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).

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.

The COVID-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, MPEG transitioned to holding its meetings as online teleconference events, the first of which was the 130th meeting in April 2020.

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)". Prof. Jörn Ostermann of Leibniz 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.

The MPEG structure that replaced the former Working Group 11 includes three Advisory Groups (AGs) and seven Working Groups (WGs)

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. Since then, some meetings have been face-to-face and others have been online.