NHW Project - a free state-of-the-art image/video compression codec

[nhw_pulsar]

Hello,

For those interested, I have released the NHW v0.3.0-rc7 new version.

I am still continuing to fine-tune the nhw_kernel weights.This new version has then more precision and a better visual quality.

More at: http://nhwcodec.blogspot.com/

-Don't know how much I will continue to fine-tune/refine the nhw_kernel weights, as I find that this stage is not far from paranoid now...-

Cheers,
Raphael

[Selur]

-Don't know how much I will continue to fine-tune/refine the nhw_kernel weights, as I find that this stage is not far from paranoid now...-

Maybe instead, really think about working on increasing the possible resolution, even when it means rewriting tons of code.
Tuning for some 'neatness' when nobody looks at the results seems like wasted time, especially if you are not sure that tuning holds true for higher resolutions.

Cu Selur

[nhw_pulsar]

Originally Posted by Selur

Maybe instead, really think about working on increasing the possible resolution, even when it means rewriting tons of code.
Tuning for some 'neatness' when nobody looks at the results seems like wasted time, especially if you are not sure that tuning holds true for higher resolutions.

Cu Selur

I think the tuning for neatness in NHW is ok with all resolutions of image.For example (and don't know if it is a good example), with larger images, if you extract 512x512 parts of these larger images, then the tuning seems still OK.

I also wanted to point out that another main aspect of NHW is its very good speed, and the fast decoder can be even speed up, for example by disabling some heavy processings that only bring marginal improvement...

Cheers,
Raphael

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Selur

Maybe instead, really think about working on increasing the possible resolution, even when it means rewriting tons of code.
Tuning for some 'neatness' when nobody looks at the results seems like wasted time, especially if you are not sure that tuning holds true for higher resolutions.

I concur on this. Among other things, with modern high dpi displays, few people look at 512x512 at anything like pixel-level detail. That's just 3% the area of a 2160p display.

So visual comparisons would happen zoomed in, which is also a pretty unnatural way to look at an image. Which makes it hard to really get a sense of how the algorithm itself would compare to others in real-world circumstances.

Even 1024x1024 would be a lot easier to visually evaluate, even if arbitrary resolutions are a big challenge.

[nhw_pulsar]

Hi,

For those interested, I have released the NHW v0.3.0-rc8 new version.

I continue to fine-tune the nhw_kernel weights and pre_processing.This new version seems then to have more precision and a better visual quality.

-Just a quick note, for now I can not explain why it works...-

More at: http://nhwcodec.blogspot.com/

Do not hesitate to let me know if you agree with this new version, else I can still revert the commit...

Cheers,
Raphael

[nhw_pulsar]

Hello,

For those interested, I have released the NHW v0.3.0-rc9 new version.

I continue to fine-tune the pre-processing.This new version has then more precision and a little better visual quality.

More at: http://nhwcodec.blogspot.com/

Cheers,
Raphael

Your project is so crucial that I can not imagine world without it.

[nhw_pulsar]

No problem, yes I get used to post my updates/new versions on a weekly basis, and yes I realize this can be quite disturbing on Doom9 for such kind of projects.

Would Doom9 members prefer that I post here each 3 or 6 months with a "big" major release rather than weekly incremental updates?

Cheers,
Raphael

[jmartinr]

Originally Posted by nhw_pulsar

No problem, yes I get used to post my updates/new versions on a weekly basis, and yes I realize this can be quite disturbing on Doom9 for such kind of projects.

Keep posting Raphael

[nhw_pulsar]

Originally Posted by jmartinr

Keep posting Raphael

Thank you

I also wanted to temperate as I am really not sure that I will continue for longtime to post weekly releases as I have other priorities that I should really care about now...

Cheers,
Raphael

[nhw_pulsar]

Hello,

For those interested (and yes, also to keep the topic warm), I have released the NHW v0.3.0-rc10 new version.

I continue to fine-tune the nhw_kernel weights and pre_processing.This new version has then more precision and a better visual quality.

More at: http://nhwcodec.blogspot.com/

Cheers,
Raphael

[nhw_pulsar]

Hello,

For those interested, I have released the NHW v0.3.0-rc11 new version.

I continue to fine-tune the nhw_kernel weights.This new version has then more precision and a better visual quality.

More at: http://nhwcodec.blogspot.com/

Cheers,
Raphael

[nhw_pulsar]

Hello,

For those interested, I have released the NHW v0.3.0-rc12 new version.

Still continuing to fine-tune the nhw_kernel weights.This new version has then more precision and a better visual quality.

More at: http://nhwcodec.blogspot.com/

Cheers,
Raphael

[nhw_pulsar]

Hello,

For those interested, I have released the NHW v0.3.0-rc13 new version.

I am still continuing to fine-tune the nhw_kernel weights.This new version has then more precision and a better visual quality.

More at: http://nhwcodec.blogspot.com/

Cheers,
Raphael

[nhw_pulsar]

Hello,

Just a quick message, I am still trying to improve precision of NHW while still keeping its neatness, but yes I realize that I have bored you for many years with neatness, asserting that it was visually more pleasant than precision, but as I advance and improve NHW (notably its precision), I really don't know what to think now, maybe precision is more important than neatness?... -It maybe depends on your type of screen?-...

Nevermind, I wanted to remind that a main point while considering NHW is its extreme speed, NHW is a lot faster to encode and decode, which again seems to make it well-suited for niche applications which need low-power.-I don't have contact with the niche industry, but that's right if they could delegate ressources (a team to help me), it could be possible to turn NHW into something usable, like notably working with any arbitrary image resolutions-...

Very quickly to finish, you certainly already have seen it, I wanted to send congratulations to the AVIF team for the CLIC 2024 Challenge.Apparently the results are ranked by order, and as you can see, it's very impressive but notably, despite that ECM 10 optimized for still image (ED codec) has +2dB PSNR compared to AVIF at high compression (which is out of this world), but CLIC compression challenge professional reviewers said that AVIF has the best visual quality and is the visually more pleasant for them, that's very impressive!

Cheers,
Raphael

[nhw_pulsar]

Hello,

For those interested in the NHW codec and its current format, I have released the NHW v0.3.0-rc14 new version.

I continue to fine-tune the nhw_kernel weights.This new version has then more precision and a better visual quality.

More at: http://nhwcodec.blogspot.com/

-I have also a new development environment and a new screen. Hope my eyes are well-tuned to my new configuration.-

Cheers,
Raphael

[nhw_pulsar]

Hello,

It is very difficult for me to work on NHW currently, but however I found a little slot of time to release the NHW v0.3.0-rc15 new version, for those interested.

I still continue to fine-tune the nhw_kernel weights, and so this new version seems to have a little more precision, and so a better visual quality (hope my eyes are not tired...).

More at: https://nhwcodec.blogspot.com/

Cheers,
Raphael

[nhw_pulsar]

Hello,

Just a little message to let you know that I finally could make a "proper" visual evaluation of the latest NHW v0.3.0-rc15 on my test images.

Actually I would find now that NHW has reached an OK precision while still retaining its neatness, which gives to v0.3.0-rc15 an interesting visual quality for me.

Just some nostalgia, I started NHW in January 2007, so it took me 17 years and 7 months (often working at a slow pace however, at my little level furthermore) to reach an OK/acceptable precision for NHW... that's quite crazy...

Today, I am however a little worried about my health, hope I could release v0.3.0-rc16 by the end of the year, but again now I think with this latest version, NHW precision is OK, so very quickly, any help for taking contact with the niche industry, to make NHW something deployable (like adapting to any image resolution), is welcome!

Cheers,
Raphael

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by nhw_pulsar

Just a little message to let you know that I finally could make a "proper" visual evaluation of the latest NHW v0.3.0-rc15 on my test images.

Actually I would find now that NHW has reached an OK precision while still retaining its neatness, which gives to v0.3.0-rc15 an interesting visual quality for me.

Just some nostalgia, I started NHW in January 2007, so it took me 17 years and 7 months (often working at a slow pace however, at my little level furthermore) to reach an OK/acceptable precision for NHW... that's quite crazy...

Today, I am however a little worried about my health, hope I could release v0.3.0-rc16 by the end of the year, but again now I think with this latest version, NHW precision is OK, so very quickly, any help for taking contact with the niche industry, to make NHW something deployable (like adapting to any image resolution), is welcome!

I hope your health improves!

It would be helpful if you had a gallery page showing some typical images with source versus JPEG and NHW at the same file size. It's a lot to ask people to download and compile each time to evaluate an improvement.

A web service where someone could upload a source image and then be showed a lossless PNG reencode of the NHW version, with the stats for the NHW encode, could go an even longer way.

[nhw_pulsar]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

I hope your health improves!

It would be helpful if you had a gallery page showing some typical images with source versus JPEG and NHW at the same file size. It's a lot to ask people to download and compile each time to evaluate an improvement.

A web service where someone could upload a source image and then be showed a lossless PNG reencode of the NHW version, with the stats for the NHW encode, could go an even longer way.

Thank you for your answer Ben.

A web service where you can upload images and convert to NHW is out of my skills for now..., I think there are some websites that propose/host image gallery pages but it's a little difficult for me currently with my bad health to provide such a service... yes NHW in its current development/evaluation process is adressed to very motivated people...

You're talking about JPEG, it makes sense as in 2016 an engineer told me that the core target of NHW would be a MJPEG replacement in the niche market, as NHW is normally faster than JPEG.

Don't remember if I already said that on this forum, but NHW is totally unoptimized C code and so I compared it to reference IJG Jpeg C code which doesn't seem to contain multithreading, SIMD optimizations... and if I remember correctly, don't know what it's worth, but NHW was 1.5x faster to encode and 2x faster to decode than IJG JPEG...

Cheers,
Raphael