Characteristics of the Mpeg or MPG format
MPEG stands for Moving Picture Experts Group and is pronounced m-peg. MPEG is a group of ISO and family of compression standards and digital video file formats developed by the group.
MPG or MPGE is basically a container format, since it can contain multiple audio and video tracks, or even optional subtitle tracks. Depending on the properties of the audio and video (resolution, bitrate, FPS, etc.), the MPG file will adapt to a certain standard.
MPEG generally produces better quality videos than other formats, such as video for Windows, Indeo, and QuickTime.
MPEG algorithms compress information into small packets that can be easily transmitted and then decompressed. MPEG achieves its high compression rate by storing only the changes from one frame to the next, instead of storing the entire frame. The video information is then encoded using a technique called Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT).
With the compression that MPEG uses, certain data is lost, but this loss is generally imperceptible to the human eye.
Regions
The MPG format is dependent on the geographical area in which it is used. Therefore, the PAL format is the one used in Europe, whereas the NTSC is the American format. However, there are multizone devices that are compatible with both PAL and NTSC. If the MPG video you will be using is in 25 FPS, you must convert it to PAL format, and if it is in 23.976 or 29.976FPS, you must use NTSC format.
The main MPEG compression formats are:
MPEG -1: is the initial audio and video compression standard. It provides video with a resolution of 352×240 at 30 frames per second (fps). This produces slightly lower video quality than conventional VCR videos. Includes Layer 3 (MP3) audio compression format.
MPEG -2: standard for audio and video for television quality broadcast. It offers 720×480 and 1280×720 resolutions at 60fps, with audio CD quality. This is sufficient for most TV standards, including NTSC, and even HDTV. MPEG-2 is used for you, satellite TV services and digital cable TV signals. MPEG-2 can compress a 2-hour video into a few gigabytes. Although decompressing an Mpeg-2 data stream does not require a lot of computer resources, encoding to the Mpeg-2 format requires considerably more power for the process.
MPEG -3: It was designed for HDTV but was abandoned in favor of MPG-2.
MPEG -4: standard graphics and video compression algorithm based on Mpeg-1 and Mpeg-2 technology and Apple QuickTime. Mpeg-4 files are smaller than JPEG or QuickTime files, so they are designed to transmit video and images over a narrow bandwidth and can mix video with text, graphics, and 2D and 3D animation layers.
MPEG -7: formally called Multimedia Content Description Interface, Mpeg-7 provides a toolkit for multimedia content. Mpeg-7 is designed to be generic and is not intended for a specific use.
MPEG -21: Includes a Rights Expression Language (REL) and a Rights Data Dictionary. Unlike other MPEG standards that describe compression and encoding methods, Mpeg-21 describes a standard that defines content description and also the processes for accessing, searching for, storing and protecting the copyright of content.
