At MPEG* meetings, members discuss global digital media standards, forge ahead with plans, and discuss next steps.

The group’s 152nd meeting took place October 7–11, 2025 in Geneva, Switzerland. There, Standardization Representative Mohamad Raad from Unified Streaming made inroads with his systems working group.

Here is a rundown of what took place.

🍫 DASH, CMAF, CENC, ISOBMFF

Raad and others went over these standards and their subactivities, and planned what’s next for them.

DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) is an international standard for adaptive bitrate streaming that delivers video by breaking it into small segments and serving them over HTTP.

‍CMAF (Common Media Application Format) is a streaming standard for encoding and delivering segmented video content efficiently across different devices and platforms.

‍CENC (Common Encryption) is a standard for encrypting digital content that allows a single file to be protected and then decrypted by multiple Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems, such as Google's Widevine or Microsoft's PlayReady.

ISOBMFF (ISO Base Media File Format) is a container file format that defines a general structure for files that contain time-based multimedia data such as video and audio.

The three standards and the one format, said Raad, are ongoing projects. Over time, and in due course, MPEG shall refine and optimize them.

🍫 Media authenticity

MPEG continues to explore media authenticity within systems “with a more focused approach as to what needs to change in existing standards,” said Raad, “to accommodate the signaling of provenance and authenticity information.”

Authenticity-related work in other working groups has slowed down now that the relevant amendments in JVET (Joint Video Experts Team) and audio have been progressed through balloting.

When asked what was discussed at the Geneva conference concerning C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity), the growing “open technical standard that for publishers, creators and consumers to establish the origin and edits of digital content,” Raad said:

“There is a growing acceptance of the idea that C2PA will be the industry choice for provenance and authenticity of media at least in the near future. A number of MPEG experts are still of the view that MPEG should define standards that are agnostic to the use of C2PA, or alternative methods for conveying provenance information, but I don’t see that as a practical approach.”

🍫 And that’s splat

To Raad’s mind, given the challenges that AI-generated and manipulated content has created, the most pressing multimedia issue is authenticity.

However, this was not a major topic at this MPEG meeting.

There is significant interest at MPEG in Gaussian splat coding for the rendering of immersive objects. But the Gaussian splat subject is the next thing in coding, said Raad, rather than answering a current industry need.

Experts also spent time enhancing the common encryption standard. This standard is rather important for the protection of content, especially due the recent attacks that have exposed serious flaws in the common encryption standard.

🍫 Geneva in general

“Geneva is a beautiful city to visit any time of the year,” said Raad.

“It’s also a city that is ideal to hold meetings such as MPEG in because of the presence of multiple international organizations that have suitable facilities to ensure a smooth meeting. I can’t really think of one favorite feature of Geneva. I just find it a nice, safe, easy-to-navigate city, which makes visiting it enjoyable and stress-free.”

🍫 To MPEG 153, and beyond

Raad believes the next MPEG conference, held mid-January 2026 online, will center mainly on the next video compression standard and Gaussian splat coding.

There will also be an uptick on DASH and streaming-related activities, with new amendments to those standards just starting, he said. The work on common encryption will also continue and pick up pace as enhancements are proposed by experts.

Unified Streaming continues to play an outsized role in the streaming standards and specifications sphere. To ask questions about research and development in this area, please get in touch with us. 

^{*MPEG is an ISO/IEC set of working groups, including SC 29/WG2, WG3, WG4, WG5, WG6, WG7, and WG8, as well as the advisory groups AG2 and AG3. These groups develop and maintain international standards for compressing and coding audio, video, and other data. (ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization. IEC stands for International Electrotechnical Commission.)}