Solutions with advanced multimedia functionality are becoming increasingly important as individuals are producing more and more digital media

not only for professional use but also for their personal use. With the increasing use of network and multimedia technologies

all kinds of compression standards of multimedia information are widely concerned. In order to push forward the research and development of compression technologies in China

a summary and general overview on matters of MPEG compression standards for coded representation of digital audio and video is provided. At first

all kinds of existed MPEG international standards MPEG-1

MPEG-2

MPEG-4

MPEG-7 and their basic applications are reviewed in this paper. Then

the new\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\ncompression standard element-MPEG-21 multimedia framework is emphasized and discussed about its target

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nuser's need

technical elements

key issues

main characteristics

application domain and future work plan.