[Lord Lucan]

This new format comes from the Alliance for Open Media, led by Mozilla and Google, and uses some technology from the AV1 video format. It is patent and royalty free.

Photo format from Google and Mozilla could outdo Apple and JPEG - CNET

The jpeg format was defined in the 1990's as a photographic format and a lot of things have changed since then. Back then hard drives were around 100Mb and internet connection speeds around 14Mbps, so some priorities have changed. There are other formats of course, including lossless ones like PNG, BMP and SVG, but most are more suited to graphic designs or line art, so jpeg has remained the dominant photo format. It seems compression of photos is still needed, but not as severe as jpeg was designed to be. Also, jpeg does not have the greater colour depth that cameras now have.

BTW, the HEIC format mentioned is not owned by Apple as the link implies. It was defined by MPEG (Ie the committee) and happens to have been adopted by Apple as their standard. However, HEIC is encumbered by patents which will discourage its use (fancy paying royalties every time you post something here in that format?).

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Last edited by Lord Lucan; 01-22-2018 at 06:56 AM. Reason: Typo

[MadMathMind]

JPEG2000 has been around for....19 years now and it never gained any adoption, despite being a massive technical upgrade. The compression and decompression did take longer and may have been a stretch for hardware and internet capabilities at the time, but surely that has been solved somewhere in the last 20 years.

The reason we don't abandon JPEG, which is rather lousy and will become very apparent to people as more and more 4K monitors are adopted, is because people don't care. Ever look at photos after upload to Facebook? They look terrible...the re-compression does awful things to them. But no one cares enough to do anything. :/

I do find it curious that we've been through a few video codecs in all that time; using JPEG is equivalent to using MPEG-2 still. But video is BIG and everyone was motivated to find ways to condense the space requirements to make streaming a real possibility. No such need for still image formats.

[BigMackCam]

Interesting. In that article, the three image comparison of JPEG vs HEIC vs AV1-based is worth looking at closely. For me, the clear winner is HEIC. The AV1-based image has good colour depth, but if you look closely, there's a weird "gridline" artefact running through the entire image, especially noticeable in the dark blues of the sky Still, they did say it's experimental right now...

Given the number of cameras and camera phones that output JPEG, it'll take any new format a good number of years to gain traction in the photography market, I think... at least so far as straight-out-of-camera images are concerned. Could be an interesting option for those shooting RAW, though, as an export format to maintain better quality. Then again, I guess it will take a while for software developers and vendors to include the new format in their RAW processing and editing tools...

[normhead]

I always ignore speculation on what could happen. Jpeg is convenient and royalty free. This headline is a clean example of pure click bait.
Google and Mozilla are compared to Apple and jpeg. As if Google does what Apple does and mozilla does what jpeg does. ANyone who knows so little about the use of metaphors and their use in the english language isn't worth reading.

I could also out do Apple and jpeg, when I take my dogs for a walk in the morning. They don't walk dogs.

The only thing that could possibly be of issue is a sociological study of how Google and Mozilla plan to ween everyone off jpeg. As pointed out, jpeg2000 has been around since well... 2000, Availability is not the issue, the technology is there and has been for many years. Getting it universally adopted is the issue.

If you spend your time studying un0adopted advanced technology, you are going to be spending a lot of time doing so. Wake me up when it goes mainstream. Until then, I'm sleeping on it.

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Last edited by normhead; 01-22-2018 at 07:20 AM.

[BrianR]

Back then hard drives were around 100Mb and internet connection speeds around 14Mbps, so some priorities have changed.

In good weather, my download speeds might hit 4Mbps. Yayyy rural internet - I'm always in favour of reducing filesizes, or better quality for the same size.

I think it will depend on how seamlessly they can get people to transition. Apple threw theirs into one of the most popular handheld devices and has made it play well with everyone else. That seems like a strong toehold to start with, but who can predict the future.

I'm still waiting/hoping on Googles Guetzli to be implemented in standard editing software. It optimizes the jpeg compression to reduce file sizes (or boost quality at the same filesize) and is still a full-on jpeg so will be viewed seamlessly by every device. Downside is the massive cost (memory & cpu) when compressing images, but it would be noticeable on webpages where content is squished once but delivered thousands of times.

---------- Post added 01-22-18 at 09:37 AM ----------

This headline is a clean example of pure click bait.
Google and Mozilla are compared to Apple and jpeg. As if Google does what Apple does and mozilla does what jpeg does. ANyone who knows so little about the use of metaphors and their use in the english language isn't worth reading.

I think you've parsed the title wrong. It is not a pairwise comparison of google to apple and mozilla to jpeg. Google and Mozilla (and the rest of the Alliance for Open Media) are working together to make an algorithm that (they hope) is better than the algorithm Apple is pushing and also better than the jpeg algorithm.

[MadMathMind]

The only thing that could possibly be of issue is a sociological study of how Google and Mozilla plan to ween everyone off jpeg. As pointed out, jpeg2000 has been around since well... 2000, Availability is not the issue, the technology is there and has been for many years. Getting it universally adopted is the issue.

And for whatever reason, no browser supported JPEG2000 and still doesn't. I don't think Windows even has built-in support for viewing. As a result, it's pretty much worthless. And there's no real technical reason why this is the case, either.

PNG got some traction because it did some things better than gif and jpeg and had browser support. Without browser support, it's going nowhere. The average person isn't going to convert images for uploading and Facebooking and such.

[normhead]

In good weather, my download speeds might hit 4Mbps. Yayyy rural internet - I'm always in favour of reducing filesizes, or better quality for the same size.

I think it will depend on how seamlessly they can get people to transition. Apple threw theirs into one of the most popular handheld devices and has made it play well with everyone else. That seems like a strong toehold to start with, but who can predict the future.

I'm still waiting/hoping on Googles Guetzli to be implemented in standard editing software. It optimizes the jpeg compression to reduce file sizes (or boost quality at the same filesize) and is still a full-on jpeg so will be viewed seamlessly by every device. Downside is the massive cost (memory & cpu) when compressing images, but it would be noticeable on webpages where content is squished once but delivered thousands of times.

---------- Post added 01-22-18 at 09:37 AM ----------



I think you've parsed the title wrong. It is not a pairwise comparison of google to apple and mozilla to jpeg. Google and Mozilla (and the rest of the Alliance for Open Media) are working together to make an algorithm that (they hope) is better than the algorithm Apple is pushing and also better than the jpeg algorithm.

The problem remains, how will they get it adopted?
I have all kinds faith in Mozilla. Google as far as I can tell is just another corporation. Apple does what's best for Apple, and their 100 billion dollar reserve fund. Apple is better at separating folks from their hard earned dollars than anyone on the planet, despite making product that it could be argued is not essential to anyone's life. (says the guy typing on an Apple computer.)

Sorry, it's still before 11 and I'm still grumpy.

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Last edited by normhead; 01-22-2018 at 01:48 PM.

[BrianR]

The problem remains, how will they get it adopted?

No one can see the future, so who knows what will happen?

As MadMathMind suggests, browser support would be a huge step. Google and Mozilla are certainly the right corporations to have backing a piece of tech that you want supported by popular browsers.

If you have no interest in image compression algorithms that may (or may not) become mainstream, then I'd suggest you step away from this thread, grab the dogs and go for a walk outside.

[RGlasel]

The only chokepoints in the adoption of a new compression process are smartphones and tablets. A new process needs to be programmed into the built-in H.264 video decoder chip, the ARM processors running all smartphones and most tablets are too slow and too preoccupied to deliver more complex images as quickly as JPEGs. Everywhere else, it just takes a software update and desktop browsers are updated weekly without any user input. Which suggests that the AV1 hack of H.264 decoders spearheaded by the Alliance could be everywhere far quicker than we might realize. How many people realize that most of the HTML content they download is bzipped? There are at least 50 ways to compress text, yet that lack of uniformity doesn't affect the user experience while browsing.

[dsmithhfx]

The problem remains, how will they get it adopted?

IIRC, png got adapted pretty quick after gif compression ip owners tried to monetize the format. Though this doesn't seem to be a factor with jpeg.

For most screen viewing purposes, jpeg scales well. Even on hdpi displays, the artifacting of high-quality jpegs isn't really noticeable, except for the pathologically fastidious.

[BigMackCam]

Sorry, it's still before 11 and I'm still grumpy.

Say it's not so, Norm

[normhead]

If you have no interest in image compression algorithms that may (or may not) become mainstream, then I'd suggest you step away from this thread, grab the dogs and go for a walk outside.

By the time I'm back with the dogs I won't be grumpy anymore. So, problem solved.

[SSGGeezer]

Say it's not so, Norm

Can't be so, Norm is never cranky online!
/s Everyone here lives in an online world of harmony and bliss. /s

[gatorguy]

In good weather, my download speeds might hit 4Mbps. Yayyy rural internet - I'm always in favour of reducing filesizes, or better quality for the same size.

I think it will depend on how seamlessly they can get people to transition. Apple threw theirs into one of the most popular handheld devices and has made it play well with everyone else. That seems like a strong toehold to start with, but who can predict the future.

I'm still waiting/hoping on Googles Guetzli to be implemented in standard editing software. It optimizes the jpeg compression to reduce file sizes (or boost quality at the same filesize) and is still a full-on jpeg so will be viewed seamlessly by every device. Downside is the massive cost (memory & cpu) when compressing images, but it would be noticeable on webpages where content is squished once but delivered thousands of times.

---------- Post added 01-22-18 at 09:37 AM ----------



I think you've parsed the title wrong. It is not a pairwise comparison of google to apple and mozilla to jpeg. Google and Mozilla (and the rest of the Alliance for Open Media) are working together to make an algorithm that (they hope) is better than the algorithm Apple is pushing and also better than the jpeg algorithm.

And Apple is now part of the AV1 group too, taking a membership in the Alliance for Open Media. Seems they're no big fans of the royalty-bearing and unclearly licensed HVEC standards either now that they're looking to be more involved with streaming media themselves.

[normhead]

And Apple is now part of the AV1 group too, taking a membership in the Alliance for Open Media. Seems they're no big fans of the royalty-bearing and unclearly licensed HVEC standards either now that they're looking to be more involved with streaming media themselves.

Apple is interesting in that one could argue they are an extremely predatory company (except for the part where no one has to buy their product, unlike food, clothing, water, medicine etc, etc.) but they also belong to and contribute 6 or so engineers to Linux as the underpinnings of their OS. SO they are one of the best examples of predatory capitalism (price fixing etc.) and co-operative non-capitalistic endeavour. A real Jeckle and Hyde company.

The only thing I'd be interested in seeing would be a clear difference in IQ, that I can see without having two images side by side. IF jpeg is good enough, and what's being suggested is only marginally better, then the resources to make a change would probably be pretty much wasted. If it gets to the point where you walk in and see two side by side identical systems one displaying jpeg and the other displaying whatever, there is a clear and noticeable difference, then I can see making a switch. But my guess would be the display is the limiting factor.

If the display is 8 bit, then it's no disadvantage having an 8 bit compression engine. I have no idea how many bits any tech can display these days. I am unqualified for further comment.

I'm much more concerned about the way it looks than file size.