An introduction of 5 variant of MPEG format

MPEG-1
An ISO/IEC (International Organization for Standardization/ International Electrotechnical Commission) standard for medium quality and medium bitrate video and audio compression. It allows video to be compressed by the ratios in the range of 50:1 to 100:1, depending on image sequence type and desired quality. The encoded data rate is targeted at 1.5Mb/s - this was a reasonable transfer rate of a double-speed CD-ROM player (including audio and video). VHS-quality playback is expected from this level of compression. The Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG) also established the MPEG-2 standard for high-quality video playback at a higher data rates. MPEG-1 is used in encoding video for VCD.

MPEG-2
An encoding standard designed as an extension of the MPEG-1 international standard for digital compression of audio and video signals. MPEG-1 was designed to code progressively scanned video at bit rates up to about 1.5 Mbit/s for applications such as CD-i. MPEG-2 is directed at broadcast formats at higher data rates; it provides increased support for efficiently coding interlaced video, supports a wide range of bit rates and provides for multichannel surround sound coding such as PCM, Dolby Digital, DTS and MPEG audio.

MPEG-3
A proposed variant of the MPEG video and audio compression algorithm and file format. MPEG-3 was intended as an extension of MPEG-2 to cater for HDTV but was eventually merged into MPEG-2.
MPEG-3 should not be confused with MP3 which is MPEG-1 layer 3 popularly used for audio encoding.

MPEG-4
An ISO/IEC standard 14496 developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), the committee that also developed MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. These standards made interactive video on CD-ROM, DVD and Digital Television possible. MPEG-4 is the result of another international effort involving hundreds of researchers and engineers from all over the world. MPEG-4 was finalized in October 1998 and became an International Standard in 1999. The fully backward compatible extensions under the title of MPEG-4 Version 2 were frozen at the end of 1999, to acquire the formal International Standard Status early in 2000. Several extensions were added since and work on some specific work-items is still in progress.
MPEG-4 builds on the proven success of three fields:
Digital television
Interactive graphics applications (synthetic content)
Interactive multimedia (World Wide Web, distribution of and access to content)

MPEG-7
MPEG-7 is an ISO/IEC standard developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group. MPEG-7, formally named ?Multimedia Content Description Interface?, is a standard for describing the multimedia content data that supports some degree of interpretation of the information?s meaning, Unlike previous MPEG standards aimed at encoding, MPEG-7 is not aimed at any one application in particular; rather, the elements that MPEG-7 standardizes support as broad a range of applications as possible.

Related web page:
Copy DVD to MPEG

MPEG supported DVD Player