JPEG 2000 Specs

Richard Finney writes ""JPEG 2000 might be the graphics file format that even dazzles the pros": at a ZD article entitled JPEG 2000 to give the Web a new image. JPEG 2K will have multiple channels, metadata, variable decompression levels and progressive decompression. "

Comments

Tom Lane of IJG says...

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks ... I contacted Tom Lane of the Indpendent JPEG Group and he says:

Nothing is happening within IJG; we are waiting to see what emerges from the ISO JPEG committee, and in particular whether it is (a) patent-free and (b) enough better than JPEG-1 to be worth a universal upgrade cycle.

On point (a), I have made my views quite clear to the JPEG committee, but I dunno whether they are listening. There will not be an IJG implementation of JPEG-2000 unless it is freely distributable and freely usable under essentially the same restrictions (ie, none to speak of) as our current code. Patent licenses are a show-stopper. But from what I've heard, all the proposals before the committee have some amount of patent encrustation.

On point (b), the poor track record of progressive JPEG has left me unenthused about pushing incompatible standards that offer only marginal or special-purpose improvements. JPEG-1 took the world by storm because it was an order of magnitude better than anything else available. Unless JPEG-2000 is that much better again, it faces at best an agonizing uphill fight; the world might be better off without the ensuing confusion. (I have not heard anything about what performance improvements they actually expect to get ... but I am suspicious that we are going to see percentage points, not integer factors.)

So, I'm waiting and watching.