What is the general relationship to previous MPEG efforts?
Where MPEG-1 and -2 concentrated almost entirely on compression, MPEG-4 moved to a higher level of abstraction in coding objects and using content-specific techniques for coding content. MPEG-7 moves to an even higher level of abstraction, a cognitive coding, some might say. In principle, MPEG-1, -2, and -4 are designed to represent the information itself, while MPEG-7 is meant to represent information about the information (although there are areas common between MPEG-4 and -7 –see below). Another way of looking at it is that MPEG-1, -2, and -4 made content available. MPEG-7 allows you to find the content you need.
