Moving Picture Experts Group
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. 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). MPEG formats are used in various multimedia systems. The most well known older MPEG media formats typically use MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 AVC media coding  and MPEG-2 systems transport streams and program streams. Newer systems typically use the MPEG base media file format and dynamic streaming (a.k.a. MPEG-DASH). History. MPEG was established in 1988 by the initiative of Dr. Hiroshi Yasuda (NTT) and Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione (CSELT). 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. 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 SC 29/WG 11) "was closed". Chiariglione described his reasons for stepping down in his personal blog. 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. Prof. Jörn Ostermann of University of 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 MPEG structure that replaced the former Working Group 11 includes three Advisory Groups (AGs) and seven Working Groups (WGs) The first meeting under the current structure was held in October 2020. It (and all other MPEG meetings starting in April 2020) was held virtually by teleconference due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 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. 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. 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. 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 after an exploration phase that began in 2015. 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 SC  29). Standards. The MPEG standards consist of different "Parts". Each "Part" covers a certain aspect of the whole specification. 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. 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: 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). An MPEG-3 project was cancelled. MPEG-3 was planned to deal with standardizing scalable and multi-resolution compression 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. 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: 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. (For example, MPEG-A includes a number of technologies on multimedia application format.) Standardization process. 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: Other abbreviations: 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.