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Is WebP really better than JPEG?

siipo.la

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Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#271

Post by hoten »

gsnedders wrote: post #200
baxtr wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s interesting is that Google’s Lighthouse tool for measuring site speed pushes for “Next Gen” image formats like WebP. But I often find that WebP files are larger than jpg, too. Yet Lighthouse recommends it. And, of course it’s a great idea to follow Google’s advice since they include the Lighthouse score in their ranking algorithm.

> And, of course it’s a great idea to follow Google’s advice since they include the Lighthouse score in their ranking algorithm. AFAIK they don't? They use some of the metrics which are provided in Lighthouse (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, Cumulative Layout Shift) all play a role in ranking, but the score itself is meaningless.

You're both wrong, but you're only slightly wrong. It's been announced that those metrics will contribute to ranking in the bear future. Search for Core Web Vitals.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#272

Post by dvhh »

alwillis wrote: post #222
TylerE wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Do you know how many binaries link to some old version of libjpeg? You're breaking 99.9% of the world and 80% of it is stuff that can't even be recompiled, probably. In fact, JPEG 2000, which was standardized, in, well, 2000, already has transparency support, and 20 years later still have no meaningful support.

In fact, JPEG 2000, which was standardized, in, well, 2000, already has transparency support, and 20 years later still have no meaningful support. Every iOS and macOS device supports JPEG 2000… that should be pretty meaningful.

Is there still some licensing issues with jpeg 2000?

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#273

Post by gsnedders »

hoten wrote: post #271
gsnedders wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And, of course it’s a great idea to follow Google’s advice since they include the Lighthouse score in their ranking algorithm. AFAIK they don't? They use some of the metrics which are provided in Lighthouse (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, Cumulative Layout Shift) all play a role in ranking, but the score itself is meaningless.

You're both wrong, but you're only slightly wrong. It's been announced that those metrics will contribute to ranking in the bear future. Search for Core Web Vitals.

You are, of course, technically correct, which is the best type of correct.

There's been some level of performance weighting for a while (but only very slight and mobile-only), but I don't actually know what metric they were using for that (this was from ~2018, before any of those metrics landed in Blink).

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#274

Post by jbk »

basilgohar wrote: post #255
vernie wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using VP9 recently has really made me appreciate how great x264 is both in terms of quality and speed.

You are comparing an encoder (x264) with a format (VP9). While there is a reference encoder for VP9 (libvpx). x264 has been one of the most heavily optimized encoders whose development was sponsored by many different organizations, whereas libvpx did not see the same kind of love and most of the work came from Google's employees (with some from outside, I'm sure). There exist other VP9 encoders, but all for specializ…

> x264 has been one of the most heavily optimized encoders whose development was sponsored by many different organizations

No, it did not.

> whereas libvpx did not see the same kind of love and most of the work came from Google's employees.

You're getting your facts wrong: x264 was developed by a very small open source community, with at most 5 developers on it, on their free time, while libvpx got quite a few people from Chrome Media Team paid to work for years on it.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#275

Post by crymer11 »

t0ughcritic wrote: post #269
pornel wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebM (despite being closely related to WebP) can be 5-10x more efficient than WebP. That's because WebP focused so strongly on being a GIF equivalent that it also dropped all things that made WebM efficient and instead adopted GIF's awfully inefficient architecture (just dumb frames overlaid on top of each other, without motion vectors or predicted frames). Safari shows how it can be done: it supports silent MP4/H.26…

Do people really use Safari?

Lots of folks using Mobile Safari.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#276

Post by fomine3 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #253
fomine3 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also video decoding is cheaper because most GPU/SoCs supports hardware decoding.

This isn't a good assumption to make, many people own cheap phones that lack hardware codecs that can decode videos with modern encodings.

I can't imagine any cheap SoC for smartphones without H.264 HW decoder because playing video is essential and it can record video. Possibly exists for low-feature phones without camera but it's not for web browsing.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#278

Post by bartread »

t0ughcritic wrote: post #269
pornel wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebM (despite being closely related to WebP) can be 5-10x more efficient than WebP. That's because WebP focused so strongly on being a GIF equivalent that it also dropped all things that made WebM efficient and instead adopted GIF's awfully inefficient architecture (just dumb frames overlaid on top of each other, without motion vectors or predicted frames). Safari shows how it can be done: it supports silent MP4/H.26…

Do people really use Safari?

Yes, lots of them... on iOS.

Also worth noting that all the alternative browsers on iOS are just reskinned versions of Safari as well.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#279

Post by viluon »

bscphil wrote: post #261

Unfortunately, targeting same SSIM makes this test basically bullshit. It would be far better to make images that are the same size, and then we can use both our eyes and various objective metrics to compare the images. The reason for this is basically that most codecs do not target SSIM internally. They're using their own algorithms to determine how to allocate bits, so two images with the same SSIM may look better…

This should be higher up. siipo.la's benchmark is anecdotal evidence, the image formats comparison shows crisper edges and smoother gradients for WebP even at large filesizes. For small files, mozjpeg can't compare.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#280

Post by viluon »

gruturo wrote: post #86

Every time I run an image comparison, the webp version looks worse and yet Google insists it's the same quality. It's baffling. Even if the above were just an individual... bafflement? and not an actual issue, the size savings really don't seem worth the compatibility hassle, the extra manpower/workflow complexity to support 2 formats, the additional storage (and caching) caused by this duplication. And the above is…

> Every time I run an image comparison, the webp version looks worse and yet Google insists it's the same quality. It's baffling.

Could you share your comparisons? From the ones I've seen, it looks like WebP significantly outperforms JPEG encoders[0].

[0]: https://wyohknott.github.io/image-formats-comparison/#endeav...

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