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Bellard Creates New Image Format To Replace JPEG
An anonymous reader writes Fabrice Bellard (creator of FFMPEG, QEMU, JSLinux...) proposes a new image format that could replace JPEG : BPG. For the same quality, files are about half the size of their JPEG equivalents. He released libbpg (with source) as well as a JS decompressor, and set up a demo including the famous Lena image.
From the web site "BPG natively supports 8 to 14 bits per channel," which is a huge advantage. 8 bits is more of a straight-jacket than people realise and this offers a more portable way for people to pass around high bit-depth issues than camera raw files (proprietary things inside) or TIFF (a complex container format prone to cross-platform issues and poor compression).
I'm not sure how you can argue that after looking at the pictures in the link. It's clearly superior to JPG, because *everyone* can see the JPG artifacts. You only tend to notice the artifacts with BPG if you're comparing to a high quality picture or the original, or else looking really hard. It seems similar in principle to good audio compression that saves space by removing details the human ear is unlikely to miss.
It's too bad, because we really could have used this years ago while we were still on dialup - it would have saved us from seeing many beautiful images compressed all to hell. Yes, bandwidth matters to some degree nowadays, but not nearly as much as it used to. This format will, unfortunately, probably get little traction for one reason. JPG is here and it's "good enough". Audiophiles chafe at MP3 as well. Technically speaking, Ogg Vorbis was a superior format in nearly every way, but it's widely ignored in favor of MP3, which is "good enough". There's a small movement with FLAC and hi resolution sound, but most people can't hear or don't care about the difference. It will probably be the same for this.
Who knows... maybe I'll be proven wrong. It would help if the browser makers actually got behind it early and supported it fully - PNG suffered poor adoption because IE lagged so far behind with support for many years. Adobe, Corel, and other makers of image software will also need to offer native support as well. A format is worthless unless people are actually using it.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I'm a videogame programmer, and Ogg Vorbis is actually a very popular format for game audio. It's not only license free, but it supports multichannel audio and seamless sample-accurate looping, which standard MP3 can't do. It was great for videogame companies, but did little to really promote the file format itself. So, sure, the fact that we have usable reference libraries means anyone can add support to their products, but I don't think that makes much of a difference, unfortunately.
Don't get me wrong - I think it's a great format (obviously technically superior) and would love to see it succeed. You say that if the format "becomes a standard implemented by browsers and major graphics tools, it will get adopted". Well, sure, but that's sort of the hard part, right?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.