Google VP9 "Next Generation Open Video" information posted

[xooyoozoo]

Guess which is which?

VP8, VP9, x264 or HEVC. Bitstream size set by HEVC QP32.

Theora*, Dirac*, MPEG2 or Xvid. Sizes at doubled the above.

Snapshot of what you'll be looking at. The two clips are 50-70MB in size. They were reencoded from each encoder's YUV dumps using x264 CRF 10 and is entirely transparent to the main encode.

I didn't like how some of the encoders in the first clip were barely flustered, so I redid that scenario but with HEVC's QP35. This one uses a scene from Big Buck Bunny and has sound: (Edit: on YouTube now. Realized its recompression doesn't change much in this situation). QP 0 lossless variant.

Settings and clip order.
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* It's strange to think that these two came out so late (2008) and won over so many on faith alone.

[dapperdan]

Originally Posted by xooyoozoo

* It's strange to think that these two came out so late (2008) and won over so many on faith alone.

2008 seems late for Theora. Wikipedia claims 2004 for initial release. Though it did lie dormant for a while till the search for a codec compatible with the W3C royalty-free standard for HTML5 made it more relevant.

Wikipedia seems to peg 2008 for various firsts for dirac, like publishing the final spec and a 1.0 version of a high-performance non-research implementation. I'm not sure how long it had been floating around before that.

And while hypnotic and fun to look at, isn't this form of testing a bit misleading? Like testing the brakes of 4 cars by driving them right up to a cliff? Yes, you can conclude that the two that aren't flaming fireballs at the foot of the cliff have better brakes than the other two, but you're going to subconsciously group both sets of two closer together (and further from the other group) than is perhaps warranted.

E.g. for me this made me mentally group VP9 and HEVC together, and VP8 and x264, whereas before I may have assumed more of a linear progression: VP8, x264, VP9, HEVC.

I'm also curious about what the red jumper guy is actually supposed to look like in the original Mall scene, is the slightly psychedelic pulsing an artifact of the encoding?.

[dngnta]

Well, they weren't kidding when they said that HEVC is visually even better than what quantitative metrics like PSNR tell you. While examination of individual frames reveals that an incredible amount of detail is thrown away, the temporal stability of hard edges and textures makes the end result much more pleasant to watch in motion than that of any other codec.

HEVC is amazing. Let's hope an open source encoder/decoder comes along soon.

[xooyoozoo]

2008 seems late for Theora. Wikipedia claims 2004 for initial release

I believe the first public 'stable' version came out in 2008? I certainly remember a lot of fanfare when it reached 1.0 (or something) then.

Originally Posted by dapperdan

And while hypnotic and fun to look at, isn't this form of testing a bit misleading? Like testing the brakes of 4 cars by driving them right up to a cliff? Yes, you can conclude that the two that aren't flaming fireballs at the foot of the cliff have better brakes than the other two, but you're going to subconsciously group both sets of two closer together (and further from the other group) than is perhaps warranted.

Considering the generational gaps present here, I dont' think there's any sort of visual test holding bitrate constant that won't either park all cars at a Walmart or throw most of them into the ocean.

You're right though, in that a multi-way comparison creates mental groupings that aren't really needed. Despite the pitfalls of objective measurements, an overview of several encoders would probably work better with some hard numbers, of which I certainly have lots and on which I will likely do a post once VP9 is released.

I'm also curious about what the red jumper guy is actually supposed to look like in the original Mall scene, is the slightly psychedelic pulsing an artifact of the encoding?.

In the original raw clip, that pattern looks normal if the image is viewed 1:1. Any sort of resizing in VLC and it's psychedelic again. I think it's just a very difficult pattern.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by gmaxwell

"You are not allowed to post or reply until you have been registered for at least 5 days." .. anyone have a doom9 account and can go tell them at http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1620374&postcount=65 that the theora format was finalized in 2004. See e.g. http://developers.slashdot.org/story/04/06/15/2250214/theora-i-bistream-format-frozen and that it was largely just a formal specification for and a few minor fixes/enhancements of a format first released to the public in 1999?

5chars

[GTPVHD]

http://blog.webmproject.org/2013/05/vp9-codec-nears-completion.html

[mzso]

Will they make a new "WebP" version too based on VP9?

[hajj_3]

No chance. WebP has taken a long time to be created, for an image format to become a standard it needs to stay the standard for several years or no-one would adopt it. Hence why we don't have h.266 coming out in 2 years. WebP will be good enough for many years to come.

[mzso]

Originally Posted by hajj_3

No chance. WebP has taken a long time to be created, for an image format to become a standard it needs to stay the standard for several years or no-one would adopt it. Hence why we don't have h.266 coming out in 2 years. WebP will be good enough for many years to come.

It's not even good now. Last time I checked a few weeks ago due to the facebook using webp news it was still inferior to jpg.

[tuqueque]

@mzso... Boy, WebP is not only superior to JPEG in 95% of cases, but in Lossless mode is superior to PNG in 99% of cases... I'm already switching all of my "raw" lossless data to WebP and have saved around half the space. And considering that I work with PNG sequence animations, that's GBs of information I've saved!

And I reiterate, I also have converted a lot of my lossy data (casual JPEGs like parties and social gatherings taken with my camera) to WebP, again, saving around 40% of data with the same visual quality.

[hajj_3]

Originally Posted by tuqueque

@mzso... Boy, WebP is not only superior to JPEG in 95% of cases, but in Lossless mode is superior to PNG in 99% of cases... I'm already switching all of my "raw" lossless data to WebP and have saved around half the space. And considering that I work with PNG sequence animations, that's GBs of information I've saved!

And I reiterate, I also have converted a lot of my lossy data (casual JPEGs like parties and social gatherings taken with my camera) to WebP, again, saving around 40% of data with the same visual quality.

Exactly, the quality of WebP is great, there are a few bugs on their bugtracker left but once those are fixed it will be a great image format: https://code.google.com/p/webp/issues/list

I'll be glad when people stop using .gif animations on reddit and other sites and start using .webp, gif looks terrible, webp looks wonderful for animated images.

[Keiyakusha]

Originally Posted by hajj_3

I'll be glad when people stop using .gif animations on reddit and other sites and start using .webp, gif looks terrible, webp looks wonderful for animated images.

How it looks or what it capable of is not an issue here. I can create .gif with Photoshop or thousands of other tools. WebP is around for quite some time already. Is there any convenient tools for working with WebP? Is there native support for it in operating systems and other software? While WebP support remains to be close to zero, people won't start using it.
There was already good formats for lossy/lossless compression like jpeg2000 and apng/mng for animated images. And while they are good (and I believe they are official standards, except apng), hardly anyone uses them. Unfortunately WebP is not any better than those formats.

[tuqueque]

I can start saying (repeating) that WebP is better than PNG in 95% of cases, ergo, is better than APNG and of course, GIF; second, in most cases WebP is better than JPEG... Is just one file format that offers better features/compression/quality than what the other three offer separately... And, oh, yes; is created, developed, maintained and promoted by a dude like Google!... Let's complain less about WebP/WebM not being supported and let's do more promoting them!

In this forums there are like 5 redundant but active threads about H265 stuff and just one about WebM... That's just sad!

Google is implementing WebP in services like Google+, Picasa, Gmail... WebP in Google Maps is not yet supported, but they're getting there... Google is already supporting WebP and WebM in Chrome. I don't use Chrome, but I use Firefox and Mozilla guys a month or so ago said that they were finally considering WebP support... Google is already working in VP9 (in a daily basis with lots of commits: http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=we...s/experimental) which will probably be about twice the quality of VP8... VP8 is inferior than H.264, but it's still a dang good video codec and is an open standart! (which I already use frequently)... I'm confident that VP9 will be equal or even slightly better than x264... So, Google is definitely doing its job (an awesome job, BTW) promoting them... Is now our job to give it a real try.

I've suggested the support for WebP in several programs and thanks to that, my favorite image viewer, JPEGView (http://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/), now supports loading and saving WebP!

So, when people like us, the users... Stop complaining and start using and promoting demonstrated new (and OPEN) standarts, those standarts will establish!

[Keiyakusha]

Wikipedia says that WebP only supports 8-bit YUV 4:2:0 Is it true? This is unacceptable if it is and format can be thrown into trash can instantly.
Jpeg with maximum quality looks visually lossless while size is like half of the optimized PNG. And this is 4:4:4, Photoshop doesn't even lets you to save jpeg with subsampling.

I just discovered some WebP plugin for photoshop based on libwebp/libvpx. Tried to save photoshop-generated tri-color gradient with it (1024x576, dithered).
With maximum quality (100%) settings I got 20kb file that looks so bad that I'm not even going to post it. Jpeg of the same size created in photoshop looks the same (if not to say better!)
No mentions of any lossless mode or something. And what about metadata or custom ICC profiles? WebP supports that? Not through this plugin at least. But even if that supported in theory, from (non-web)designers and artist's point of view, saving in some intermediate format and then properly converting it to WebP using some commandline tools is not an option.
Also I need a tool that can not only save file, but allows me to specify target filesize instead of desired quality.

Originally Posted by tuqueque

I can start saying (repeating) that WebP is better than PNG in 95% of cases, ergo, is better than APNG and of course, GIF; second, in most cases WebP is better than JPEG...

Where is any tools that will allow me and other users to see it? I'd like to test them. Please no commandline stuff. Something with GUI that is easy to use, as we're talking about simple users here. Available tools is what matters for wide adoption, not how good the format is. "open standard" is not something normal users care about.

Edit: To be clear, I don't deny that such tools may exist. I just want information on where they are. But if there is no such tools, even if format many times better than jpeg - it doesn't matter.
Tried plugin for GIMP. the only option is quality. with 100% quality I got 30kb image - a bit more than with Photoshop plugin but looks just as crappy. No mentions of lossless mode, no ways to save real high quality but still lossy image, no mentions about animation, no mentions about ICC profiles, no alpha support. And this is plugin that I need previously find and then install. As a simple user I demand out of the box support. Otherwise this is an image format for geeks.

Edit2: simple example. Below I tried to embed WebP image using [img] tag. It works? Not in firefox at least. As simple user, before I'll even think about using this format, someone have to make sure it does work in all browsers. Even on official WebP presentation page all images converted to png for display. What joke is that?

[tuqueque]

@Keiyakusha:
I'm doing some "research" and investigation and I'll get back in a couple of days with more tangible information (and possibly comparisons and tools to create good WebPs)...

simple example. Below I tried to embed WebP image using [img] tag. It works? Not in firefox at least. As simple user, before I'll even think about using this format, someone have to make sure it does work in all browsers. Even on official WebP presentation page all images converted to png for display. What joke is that?

Also, try to embed a Jpeg2000 (which has been out 3 or 4 times as long as WebP)... Good luck with that!

Firefox said it won't support (ever) natively Jpeg2000... OTOH, hopefully, this year we could see support for WebP (which is already supported in Chrome and Opera)... 3 of the 5 major browsers supporting natively WebP this year? that's not a joke, my friend , WebP guys are trying to improve the format constantly and you can see the improvements with each release.

You described yourself as a simple user (I'm not pointing it out in a bad way; don't take me wrong)... So is natural that while this format is still in adoption process (as it is today), most tools are a bit "unfriendly" and just targeted for advanced users, early adopters, developers and enthusiasts in general. General users will come later (hopefully soon enough)... Anyway, if you feel a little adventurous, in my next post I'll try to talk about a couple of tools that are not entirely friendly, but will meet you half-way.

Greets!

[Keiyakusha]

Originally Posted by tuqueque

I'm doing some "research" and investigation and I'll get back in a couple of days with more tangible information (and possibly comparisons and tools to create good WebPs).

Don't bother with comparison if you don't feel like it. I have no doubts that lossless WebP is smaller than PNG, or that lossy WebP can perform better than JPEG. I just say that available tools are so bad that they can't show this effectively, most of the features are not available at all.

Originally Posted by tuqueque

Also, try to embed a Jpeg2000 (which has been out 3 or 4 times as long as WebP)... Good luck with that!

Of course it won't work. But noone here says that I should use jpeg2000 because it's so awesome and I have no plans on using it myself. Otherwise I would make the same example with jpeg2000.

Originally Posted by tuqueque

3 of the 5 major browsers supporting natively WebP this year? that's not a joke, my friend

When I said about joke, I meant that WebP presentation page is a joke because what it really shows is a webp-converted-to-png. Nothing more. They should be forcing mozilla to add WebP support before even creating that page. Or write patch themselves if they have to, firefox is opensource after all.
If something becomes widely supported, it can become a standard (official or de facto). If they want to make standard, they should also make it widely supported. Look at matroska. If there was no mkvtoolnix and haali splitter, everyone would still use avi and occasionally mp4. And even with these epic tools mkv is not as supported as everyone wanted it to.

Originally Posted by tuqueque

You described yourself as a simple user (I'm not pointing it out in a bad way; don't take me wrong)... So is natural that while this format is still in adoption process (as it is today), most tools are a bit "unfriendly" and just targeted for advanced users, early adopters, developers and enthusiasts in general. General users will come later (hopefully soon enough)... Anyway, if you feel a little adventurous, in my next post I'll try to talk about a couple of tools that are not entirely friendly, but will meet you half-way.

I don't see any reason to talk about not user-friendly tools, because for me advantages of using WebP is not big enough to make it worth using it instead of good old jpeg/png. Even as advanced user, if lossless WebP can compress 2 times better, it is still not enough for me to switch my production pipeline to it from PNG, because of how much more operations I can already perform on PNG material. And professional tools not getting support for WebP because they also think that improvements are not big enough to make users pay for it, that the format is mature enough to make it high priority. If it will be able to compress 4 times better and decompression wont take any longer than jpeg - then it will be really useful, then it will be instantly supported everywhere.

Edit: BTW, PNG supports bitdepth up to 16bits per channel +alpha. jpeg2000 supports 32bit float +alpha. How about webp? Am I really limited to 8-bit 4:2:0?

[vivan]

IrfanView has webp plugin for opening and saving webp images. It has lossless mode too, I've got ~20% better compression than png with it (and checked that it bit-identical to it). But it slow as hell (like 1 min for compressing 720p image o_O).
As for lossy - it has some presets (text, photo), but the only rate control is «quality». Also it's fast.

Originally Posted by tuqueque

Google is already working in VP9 (in a daily basis with lots of commits: http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=we...s/experimental) which will probably be about twice the quality of VP8... VP8 is inferior than H.264, but it's still a dang good video codec and is an open standart!

H.264 and H.265 are "open standart". VP8 is kinda open, since it specification is available, but it's awful. And have you seen VP9 specs? Me neither.

Originally Posted by tuqueque

I'm confident that VP9 will be equal or even slightly better than x264...
So, Google is definitely doing its job (an awesome job, BTW) promoting them... Is now our job to give it a real try.

Yeah, awesome job: lying, cheating, making absurd claims, removing H.264 from Chrome...

[dapperdan]

Originally Posted by vivan

And have you seen VP9 specs? Me neither.

Yeah, awesome job: lying, cheating, making absurd claims, removing H.264 from Chrome...

They published an "overview" of VP9 here:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-grange-vp9-bitstream-00

I assume they'll similarly publish the spec once it's done, like they did for VP8:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bankoski-vp8-bitstream-06

Also, they never removed H.264 from Chrome and it seems unlikely they will now, though they did announce they were going to a couple of years ago.

[mandarinka]

Originally Posted by tuqueque

@mzso... Boy, WebP is not only superior to JPEG in 95% of cases, but in Lossless mode is superior to PNG in 99% of cases... I'm already switching all of my "raw" lossless data to WebP and have saved around half the space. And considering that I work with PNG sequence animations, that's GBs of information I've saved!

My results were much more modest (webp lossless filesizes were pretty unimpressive). Try if you don't get better compression with lossless jpeg 2000 or jpeg-XR (the former achieves better ratios). Make sure though that your software uses the reversible transform and yuv conversions. Jasper (also used in imagemagick) apparently fails to.

[Rumbah]

Originally Posted by Keiyakusha

And this is 4:4:4, Photoshop doesn't even lets you to save jpeg with subsampling.[/IMG]

Photoshop saves jpegs automatically with subsampling depending on the quality you choose (if I remember it correctly 4:2:0 with quality <=6 or 50% with save for web, 4:4:4 above).