.png)
MPEG, the set of international media standards and specifications working groups, met in Hangzhou, China, October 19–23, 2026, for MPEG 156. Unified Streaming’s Standardization Representative Mohamad Raad attended the conference in person.
Here are the top five things MPEG worked on in Hangzhou that Raad thought were worth mentioning.
1. DASH feature set creation
MPEG 156 attendees worked to create a set of DASH features that can be referenced consistently by other SDOs (standards development organizations) such as DVB.
“One of the problems that other SDOs have in referencing parts of DASH is that it is not always clear how these parts fit together to address specific use cases,” says Raad. “So during this meeting we started an activity to organize the tools in the DASH specification, so that it is clearer how these may be used to address specific use cases.”
Raad says MPEG made “good progress” in developing a new annex to the DASH specification that provides a more specific level of use-case organization.
2. High-frequency key rotation tools in DASH: development advances
Two methods of developing high-frequency key rotation tools have been adopted into the working draft, which are meant to be complementary to each other. There is one method at the MPD level, and one that is in-band. Both rely on event messages for signaling key rotations.
An "in-band" method for high-frequency key rotation means that the DRM metadata required to change encryption keys sits right inside the media segments themselves, rather than being declared in the top-level DASH manifest file.
An MPD-level method refers to attributes, elements, or metadata declared at the root (top) level of an MPEG-DASH Media Presentation Description (MPD) manifest file, rather than lower down inside specific Periods, Adaptation Sets, or Representations. (These terms are capitalized because they are official XML element tags defined in the ISO/IEC 23009-1 standard for MPEG-DASH. In the XML code of an MPD manifest file, they look like this: <Period>, <AdaptationSet>, and <Representation>.)
What’s an MPEG-DASH MPD do? In MPEG-DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP), the MPD tells a video player how to find, load, and play video, audio, and subtitle segments. The file is organized hierarchically, from top to bottom.
3. Cooperation with the IETF on low overhead CMAF
“There’s a great deal of interest from the IETF (and others) in low overhead CMAF for low latency applications,” says Raad.
[By the way, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops core standards, protocols, and working group specifications that shape modern video streaming across the internet.]
[Also, by the way, Low Overhead CMAF (LOCMAF) is an emerging technical specification developed within the IETF Media over QUIC (MoQ) Working Group. The spec aims to reduce the data overhead of streaming CMAF video and audio drastically over next-generation real-time network protocols.]
“It’s important that activities in multiple SDOs align to ensure we do not get market fragmentation,” says Raad. “This emerging activity within MPEG systems is intended to define what MPEG can define to enable the development of low overhead CMAF, while ensuring there is complementarity between MPEG and other SDOs.”
Glad you asked. “Complementarity” is the quality of being different yet useful when combined.
4. New video compression standard
New video compressions are always coming. That’s a good thing, because it keeps things in the streaming industry fresh, interesting, and, above all, useful.
This new video compression thing is at the “call-for-proposals” level. How the results of the answers to the call for proposals will be assessed has already sparked significant debate.
And “all new codecs are expected to be AI-based,” says Raad.
5. Next set of systems standards
Developing a vision for a new set of systems standards is “an ongoing activity,” says Raad, “but during this meeting it became clearer that the next phase of work will focus on organizing what we currently have in a better way so that the industry can better apply existing standards.”
It’s also a waiting period for the answers to the media authenticity call for proposals to be received, and for the development of new video and graphics codecs.
More tidbits: C2PA
C2PA didn’t get too many discussions at MPEG 156 due to the waiting period for responses to the call for proposals on media, which are due at MPEG 157, January 2027. But Raad says that during a joint meeting it was decided that “MPEG and JPEG will be working more closely together on the topic of media authenticity.”
More tidbits: Brisbane
The next MPEG conference, which will be held January 18–22, 2027 in Brisbane, Australia proves to feature some interesting developments and discussions.
Not only will the media authenticity proposals be received and reviewed at the meeting, but the new video coding proposals will be received and studied then, too. The last time video coding proposals were reviewed? Eight years ago.
“The Brisbane meeting is shaping up to be a very consequential meeting,” says Raad.
Stay tuned, then.