The Moving Picture Experts Group

Who we are

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is a working group of ISO/IEC in charge of the development of international standards for compression, decompression, processing, and coded representation of moving pictures, audio and their combination.

Attendance at MPEG meetings requires accreditation by a National Standards Body or standards committee in liaison. Experts attending MPEG who do not represent a committee in liaison must be members of a National Delegation.

To know whom to contact in your country click here. You should make sure that you seek membership of the right committee, formally ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/ WG 11 (MPEG), because national standards bodies have competence in manifold areas of standardisation.

So far MPEG has produced:

  • MPEG-1, the standard for storage and retrieval of moving pictures and audio on storage media (approved Nov. 1992)
  • MPEG-2, the standard for digital television (approved Nov. 1994)
  • MPEG-4, the standard for multimedia applications (approved Oct. 1998)
  • MPEG-7 the content representation standard for multimedia information search and filtering (approved Jul. 2001)
  • MPEG-21, the multimedia framework
  • MPEG-A, the collection of Application Formats standards
  • MPEG-B, a collection of other Systems-related standards
  • MPEG-C, a collection of other Video-related standards
  • MPEG-D, a collection of other Audio-related standards
  • MPEG-DASH, the standard for adaptive streaming
  • MPEG-E, the Multimedia Terminal standard
  • MPEG-H, the standard for media on hybrid delivery systems
  • MPEG-M, the standard for packaging and reusability of MPEG technologies
  • MPEG-U, the standard for rich-media user interfaces
  • MPEG-V, the standard for real and virtual worlds, and for their interactions

MPEG continues the development of:

  • MPEG-2, particulalrly in MPEG-2 Transport Stream
  • MPEG-4 in its different components (Systems, Video, Audio, File Format, 3D Graphics, Composition, Fonts etc.)
  • MPEG-7, particularly in Profiles and MPEG Query Format
  • MPEG-21, particularly in the area of Contract Expression Language
  • MPEG-A, particulalrly new application formats (Augmented Reality, Multimedia Preservation, Publish/Subscribe)
  • MPEG-B, particularly in variousarea 
  • MPEG-C, particularly Reconfigurable Video Coding
  • MPEG-D, particularly Dynamic Rasnge cONTROL
  • MPEG-H, particulalrly in the areas of HEVC extensions and 3D Audio

and is now investigating:

  • Compact descriptors for video analysis
  • Free Viewpoint Television (FTV)
  • Genome compression
  • High dynamic range and wide colour gamut content distribution
  • Processing and Sharing of Media under User Control
  • Uniform Signalling for timeline alignment

MPEG keeps on exploring new opportunities for standards serving the needs of the media industry. Visit the MPEG home page to keep abreast of MPEG developments.

MPEG usually holds four meetings a year. These comprise plenary meetings and subgroup meetings on Requirements, Systems, Video, Audio and 3D Graphics. Participation is open to experts duly accredited by an appropriate National Standards Body. On average a meeting is attended by more than 300 experts from some 20 countries representing more than 200 companies spanning all industry domains with a stake in digital audio, video and multimedia.