MPEG is a popular video file type that is used to store high-quality videos. They can be played in any operating systems with the help of certain software and codecs.
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What is MPEG?
MPEG stands for Motion Picture Experts Group. MPEG was developed by the Moving Pictures Expert Group and has been published as ISO/IEC standard 13818-12 since 1994, where it is also known as MPEG-I Part 12 (or MP@ML).
It’s newer standards are called AVC or H.264; this article will focus on MPEG-I Part 12 which is most commonly used with videos such as DVDs. Originally implemented in 1996 at a video quality of 320×240 pixels, the latest version supports HDTV resolutions up to 1920×1080p. MPEG files usually have a “.mpg” or “.mpeg” file extension.
When using MPEG compression to reduce the file size of a multimedia file, quality is only slightly reduced with minimal loss. Streaming MPEG movies on the internet is more efficient than sending them entirely, saving bandwidth and time.
The name “MPEG” may be derived from its original form: moving pictures expert group. The term MPEG is commonly used to refer to any video file saved in an MPEG format rather than the organization itself.
Recommended Software to Open MPEG
VLC Media Player
VLC is a free and open-source cross platform media player that supports many audio and video formats. It can be downloaded from the official website, but it’s also available in Windows Store as an app for Windows devices. To play mpeg files using this method, all you need to do is download the program or install it on your system if you already have one installed (in which case just launch the application), because there are no additional codecs required for playback of MPEG videos with VLC. The only downside here may be how short its window size is – so if you’re planning to watch both sides of something like a DVD or blu-ray then there’ll probably not be enough room for the video.
If you’re not sure how to find and install VLC Media Player from a website, then search “vlc media player download” on Google or use an Internet browser such as Edge, Chrome, Firefox etc. You can also access it simply by typing “vlc” into your Windows taskbar’s Run dialog (Windows+R). Once installed and launched click File > Open Video… to load in the MPEG file of choice; if there are multiple videos available with that extension they’ll be listed under Select one or more files at once: so just pick out the one you want.
Microsoft Movie Maker
This is primarily designed for editing rather than playback but will work fine as long as you don’t need to do anything more than watch the video. If there are multiple videos available with that extension they’ll be listed under Select one or more files at once: so just pick out the one you want, and click Open.
This might sound like a lot of steps, but it’s actually barely any different from double-clicking on MPEG file in Windows Explorer – which isn’t much better anyway thanks to its inability to play back audio too.
Media Player Classic Home Cinema
Media Player Classic is a very popular free media player. It has many advanced features for audio and video files, such as volume normalization, frame-by-frame advancement of videos with support for variable playback rates (0.25x to 16x), frame stepping in slow motion mode, zooming in/out on still images and this can all be achieved using keyboard shortcuts or via the mouse interface.
It also includes basic editing functions like cropping pictures and adding color space conversions that are not available at all in other players. One notable feature it doesn’t have is DVD support but you can get these from some third party providers if needed.
