audio services to multi-channel audio in a backwards compatible fashion. The total bit rates used for the core and the MPEG Surround data are typically only slightly higher than the bit rates used for coding of the core. MPEG Surround adds a side-information stream to the core bit stream, containing spatial image data. Legacy stereo playback systems will ignore this side-information while players supporting MPEG Surround decoding will output the reconstructed multi-channel audio.
Structured Audio Orchestra Language (SAOL) is an imperative, MUSIC-N programming language designed for describing virtual instruments, processing digital audio, and applying sound effects. It was published as subpart 5 of MPEG-4 Part 3 in 1999.
MPEG-D is a group of standards for audio coding formally known as ISO/IEC 23003 - MPEG audio technologies, published since 2007.
The ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF) is a container file format that defines a general structure for files that contain time-based multimedia data such as video and audio. It is standardized in ISO/IEC 14496-12, a.k.a. MPEG-4 Part 12, and was formerly also published as ISO/IEC 15444-12, a.k.a. JPEG 2000 Part 12.
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29, entitled Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information, is a standardization subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). It develops and facilitates international standards, technical reports, and technical specifications within the field of audio, picture, multimedia, and hypermedia information coding. SC 29 includes the well-known JPEG and MPEG experts groups, and the standards developed by SC 29 have been recognized by nine Emmy Awards.
MPEG-A is a group of standards for composing MPEG systems formally known as ISO/IEC 23000 - Multimedia Application Format, published since 2007.
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