1Introduction

What MPEG is, the efforts that MPEG initially undertook, what MPEG-2 Systems is and how it is used by applications.

MPEG, which stands for the Moving Picture Experts Group, is the name of a group of audiovisual coding experts operating in ISO/IEC, see Note 1.1. The MPEG group is responsible for a series of well-known international standards, used for coding of audio-visual information in a digital compressed format, such as MPEG-2 video, AVC, MP3 audio and AAC. MPEG was established in 1988 and had its first meeting in May 1988 in Ottawa, Canada. The first two standards produced by MPEG were MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, published as ISO/IEC 11172 [1–6] and ISO/IEC 13818 [7–18], respectively.

Typically, each MPEG standard contains specifications for compression of audio, for compression of video and for transport and synchronization of compressed audio and video. These specifications are usually referred to as MPEG audio, MPEG video and MPEG systems, respectively, and documented in different parts of MPEG standards. For the parts contained in the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards, see Note 1.1.

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