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> Regarding JPEG XL's mobile support, it makes sense it would see limited development if the company that manages one of the biggest mobile players has been the

by unlord 2y ago

> Regarding JPEG XL's mobile support, it makes sense it would see limited development if the company that manages one of the biggest mobile players has been the greatest restriction on their success. The lack of support also disincentivises manufacturers to prioritise support. There was literally no involvement from any hardware vendor in the standardization of JPEG XL. It went from a Call for Proposals in Sept 2018 to Committee Draft in Aug 2019 with very little time for industry feedback. Contrast this with AV1 which had involvement from hardware vendors Intel, NVIDIA, Arm, AMD, Broadcom, Amlogic from the beginning as well as companies who ship media on hardware at scale such as Cisco, Netflix, Samsung and yes Google. These companies reviewed and provided significant feedback on the format that made it suitable for hardware implementation. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=JyrkiAlakuijala https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=JyrkiAlakuijala is a lead on the project and a Google employee, and active in JPEG XL development https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl/commits?author=jyrkialakuijala https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl/commits?author=jyrkialakuij...

OuterVale 2y ago
I very much agree with your observation that the involvement from hardware vendors was minimal. It definitely would have been advantageous to slow down, and it's beyond disappointing that it wasn't pursued further. They absolutely dropped the ball in that regard. AV1, however, is first and foremost a video format. A very popular one at that. It's perfect for video, and that explains the great industry support. The fact it is the most promising option for video is why it's seen hardware vendor support, not because AVIF is ideal. JPEG XL unfortunately doesn't have this luxury, but still could have done better. This doesn't mean that JPEG XL can't see support now, though, and there are plenty of opportunities for hardware support now it's been proven viable. While there are certainly employees at Google that have contributed to JPEG XL recently, I'm still yet to see any evidence that the company itself has provided any direct support lately.
- Latty 2y ago
  Isn't that kind of the point though? AV1/AVIF has an extremely strong case for hardware implementations: you need efficient (both in terms of processing and compression) video decoding on modern devices because the battery cost/bandwidth cost is so high otherwise. Image decoding is nice to have, but less important. When you are deciding to put custom hardware into a device, that's a huge investment in something only useful for that one task. Being compatible with a video format so you can share that hardware between the two tasks is a huge win for hardware manufacturers who get two-for-one, and for the rate of adoption. With AV1 already very efficient and rolled out in a lot of hardware already, it just has a huge advantage.
  - OuterVale 2y ago
    While that most definitely is a consideration, AVIF lacks many features and much of the functionality offered by JPEG XL. An investment in JPEG XL, while only being beneficial for one task like you say, would have huge benefits given just how many images we see and process on the web. AVIF certainly gets the hardware support advantage, but it fails in other regards where JPEG XL shines. Looking at it either way, JPEG XL is far from slow, and I'd argue that the other benefits outweigh that single shortcoming. Bandwidth should also be treated as a consideration, as you mentioned, and JPEG XL generally leads to smaller file sizes. Realistically, this boils down to AVIF being largely worse than JPEG XL, with the exception of performance. Performance that could be improved for JPEG XL should hardware vendors choose to provide better support.
    - Latty 2y ago
      Any features that matter to consumers more than slightly better battery life? I haven't seen one yet despite people always touting "better features". It feels to me like JPEG XL's advantages are mostly hypothetical, and practically AVIF is the format that has more value. I'm no expert on this, to be clear, but I have yet to be convinced despite all the JPEG XL hype on HN.
      - janwas 2y ago
        Disclosure: I worked on JPEG XL, opinions are my own. The radio(network) on phones can consume more power than the SoC(CPU). Thus smaller size can translate into energy savings. As to hypothetical advantage, we are talking about HW _potentially_ being used for image decode. AFAIK this does not happen in practice, despite WebP non-lossless being a VP8 frame and the hardware being plentifully available. As evidence for the advantages of JPEG XL being real, consider the fact that it is increasingly being adopted in serious SW including ACR, Darktable, Krita, and Lightroom.
        Latty 2y ago
        JPEG XL is significantly smaller? All the stuff I've seen has show a slight edge for the same visual quality, but not enough I'd suspect it'd offset hardware decode, although if software doesn't actually do hardware decode, then yeah, the argument falls apart. I can 100% see JXL being adopted in production tools, where the motivations are different, I was mainly talking about the web adoption perspective for end users (which is the context of Google's supposed war on it, of course).
paulddraper 2y ago
> it makes sense it would see limited development if the company that manages one of the biggest mobile players has been the greatest restriction on their success Huh? Isn't Apple pro-JPEG XL?
- OuterVale 2y ago
  I was referring to Google with Android. You're correct in thinking Apple is pro JPEG XL.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

by unlord 2y ago

OuterVale 2y ago

I very much agree with your observation that the involvement from hardware vendors was minimal. It definitely would have been advantageous to slow down, and it's beyond disappointing that it wasn't pursued further. They absolutely dropped the ball in that regard. AV1, however, is first and foremost a video format. A very popular one at that. It's perfect for video, and that explains the great industry support. The fact it is the most promising option for video is why it's seen hardware vendor support, not because AVIF is ideal. JPEG XL unfortunately doesn't have this luxury, but still could have done better. This doesn't mean that JPEG XL can't see support now, though, and there are plenty of opportunities for hardware support now it's been proven viable. While there are certainly employees at Google that have contributed to JPEG XL recently, I'm still yet to see any evidence that the company itself has provided any direct support lately.

Latty 2y ago
Isn't that kind of the point though? AV1/AVIF has an extremely strong case for hardware implementations: you need efficient (both in terms of processing and compression) video decoding on modern devices because the battery cost/bandwidth cost is so high otherwise. Image decoding is nice to have, but less important. When you are deciding to put custom hardware into a device, that's a huge investment in something only useful for that one task. Being compatible with a video format so you can share that hardware between the two tasks is a huge win for hardware manufacturers who get two-for-one, and for the rate of adoption. With AV1 already very efficient and rolled out in a lot of hardware already, it just has a huge advantage.
- OuterVale 2y ago
  While that most definitely is a consideration, AVIF lacks many features and much of the functionality offered by JPEG XL. An investment in JPEG XL, while only being beneficial for one task like you say, would have huge benefits given just how many images we see and process on the web. AVIF certainly gets the hardware support advantage, but it fails in other regards where JPEG XL shines. Looking at it either way, JPEG XL is far from slow, and I'd argue that the other benefits outweigh that single shortcoming. Bandwidth should also be treated as a consideration, as you mentioned, and JPEG XL generally leads to smaller file sizes. Realistically, this boils down to AVIF being largely worse than JPEG XL, with the exception of performance. Performance that could be improved for JPEG XL should hardware vendors choose to provide better support.
  - Latty 2y ago
    Any features that matter to consumers more than slightly better battery life? I haven't seen one yet despite people always touting "better features". It feels to me like JPEG XL's advantages are mostly hypothetical, and practically AVIF is the format that has more value. I'm no expert on this, to be clear, but I have yet to be convinced despite all the JPEG XL hype on HN.
    - janwas 2y ago
      Disclosure: I worked on JPEG XL, opinions are my own. The radio(network) on phones can consume more power than the SoC(CPU). Thus smaller size can translate into energy savings. As to hypothetical advantage, we are talking about HW _potentially_ being used for image decode. AFAIK this does not happen in practice, despite WebP non-lossless being a VP8 frame and the hardware being plentifully available. As evidence for the advantages of JPEG XL being real, consider the fact that it is increasingly being adopted in serious SW including ACR, Darktable, Krita, and Lightroom.
      - Latty 2y ago
        JPEG XL is significantly smaller? All the stuff I've seen has show a slight edge for the same visual quality, but not enough I'd suspect it'd offset hardware decode, although if software doesn't actually do hardware decode, then yeah, the argument falls apart. I can 100% see JXL being adopted in production tools, where the motivations are different, I was mainly talking about the web adoption perspective for end users (which is the context of Google's supposed war on it, of course).

paulddraper 2y ago

> it makes sense it would see limited development if the company that manages one of the biggest mobile players has been the greatest restriction on their success Huh? Isn't Apple pro-JPEG XL?

OuterVale 2y ago
I was referring to Google with Android. You're correct in thinking Apple is pro JPEG XL.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]