Which image format will see wide adoption? (Poll)

[foxyshadis]

Originally Posted by Jamaika

Oh, and where is the HEIF software running under Windows correctly. What is on github simply doesn't work.
MediaInfo admittedly added images BPG to the software, but HEIF isn't interested. FFmpeg also.

I agree, I've been working on better integrating it into ImageMagick myself, and MediaInfo & ffmpeg are on my list to work on next. It's infuriating how most codecs make no effort to get themselves implemented more generally.

It's also infuriating that Microsoft did the hard work to bring support for wdp/hdp/jxr across the whole closed & open source ecosystem, even into Firefox and Chrome, and no one was the slightest bit interested in using it. JPEG XR is actually a FLOSS format with a ton of capabilities, and people are more interested in HEIC just because Apple uses it, so we're stuck with patents.

[Neillithan]

I'm betting my money on AV1 just because Google shoehorned WebP into Chrome, and we can expect them to do the same with AV1. Once that happens, >60% browser market share will have access to it, while you can provide a fallback method for non compliant browsers. Meanwhile, AV1 has support from an endless list of companies, hardware support is coming, everyone seems to be really excited about this free, open source, royalty free format that's getting collaboration from half a dozen projects. AV1 image format is basically going to make a huge impact whenever it arrives.

That doesn't mean I think AV1 is the best image format. It certainly isn't, and has plenty of room for improvements. It has a problem with saturation, and loss of grainy / noisy micro details. However, if you want a tiny image file with an alpha channel, AV1 is going to be absolutely fantastic for that. Jpeg will still always be king of noisy/grainy images... but chances are, you won't care about that if you care about filesize.

The PIK format is interesting, as it appears to be true successor to JPEG and great at preserving micro details and noise/grain.... however, it has some artifacting issues around edges that I think need to be resolved... and even then, it's pretty much a doomed format since adoption rate will be a big whopping 0%, guaranteed. I'm not losing any sleep over this.

As soon as AV1 image format arrives, apples HEIF/HEIC image format is essentially doomed. Apple is a retarded ass company that somehow manages to make money, but I'm fairly confident their decision to push HEIC/HEIF is about the stupidest decision they've made yet.

[foxyshadis]

Originally Posted by Neillithan

I'm betting my money on AV1 just because Google shoehorned WebP into Chrome, and we can expect them to do the same with AV1. Once that happens, >60% browser market share will have access to it, while you can provide a fallback method for non compliant browsers. Meanwhile, AV1 has support from an endless list of companies, hardware support is coming, everyone seems to be really excited about this free, open source, royalty free format that's getting collaboration from half a dozen projects. AV1 image format is basically going to make a huge impact whenever it arrives.

That doesn't mean I think AV1 is the best image format. It certainly isn't, and has plenty of room for improvements. It has a problem with saturation, and loss of grainy / noisy micro details. However, if you want a tiny image file with an alpha channel, AV1 is going to be absolutely fantastic for that. Jpeg will still always be king of noisy/grainy images... but chances are, you won't care about that if you care about filesize.

The PIK format is interesting, as it appears to be true successor to JPEG and great at preserving micro details and noise/grain.... however, it has some artifacting issues around edges that I think need to be resolved... and even then, it's pretty much a doomed format since adoption rate will be a big whopping 0%, guaranteed. I'm not losing any sleep over this.

As soon as AV1 image format arrives, apples HEIF/HEIC image format is essentially doomed. Apple is a retarded ass company that somehow manages to make money, but I'm fairly confident their decision to push HEIC/HEIF is about the stupidest decision they've made yet.

Apple has always been a company that would rather design a better format than use someone else's, especially someone else's unfinished format. They had a large hand in creating HEIF, and some input in AVC & HEVC, of course they're going to use and push it. Given that it will likely be well over a year before any image format based on the still-unfinalized video format, possibly several years if they dally and bicker, those who want to change aren't going to hold onto unrealized hope forever. It's as likely that AV1 suffers the same fate as Vorbis vs MP3 & MP4 or VP8 vs AVC; too little too late. VP9 is afloat because of Google's clout, but hardly dominating the field. I hope AV1 will do better, but my prediction is that it'll always be the alternative, not the normal.

BPG and HEIF show that there's a lot more to it than just having an I-frame with extra color types; if they're smart they'd just re-use HEIF with the underlying codec swapped out, because it pretty much has every bit of flexibility and power that anyone would want, except that vector capabilities are pretty simple -- no SVG competitor there. It reminds me a lot of Photoshop's PSD, except open and based on MP4.

[iwod]

Does anyone know why there isn't an image format based on H.264?

[wiak]

apng & png

[utack]

It is really sad how it is 8 years later and this old blogpost analyzing a WebP pre-release version still holds:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120319...x/archives/541
I have done some recent tests and at the same filesize WebP was doing clearly worse than mozjpeg in a bit more than half of my test images.
libvpx and libaom do the same, they just blur anything to get good PSNR metrics, unusable for human perception

[iwod]

Originally Posted by utack

It is really sad how it is 8 years later and this old blogpost analyzing a WebP pre-release version still holds:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120319...x/archives/541
I have done some recent tests and at the same filesize WebP was doing clearly worse than mozjpeg in a bit more than half of my test images.
libvpx and libaom do the same, they just blur anything to get good PSNR metrics, unusable for human perception

Because I don't think there are much interest from companies. It seems as Bandwidth increases every year we have settled JPEG as baseline.

I am hoping we may finally see one from VVC.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Jamaika

Oh, and where is the HEIF software running under Windows correctly. What is on github simply doesn't work.
MediaInfo admittedly added images BPG to the software, but HEIF isn't interested. FFmpeg also.

Microsoft now has a beta HEVC/HEIF Media Foundation Transform on the Windows Store for $0.99.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by utack

It is really sad how it is 8 years later and this old blogpost analyzing a WebP pre-release version still holds:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120319...x/archives/541
I have done some recent tests and at the same filesize WebP was doing clearly worse than mozjpeg in a bit more than half of my test images.
libvpx and libaom do the same, they just blur anything to get good PSNR metrics, unusable for human perception

There never was a WebP psychovisually good enough to make it work dealing with the support. It takes the promise of a 2x improvement to really get people to start working towards adoption of new media technologies.

One thing that is important to note is that it is increasingly trivial for a big web site to have an image available in multiple formats, and deliver the appropriate one for a given browser/platform/window size. If you think about big social media and shopping sites, there are SO many pictures, the cost savings and particular page load time improvements of a 2x more efficient codec can be easily justified financially.

And 2x is just for natural images; much better results are seen with synthetic and hand-drawn images. I've been able to beat JPEG 20x with HEIF for comic book art, for example. JPEG just doesn't do sharp edges well. A nice thing about HEIF is that a single frame can mix natural and synthetic elements, being better than JPEG in some areas and better than PNG in others. Features like intra-frame prediction, transform skip, highly variable block and motion partition sizes, and lossless CUs are big advantages for text, screen captures, line art, etcetera.

[iwod]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

There never was a WebP psychovisually good enough to make it work dealing with the support. It takes the promise of a 2x improvement to really get people to start working towards adoption of new media technologies.

One thing that is important to note is that it is increasingly trivial for a big web site to have an image available in multiple formats, and deliver the appropriate one for a given browser/platform/window size. If you think about big social media and shopping sites, there are SO many pictures, the cost savings and particular page load time improvements of a 2x more efficient codec can be easily justified financially.

And 2x is just for natural images; much better results are seen with synthetic and hand-drawn images. I've been able to beat JPEG 20x with HEIF for comic book art, for example. JPEG just doesn't do sharp edges well. A nice thing about HEIF is that a single frame can mix natural and synthetic elements, being better than JPEG in some areas and better than PNG in others. Features like intra-frame prediction, transform skip, highly variable block and motion partition sizes, and lossless CUs are big advantages for text, screen captures, line art, etcetera.

I have always used BPG representing HEIF [1], are there any reason why HEIF would be better? I think both are based on x265?


[1] https://wyohknott.github.io/image-fo...&webm=s&webm=s

[Jamaika]

Originally Posted by iwod

I have always used BPG representing HEIF [1], are there any reason why HEIF would be better? I think both are based on x265?

The creator of bpg have a plugin on the jctvc codec. I don't know if it will be possible to connect a newer jvetvcc.
It isn't known what codec is google pik.
The creators of HEIF bind high hopes with the family of av1 codecs.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by iwod

Does anyone know why there isn't an image format based on H.264?

No good reason. I did quite a bit of testing with H.264 High Profile IDR frames, and they are a lot better than JPEG and almost always better than PNG. Not as good as HEVC (tskip and sub-frame lossless are huge for some image types). But still decently better for natural images and a lot better for synthetic or mixed natural/synthetic content.

HEIF as a file format supports H.264 as well as HEVC, but I don't know if anyone has ever used it for anything. I could see an HEIF JavaScript parser that hands off H.264 decode to the system being not that hard to implement on all web browsers. Could be a great intermediate/alternative solution when a newer codec isn't available.

[foxyshadis]

Originally Posted by iwod

Does anyone know why there isn't an image format based on H.264?

It just wasn't good enough. Much like VP8-based WebP, AVC was designed with 8-bit in mind, and despite the range extensions, it never really broke out of that niche; by the time anyone started seriously thinking about utilizing video tech for a new uber-format (as opposed to WebP and JPEG-XR, which I'd call solutions in search of a problem, despite my high hopes for hdp/jxr), HEVC and VP9 were on the scene, AV1 was around the corner, and VVC was in the works. HEIF would be another also-ran if it wasn't for Apple deciding that they finally need something between JPEG and RAW (and since they already have the hardware decoder, might as well make use of it).

Originally Posted by iwod

I have always used BPG representing HEIF [1], are there any reason why HEIF would be better? I think both are based on x265?


[1] https://wyohknott.github.io/image-fo...&webm=s&webm=s

BPG paved the way, but it's a fairly narrow focus. It's a technically excellent image format. HEIF, in its full standard, sits somewhere between an image and document format; its killer feature is that images can be layered, which makes it possible to mix types of compression where each is most appropriate; imagine layering JPEG areas on a PNG for screenshots, or being able to go back and adjust the exposure an hour later without generational losses. Obviously, Apple hasn't cared about that; they just wanted a better image format and got the stamp of MPEG and ITU, much like they did with AAC, but there's a solid chance it'll give us an image format that'll last as long as good old JPEG did. (Or it could flop like all the other JPEG-killers. Who knows.)

[iwod]

Originally Posted by foxyshadis

It just wasn't good enough. Much like VP8-based WebP, AVC was designed with 8-bit in mind, and despite the range extensions, it never really broke out of that niche; by the time anyone started seriously thinking about utilizing video tech for a new uber-format (as opposed to WebP and JPEG-XR, which I'd call solutions in search of a problem, despite my high hopes for hdp/jxr), HEVC and VP9 were on the scene, AV1 was around the corner, and VVC was in the works. HEIF would be another also-ran if it wasn't for Apple deciding that they finally need something between JPEG and RAW (and since they already have the hardware decoder, might as well make use of it).

Thanks, I nearly forgot about the whole Hi10P problem.