Moving Picture Experts Group

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Three of the MPEG standards and their associated media

The Moving Picture Experts Group ( MPEG , English. "Expert group for moving images" ) [ muːvɪŋ pɪktʃəɹ ɛkspɜːts ɡɹuːp ] is a group of professionals dedicated to the standardization of video compression and the associated areas, such as audio data compression or container formats , busy. Colloquially, “MPEG” is usually not used for the expert group, but for a special MPEG standard.

The MPEG meets three or four times a year for five days. Around 350 experts from 200 companies and organizations from 20 countries take part in these meetings, the MPEG meetings. The group was founded in 1988 by Leonardo Chiariglione , then Vice President of the Media Group of the Italian research center CSELT . He resigned in June 2020.

MPEG is part of ISO / IEC JTC1 / SC29 (International Organization for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission, Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29) and has been divided into various working groups since June 2020 (formerly "Working Group 11"). The standards are compared with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and largely developed in joint working groups. The most prominent example is the MPEG-4 AVC standard, the wording of which was adopted identically as ITU-T H.264.

MPEG formats

The group has developed the following compression formats into an ISO standard. H.26x is the designation as an ITU standard and arose from the collaboration with MPEG:

Surname Publishing year comment
H.261 1988 H.261 was developed without cooperation with MPEG; Video telephony, video conferences via ISDN
MPEG-1 1993 Progressive video format with multiple layers. Used for video CDs , among other things . The audio part of MPEG-1 includes MP3 (MPEG-1 Layer 3).
MPEG-2 /
H.262 		1994/95 TV quality video and audio formats. Also used for DVD video and DVB . (Bit rate: up to 15 Mbit / s)
H.263 1995/96 H.263 was developed without cooperation with MPEG
H.263 + 1997/98
H.263 ++ 2000
MPEG-3 (never appeared) Should have become the standard for HDTV . An extension of MPEG-2 was sufficient. MPEG-3 was therefore no longer adopted.
MPEG-4 1998/99/2000/01 ISO / IEC 14496: Compared to MPEG-2, significantly stronger video compression. The first version of the standard came out in 1998. This was followed by version 2 1999/00 and version 3 in 2001. MPEG-4 describes a.o. a. a complex container format based on QuickTime , a 3D language similar to VRML and non-rectangular video objects. It also includes support for digital rights management .
MPEG-4 AVC / H.264 2002 H.264: Official terminology of the ITU. MPEG-4-AVC or MPEG-4 Part 10 (official MPEG terminology) ISO / IEC 14496-10 AVC. At the beginning (2002) also called H.26L. The work of the JVT or "JVT CODEC", called Advanced Video Code (AVC), JM2.x, JM3.x and JM4.x.
MPEG-7 2002 A system for describing multimedia content (including metadata ). Cataloging, inventory and retrieval of multimedia data are the central keywords.
MPEG-21 ISO / IEC 21000: A so-called "Multimedia Framework " .
MPEG-A 2004 Standardization of integrated solutions ("MPEG application formats ") for specific, clearly defined use cases; references tools / technologies from other MPEG standards as well as from outside;
MPEG-B 2005 "MPEG Systems Technologies": Standardization of "Systems" technologies that are used in several MPEG standards (e.g. binary coding of XML );
MPEG-C 2005 "MPEG Video Technologies": Standardization of video technologies that are used in several MPEG standards (e.g. inverse DCT );
MPEG-D 2005 "MPEG Audio Technologies": Standardization of audio technologies that are used in several MPEG standards (e.g. " MPEG Surround " for encoding surround sound audio material);
MPEG-E 2005 M3W (MPEG Multimedia Middleware ) ;
MPEG-U 2010 "Rich media user interfaces"
MPEG-V 2011 "Media Context and Control"
MPEG DASH 2012 "Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP", ISO standard for streaming over HTTP, similar to Apple HLS, Microsoft Smooth Streaming and Adobe HDS.
MPEG-M 2013 "Multimedia service platform technologies"
MPEG-H HEVC / H.265 2013 "High efficiency coding and media delivery in heterogeneous environments": Part 2 contains HEVC (corresponds to the ITU standard H.265 ), a further development of H.264 / AVC which allows stronger compression with the same quality.

MPEG only standardizes the bitstream (sequence of bits) and the decoder (as a so-called terminal architecture). The encoder is not standardized, so there is room for efficiency gains. Sample implementations ( verification models ) are proposed, but they are neither particularly fast nor particularly efficient, since they only show the feasibility. Therefore, commercial providers are rewriting the implementations of MPEG encoders from scratch in order to achieve either a more efficient, better quality conversion of the original material into the encoded data stream or a faster implementation.

The MPEG specifies both container formats and codecs . This means that video tracks encoded in MPEG-2 can also be stored in (technically inferior) AVI containers and not only in the company's own MPEG containers.

Structure of standards

Usually an MPEG standard is divided into several parts (e.g. ISO-IEC 14496: MPEG-4).

  • Part 1: System description, overview of the architecture and description of the system components
  • Part 2: video, video bitstream, video decoding
  • Part 3: audio
  • Part 4: Conformance
  • Part 5: Reference software
  • more pieces

See also

Web links

Commons : MPEG  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ MPEG | The Moving Picture Experts Group website. Retrieved July 6, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Jan Ozer: MPEG: What Happened? streamingmedia.com, July 2, 2020, accessed July 6, 2020 (American English).
  3. ^ Future of SC 29 with JPEG and MPEG. In: JTC June 1, 24, 2020, accessed July 25, 2020 (American English).