New still picture format based on H.265

[nic2k4]

The guy behind FFmpeg has a new library out to create images compressed with H.265. In a comparison with the same file size JPG it creates nicer looking images, but it does remove a lot of fine details (notice the basket suspension wires).

[racer-x]

Sorry, but the point to this thread escapes me.

Jpeg2000 was supposed to be a big thing, only to turn out nothing. Does anyone really think this, (or anything like this) will do any better? For good or worse, most people will stick with readily available and highly compatible formats like jpg, png, tiff, tga, bmp and psd.

[Cornucopia]

Well, I would disagree with you about JP2k being nothing.

AFA this idea is concerned, there are a number of threads (including in today's) that have asked about muxing a still frame with an audio file in order to have the audio with something visual that doesn't use up a whole lot of bandwidth. This is a perfect use for that need, as it is part of the general HEVC spec and thus can be muxed into the same containers (TS, MP4, MKV...) that regular video HEVC can.

Scott

[El Heggunte]

FWIW, JPEG2000 is a must for the PDFs I create

Regarding H.265 still pictures in Matroska --- MKVmerge doesn't support them,
and Mosu himself is not going to fix the problem (patches will be welcome of course, but... )

[TreeTops]

Can you recommend a program that will do Jpeg2000. Irfanview won't do it. (Requires a registration code from a German website that I can't read) My version of Photoshop Elements doesn't have that option. Faststone viewer crashes when trying to do a large image. Because it's so hard for the average joe to save a photo as Jpeg2000, it will never become mainstream like jpg. But if it creates files smaller than jpg for a pdf document I would be very interested.

[racer-x]

My FastStone Viewer (version 5.3) can save Jpeg2000 @ 5184x3456, but encoding and decoding is very slow.

[El Heggunte]

XnView, or

Paint Shop Pro 7.04 + the LEAD Jpeg2000 plugin <= very difficult to find

(versions 9 and higher of PSP have native Jpeg2000 support, but are incredibly bloated as well).

[Cornucopia]

Don't know if Elements supports *.8bm file format plugins like it's big brother does, but if so, there are a few jp2k ones available out there, such as this free one: http://www.fnordware.com/j2k/. I do notice in the Sys Req. that it expects CS3, so YMMV.

Scott

[Cornucopia]

FWIW, JPEG2000 is a must for the PDFs I create

Regarding H.265 still pictures in Matroska --- MKVmerge doesn't support them,
and Mosu himself is not going to fix the problem (patches will be welcome of course, but... )

Any particular reason why/why not?

Scott

[nic2k4]

Sorry, but the point to this thread escapes me.

The point should be obvious especially if you read the first line of the intro from the link.

This new format makes pictures that are half the size of equivalent quality JPG's. You say big deal, but what video CODEC is used on just about every modern phone and is hardware encoded? This is a way to make better looking stills using that. The issue with JPEG2000 was all the patents that went along with it, no manufacturer wanted to increase his costs when JPEG was good enough. This guy's idea is to use what is already licensed for video on the device to make stills and it's open source.

[El Heggunte]

.........
Any particular reason why/why not?

Scott

Mosu said a) he's been too busy since 2013, and b) "almost nobody" wraps still images with audio in Matroska

[Cornucopia]

Sorry, but the point to this thread escapes me.

The point should be obvious especially if you read the first line of the intro from the link.

This new format makes pictures that are half the size of equivalent quality JPG's. You say big deal, but what video CODEC is used on just about every modern phone and is hardware encoded? This is a way to make better looking stills using that. The issue with JPEG2000 was all the patents that went along with it, no manufacturer wanted to increase his costs when JPEG was good enough. This guy's idea is to use what is already licensed for video on the device to make stills and it's open source.

That would be good, except:
1. HEVC is NOT used on hardly anything yet. I doubt it has even 1% penetration in either hardware or software.
2. HEVC, being much more complex, requires a much higher level of CPU horsepower. That in itself will slow the uptake for a while (until hardware in general has progressed).
3. HEVC has no less # of patents & licensing hassles than JP2K does. Since it is not just the codec, but certain levels/profiles, I'm guessing that there are multiple tiers of licensing based on which level/profile(s) are used. Add the still profile, add more licensing...

Scott

[racer-x]

Sorry, but the point to this thread escapes me.

The point should be obvious especially if you read the first line of the intro from the link.

This new format makes pictures that are half the size of equivalent quality JPG's. You say big deal, but what video CODEC is used on just about every modern phone and is hardware encoded? This is a way to make better looking stills using that. The issue with JPEG2000 was all the patents that went along with it, no manufacturer wanted to increase his costs when JPEG was good enough. This guy's idea is to use what is already licensed for video on the device to make stills and it's open source.

OK, it works in browsers only if you enable scripts (I hate to do that). The $64,000 question is what programs will support it? Only time will tell....

Maybe I'll download it and give it a whirl, but so far, I'm not impressed.

***Edit** OK, I downloaded the encoder. Nothing I have can open the .bpg file. Interestingly if you go to the comparison site: http://bellard.org/bpg/lena.html and right-click to save image, it will only allow you to save as png. I have to wonder if it gets transcoded to png by default....

[Gravitator]

Hi,
The main thing that was for the benefit of consumers...
How much will rise in the price of equipment to support this format? $ 1-2 no more. At least something new will appear for these many years

[DarrellS]

I haven't used the encoder yet but according to the help file, you can output .ppm files which I believe Irfanview and Xnview can both read. I can read and encode .ppm files in Photoshop.

I installed the WebP codecs last night and I can create WebP files with Irfanview.

[racer-x]

You can encode webp files with current version of ffmpeg. I tried to post one the other day, but this site doesn't allow those.

[Baldrick]

You can encode webp files with current version of ffmpeg. I tried to post one the other day, but this site doesn't allow those.

I have added .webp attachment support.

[racer-x]

If anyone is interested, there is a very nice import/export webp plugin for Paint.NET. It works very well and has a nice preview screen, along with quality slider and various saving modes. http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/21773-webp-filetype-2014-10-19/

Question: If webp hasn't taken off, why would this new format have any chance?

[DarrellS]

How did you get the bpg to work. I can't get it to do anything. Not a valid Win32 application.

I did get the ffmpeg libwebp working in Virtualdub though. It would be nice if I could get Photoshop to read and write webp.

I watched a video about the Canon EOS 1D-C HEVC camera the other day and the people who tested it loved to be able to shoot action and pull stills from the video but were disappointed that although they could print stills directly from the camera that there still was not a format that they could save the 4k stills to.

[DarrellS]

I guess you can read and write webp in Photoshop with this plugin...

http://telegraphics.com.au/sw/product/WebPFormat

[racer-x]

How did you get the bpg to work. I can't get it to do anything. Not a valid Win32 application.

I did get the ffmpeg libwebp working in Virtualdub though. It would be nice if I could get Photoshop to read and write webp.

I watched a video about the Canon EOS 1D-C HEVC camera the other day and the people who tested it loved to be able to shoot action and pull stills from the video but were disappointed that although they could print stills directly from the camera that there still was not a format that they could save the 4k stills to.

I couldn't get it to encode either, but in the doc folder is a Lena.bpg file.

Aviutl can import HEVC. Virtualdub can too with the latest ffmpeg input plugin. Extracting frames from video is an easy process.....

[nic2k4]

Honeyview from Bandisoft now has support for the format.

[DarrellS]

I couldn't get it to encode either, but in the doc folder is a Lena.bpg file.

Aviutl can import HEVC. Virtualdub can too with the latest ffmpeg input plugin. Extracting frames from video is an easy process.....

Thanks! I couldn't understand why I couldn't open HEVC.MKV in Virtualdub. The link that took me to the ffmpeg input plugin had the latest build as 2012. I found another link that took me back to the Virtualdub forum which had December 2014 as latest build. Now I can open my HEVC MKVs in Virtualdub if I need to.

A plugin that I would love to see in Virtualdub is a PSD (Photoshop) input plugin. It would save me a step in creating animations. Now, I use Gif Movie Gear which opens PSD files (while keeping 24 bit) to save as uncompressed AVI that I open in Virtualdub and convert the frame rate and save as HEVC MKV with the External Encoder.

[TreeTops]

Here is an update in response to post #5 (what program will do Jpeg2000?)...Found this program that seems to be a real gem. 'Chasys Draw IES'

It's free and seems to have a lot of features. I have tested it on several photos and saving to jpeg2000 does make a smaller PDF file when including those photos in a PDF.

[racer-x]

Paint.net can export jpeg2000 and webp via a free export plugin. I don't know anyone that uses them.

[Jamaika]

I have read the whole thread and I have a question.
I have a picture RAW rgb24 / rgb48 and encoding it in JPG / JPG2000 / BPG / WebP, which is the loss of data?
Someone did some tests? I tried to do the tests and the results are surprising for me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
Can data loss is negligible, the quality of almost 100%, and a man shouldn't think about it.
I am not interested the size of images, the availability of programs or creation time.

[-Habanero-]

Sorry, but the point to this thread escapes me.

Jpeg2000 was supposed to be a big thing, only to turn out nothing. Does anyone really think this, (or anything like this) will do any better? For good or worse, most people will stick with readily available and highly compatible formats like jpg, png, tiff, tga, bmp and psd.

JPEG2000 is better quality than JPEG at the same file size. It turned to nothing because of poor marketing. It is widely used in the professional sector as well as movie theatres who use motion-JPEG2000. So be careful what you imply.

[racer-x]

I know what jpeg2000 is and what it's used for. I said it turned out to be nothing because it was thought to replace jpg in images. That obviously didn't happen. Regardless of quality and filesize, it will be hard to replace the old jpg format simply because it's by far the most compatible image format along with PNG and BMP.

By the way OpenOffice and LibreOffice fully supports creating PDF's using Jpeg2000 images for anyone looking for that.

[Jamaika]

JPEG2000 is better quality than JPEG at the same file size. It turned to nothing because of poor marketing. It is widely used in the professional sector as well as movie theatres who use motion-JPEG2000. So be careful what you imply.

This is true. However, recently I realized that the pictures SuperPNG have the same level of compression as JPEG 100% quality. So what sense is the introduction of JPEG2000.

[-Habanero-]

JPEG2000 is better quality than JPEG at the same file size. It turned to nothing because of poor marketing. It is widely used in the professional sector as well as movie theatres who use motion-JPEG2000. So be careful what you imply.

This is true. However, recently I realized that the pictures SuperPNG have the same level of compression as JPEG 100% quality. So what sense is the introduction of JPEG2000.

Anyone who uses Q100 with JPEG doesn't know what they're doing. Q95 is the maximum that should be used which is virtually the same quality and a couple times less the filesize. When you find a lossless format that compresses as good as JPEG Q95 then let me know.