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The case for JPEG XL

cloudinary.com

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Re: The case for JPEG XL

#91
post #38

I had regarded the lossless re-compression as an interesting parlor trick, but I get it now. Coincidentally today I was testing how much we can shrink our archived videos. We have lots of videos recorded with the Intel hardware encoder in H264, so not even the state of the art of H264. I figured: pop it into handbrake, change the codec to H265 (X.265), and boom 30%+ reduction. No, the H265 file got 3X larger. Well th…

> But it sure would be nice to be able to losslessly recompress those videos!

And you highlight a crucial thing here: being able to do so without fiddling with parameters for hours to fine-tune it or even just finding something that works at all.

Re: The case for JPEG XL

#92

Beautifully written article -- I couldn't agree more. From my personal point of view the biggest impact are: 1) e-commerce textures such as cloths are more faitfully represented -- more trust in e-commerce, more revenue 2) more equity for selfies, people-of-color skin is better represented in JPEG XL, selfies in general look more people like with less smoothing of skin performed at compression stage -- I'm a great fr…

Could you elaborate on 5) thermal camera support? How thermal camera could replace normal camera (this only capture infrared light?)? Why thermal camera are more ecological-friendly?

It would not replace the existing cameras. A thermal camera is a great tool for energy conservation: you can find misbehaving appliances consuming too much electricity idling, compare waste of different appliances, heat leaks at home, find hotspots in devices you maintain (say, a badly connected cable can offer extra resistance and become hot).

Though I don't think thermal cameras will be user affordable for a long while.

Re: The case for JPEG XL

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing that I don't understand is why the world has switched over to Chrome leaving Firefox behind Reasons why I, a former Firefox promoter switched to Chrome: 1. Speed. Chrome was blazing fast compared to other browser 2. Stability: Chrome could have a tab crash without bringing down your entire browser. 3. Really good developer tools that were superior to Firebug. As a matter of fact, Chrome Dev tools were my…

Situation has changed dramatically wrt points 1 and 2 since years, however. As for 3, I'm no web developer so can't comment on this.

The dev tools are really good in Firefox and its browser forks.

Re: The case for JPEG XL

#95
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is one of the founding members of AoM backing AVIF/AV1. They're shipping AVIF support enlabled. The JPEG-XL bug hasn't received any news or updates for at least a year now and the support is disabled on all stable builds (meaning: you can't even enable it with a flag since it's not compiled in). You can enable a flag on nightlies.

It hasn't received news or updates because it has been locked. Basically Mozilla's position seems to be that they're not going to do anything on this front until Chrome does it first. I can only assume the decision makers at Mozilla feel the need to "prove their loyalty to the AOM", just like the Chrome codec devs, by blocking non-AOM codecs, in particular JXL.

Sad joke was that they are waiting for an “alternative implementation”, yet I’m still shocked that Mozilla people are alluding to that elsewhere in this very thread. Unbelievable…

Re: The case for JPEG XL

#96
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hasn't received news or updates because it has been locked. Basically Mozilla's position seems to be that they're not going to do anything on this front until Chrome does it first. I can only assume the decision makers at Mozilla feel the need to "prove their loyalty to the AOM", just like the Chrome codec devs, by blocking non-AOM codecs, in particular JXL.

Or, they just don't have the resources, market share, or interest to fight this battle. I can think of many better things FF should do other than try to push forward a new image format.

It is not a battle, everyone wants the same: to create the best experience for all the internet users by using free software.

We can arrive to the best solution by listening, by creating and studying the evidence, and by discussion.

Re: The case for JPEG XL

#97
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on 5) thermal camera support? How thermal camera could replace normal camera (this only capture infrared light?)? Why thermal camera are more ecological-friendly?

It would not replace the existing cameras. A thermal camera is a great tool for energy conservation: you can find misbehaving appliances consuming too much electricity idling, compare waste of different appliances, heat leaks at home, find hotspots in devices you maintain (say, a badly connected cable can offer extra resistance and become hot). Though I don't think thermal cameras will be user affordable for a long w…

There are already cheap (ish) add-on cameras for Android and iOS. For example my review of https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/10/gadget-review-seek-infrared...

There are a bunch of Android phones which already have this tech built in. Some are high end, but a surprising number of mid-range devices as well.

Re: The case for JPEG XL

#98

Tangentially, in his linked page "hall of shame" https://jon-cld.s3.amazonaws.com/test/ahall_of_fshame_SSIMUL... , he argues humans prefer row A to row C. Personally in most cases I prefer row C. It may have less color accuracy, but is often a lot sharper, which in my eyes stands out a lot more.

Did you read the sentence right after he makes that claim?

> At Cloudinary, we recently performed a large-scale subjective image quality assessment experiment, involving over 40,000 test subjects and 1.4 million scores.

This isn't about your, my or Jon Sneyer's individual opinions on these photos, it's the consensus of 40,000 test subjects. And yeah, I agree with you that for a significant number of photos I disagree with the consensus. But given that we're both posting on HN we're both also likely the kind of people who like to prove other people wrong by actively looking for and overvaluing counterexamples, so also keep that in mind. Because to be honest, for a large number of photos I also agree with the consensus.

Re: The case for JPEG XL

#99
post #17

The scoop: a JPEG XL developer explains how JPEG XL is uniquely better than AVIF, webP, and PNG, and laments the Chrome team's decision to drop the experimental support for it. AFAICT, JPEG XL does not seem to have the licensing complications of JPEG2000.

I might be wrong, but doesn't AVIF benefit enormously because all the new phones, CPUs, GPUs, etc. support AV1 codec out of the box?

Re: The case for JPEG XL

#100
post #69
post #17

The scoop: a JPEG XL developer explains how JPEG XL is uniquely better than AVIF, webP, and PNG, and laments the Chrome team's decision to drop the experimental support for it. AFAICT, JPEG XL does not seem to have the licensing complications of JPEG2000.

> AFAICT, JPEG XL does not seem to have the licensing complications of JPEG2000. Well, there is this thing https://jpegxl.io/articles/rans/

You're technically correct, but:

> Several variants of the coding procedure Asymmetric Numerical Systems (ANS) may be found in most modern codecs, such as AV1, Z-Standard compression, or even rANS in JPEG XL.

... this is hardly the fault of the JPEG XL developers though, that's the US patent system being ridiculous. Also, in the current discussion context that patent screws over any new compression format, not JPEG XL specifically. Note: general compression, not just image compression (ok, sure, QOI isn't affected. QOI also isn't relevant here).

It's obviously a defensive patent anyway, because between AV1, zstd and JPEG XL Microsoft would have to fight an alliance of literally everyone else out there if they'd plan on suing anyone.

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