4 ms·

Why spend a lot of time improving jpeg instead of spending time promoting a HEVC-based standard like that one? http://bellard.org/bpg/ http://bellard.org/bpg/

by d--b 10y ago

wolf550e 10y ago
Because patents.
- johansch 10y ago
  And slowness of cross-browser deployment. Both for stupid and very valid reasons. As an example of the latter: I think Opera Mini (which I ran the development of for its first decade) still has somewhere around 150-200 million monthly unique users, down from a peak of 250M. Pretty much all of those users would be quite happy to receive this image quality improvement for free, I think. (Assuming the incremental encoding CPU cost isn't prohibitive for the server farms.) Opera Mini was a "launch user" of webp (smartphone clients only) for this particular reason. Many of those users devices are Nokia/Sony Ericsson/etc J2ME devices with no realistic way of ever getting system-level software updates. They are still running some circa 2004 libjpeg version to actually decode the images. It's still safe because the transcoding step in Opera Mini means that they aren't exposed to modern bitstream-level JPEG exploits from current web, but it underscores why any improvements targetting formats like JPEG is still quite useful. Opera Mini for J2ME actually includes a very tiny (like 10k iirc) Java-based JPEG decoder since quite a few devices back then didn't support JPEG decoding inside the J2ME environment. It's better than having to use PNG for everything, but because it's typically like 5x-10x slower than the native/C version even in a great JVM of the time it really only makes sense to use as a fallback.)
mtgx 10y ago
If anything, they would spend the time to make it AV1-based, which apparently was expected to come out this month: http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/-110383.aspx http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/-110383.asp... http://aomedia.org/about-us/ http://aomedia.org/about-us/
- ktta 10y ago
  Nope, they pushed the expected release date to end of this year[1]. I was really hoping it would come out this month too, then I realized we won't see much adoption till 2019. 2018 will be spent with a couple releases of software decoders, and some adoption, and 2019 is when the hardware decoders will released. Which is when we can expect everyone to more to AV1. But I'm still skeptical because HEVC might be more widespread with hardware decoders everywhere and people might just not care enough to move to the new standard. Unless MPEG-LA exploits its dominance really bad with license fees, then we can expect MPEG codecs to die off. Although I think x264 will still live. [1]: https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/om_av1/attachments/slides/1795/export/events/attachments/om_av1/slides/1795/av1_update.pdf https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/om_av1/attachments/sl... (4th slide. This codec will be standardized after the experiments are removed and it is frozen to test software.)
  - MikusR 10y ago
    The problem with HEVC is HEVC Advance. A second patent pool that appeared 2 years ago.
    - Veratyr 10y ago
      Not just HEVC Advance. There are also some patent holders who aren't members of any pool, like Technicolour.
  - mtgx 10y ago
    I would've preferred it if AV1 was 2x better than HEVC, but I don't think even HEVC was 2x better than h.264. So if they can achieve at least 50% in all tests against HEVC, it may be a good enough improvement to the point where companies like Netflix, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter adopt it, as well as tv show and movie torrent uploads (which has its own impact on codec adoption). Plus, YouTube is a given, and it's nice to hear that even Apple may adopt it and that Apple is actually going back on promoting HEVC support.
    - ktta 10y ago
theandrewbailey 10y ago
Install base. JPEG has already been promoted and is everywhere. If it's not a pain to better use what's already out there, why would one want to support another format (with all its code bloat, security, and legal implications) indefinitely?
cbhl 10y ago
Google already has a video-codec-based image format: WebP.
gribbly 10y ago
bpg will never get anywhere due to being patent encumbered. There is no way we will start paying royalties to show images on the web.

Why spend a lot of time improving jpeg instead of spending time promoting a HEVC-based standard like that one? http://bellard.org/bpg/ http://bellard.org/bpg/

by d--b 10y ago

Why spend a lot of time improving jpeg instead of spending time promoting a HEVC-based standard like that one? http://bellard.org/bpg/ http://bellard.org/bpg/

wolf550e 10y ago

Because patents.

johansch 10y ago
And slowness of cross-browser deployment. Both for stupid and very valid reasons. As an example of the latter: I think Opera Mini (which I ran the development of for its first decade) still has somewhere around 150-200 million monthly unique users, down from a peak of 250M. Pretty much all of those users would be quite happy to receive this image quality improvement for free, I think. (Assuming the incremental encoding CPU cost isn't prohibitive for the server farms.) Opera Mini was a "launch user" of webp (smartphone clients only) for this particular reason. Many of those users devices are Nokia/Sony Ericsson/etc J2ME devices with no realistic way of ever getting system-level software updates. They are still running some circa 2004 libjpeg version to actually decode the images. It's still safe because the transcoding step in Opera Mini means that they aren't exposed to modern bitstream-level JPEG exploits from current web, but it underscores why any improvements targetting formats like JPEG is still quite useful. Opera Mini for J2ME actually includes a very tiny (like 10k iirc) Java-based JPEG decoder since quite a few devices back then didn't support JPEG decoding inside the J2ME environment. It's better than having to use PNG for everything, but because it's typically like 5x-10x slower than the native/C version even in a great JVM of the time it really only makes sense to use as a fallback.)

mtgx 10y ago

If anything, they would spend the time to make it AV1-based, which apparently was expected to come out this month: http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/-110383.aspx http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/-110383.asp... http://aomedia.org/about-us/ http://aomedia.org/about-us/

ktta 10y ago
Nope, they pushed the expected release date to end of this year[1]. I was really hoping it would come out this month too, then I realized we won't see much adoption till 2019. 2018 will be spent with a couple releases of software decoders, and some adoption, and 2019 is when the hardware decoders will released. Which is when we can expect everyone to more to AV1. But I'm still skeptical because HEVC might be more widespread with hardware decoders everywhere and people might just not care enough to move to the new standard. Unless MPEG-LA exploits its dominance really bad with license fees, then we can expect MPEG codecs to die off. Although I think x264 will still live. [1]: https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/om_av1/attachments/slides/1795/export/events/attachments/om_av1/slides/1795/av1_update.pdf https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/om_av1/attachments/sl... (4th slide. This codec will be standardized after the experiments are removed and it is frozen to test software.)
- MikusR 10y ago
  The problem with HEVC is HEVC Advance. A second patent pool that appeared 2 years ago.
  - Veratyr 10y ago
    Not just HEVC Advance. There are also some patent holders who aren't members of any pool, like Technicolour.
- mtgx 10y ago
  I would've preferred it if AV1 was 2x better than HEVC, but I don't think even HEVC was 2x better than h.264. So if they can achieve at least 50% in all tests against HEVC, it may be a good enough improvement to the point where companies like Netflix, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter adopt it, as well as tv show and movie torrent uploads (which has its own impact on codec adoption). Plus, YouTube is a given, and it's nice to hear that even Apple may adopt it and that Apple is actually going back on promoting HEVC support.
  - ktta 10y ago

theandrewbailey 10y ago

Install base. JPEG has already been promoted and is everywhere. If it's not a pain to better use what's already out there, why would one want to support another format (with all its code bloat, security, and legal implications) indefinitely?

cbhl 10y ago

Google already has a video-codec-based image format: WebP.

gribbly 10y ago

bpg will never get anywhere due to being patent encumbered. There is no way we will start paying royalties to show images on the web.