H.264 and VP8 for still image coding: WebP?

http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=541

by astrange • 16 years ago

66 16 16 years ago

x264dev.multimedia.cx

sprout3• 16 years ago

Even if all the vendors in a position to do so put in support for WebP today, it would be pretty much a decade before it got any serious use. Most Cameras take pictures as jpegs, and re-encoding jpegs in another lossy format is a losing proposition.

So anything released today is of necessity in it for the long haul. That said, maybe releasing a spec today from one player isn't the way to go. Google should be talking with Microsoft, Apple, and their hardware partners to look at next-generation technology they can put out, unencumbered by any patents and figure out a 3-year timetable after which they will have the format ready for use in cameras and phones. At the hardware level where the data is encoded off the CCD. Partnering with Flickr, Facebook, etc. they could make sure that these phones and cameras with next-gen encoders work out of the box, on the web.

jws• 16 years ago

Cameras also take pictures with an order of magnitude more pixels and far more coefficients than are needed for web display. You can safely ignore the transcoding effects when you are also downsizing and "down-quality-ing".

andrewf• 16 years ago

I don't think most pictures on the Internet come from a camera verbatim.

If you look at something like cnn.com or arstechnica.com - most images on that page have been scaled, cropped, composited with other images and finally re-encoded.

sprout3• 16 years ago

Where are most pictures on the Internet? I would guess Facebook and Flickr, uploaded by users who haven't the skill or the time to bother touching up the pictures they took today.

CWuestefeld• 16 years ago

For professional stuff, definitely.

But there's a movement afoot to build greater image-processing power into cameras, doing all of those operations right there on the device.

Personally, I'd never do that. I shoot RAW, and then handle on my desktop -- and calibrated monitor -- all of the adjustments. If nothing else, no matter how good the camera's CPU, the awful display on the back of the camera makes serious work impossible. It just can't be big enough if it's on the back of a convenient camera, and it won't be calibrated.

But for your average person taking photos of the kids at their soccer game, they don't care about any of that. The camera makers do a pretty good job of fine-tuning the heuristics (white balance, color adjustment, sharpening, etc.) so that the JPEG the camera produces is usually quite good, even if it's not excellent.

These people will be the ones driving a new "broadcast" image format. For quality stuff, the enthusiasts and pros have DNG and TIFF.

patrickaljord2• 16 years ago

> Google should be talking with Microsoft, Apple, and their hardware partners to look at next-generation technology they can put out, unencumbered by any patents

But Apple and Microsoft are not interested by formats unencumbered by patents. Google, xiph and the fsf have been pushing for such formats for decades and Apple and Microsoft have been doing the contrary, pushing hard for their patents encumbered wm9 and AAC.

Unfortunately, Google is alone on this one and will have to push webm and webp and any other open format on their own.

werftgh• 16 years ago

Might not be possible, it's not the format or algorithm thats patented - in many cases it's the concept. A patent on compressing an image by only storing some spatial frequencies gets you however you code the DCT.

astrange• 16 years ago

JPEG is an open format already, so that alone as an argument for replacing it doesn't really make sense.

Some features of JPEG haven't been implemented due to patent concerns, but I think those have expired now.

spot• 16 years ago

Google's servers can identify when the client can handle this format and give those users a better experience (faster download). So it will be saving money for G while at the same time either driving wider adoption of Chrome, or spreading the format to other browsers. Sounds like a good move to me.

disclaimer: i work at G but not on this.

patrickaljord2• 16 years ago

> it doesn’t even support all of JPEG’s features, let alone many of the much-wanted features JPEG was missing (alpha channel support, lossless support). It only supports 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, while JPEG can handle 4:2:2 and 4:4:4. Google doesn’t seem interested in adding any of these features either.

Wrong:

> We plan to add support for a transparency layer, also known as alpha channel in a future update.

from: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/09/webp-new-image-format...

tvon• 16 years ago

Wrong on just the alpha channel or all of it?

teilo• 16 years ago

I don't know... Judging from this article, I think these conclusions are premature: http://englishhard.com/2010/10/01/real-world-analysis-of-goo...

I am especially interested in the lack of banding vs. JPEG.

Now - next question: Can it support CMYK?

H.264 and VP8 for still image coding: WebP?

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