this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 69 points 3 months ago (9 children)

Jpeg XL isn’t backwards compatible with existing JPEG renderers. If it was, it’d be a winner. We already have PNG and JPG and now we’ve got people using the annoying webP. Adding another format that requires new decoder support isn’t going to help.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 3 months ago

"the annoying webp" AFAIK is the same problem as JPEG XL, apps just didn't implement it.

It is supported in browsers, which is good, but not in third party apps. AVIF or whatever is going to have the same problem.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Jpeg XL isn’t backwards compatible with existing JPEG renderers. If it was, it’d be a winner.

According to the video, and this article, JPEG XL is backwards compatible with JPEG.

But I'm not sure if that's all that necessary. JPEG XL was designed to be a full, long term replacement to JPEG. Old JPEG's compression is very lossy, while JPEG XL, with the same amount of computational power, speed, and size, outclasses it entirely. PNG is lossless, and thus is not comparable since the file size is so much larger.

JPEG XL, at least from what I'm seeing, does appear to be the best full replacement for JPEG (and it's not like they can't co-exist).

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago (2 children)

It’s only backwards compatible in that it can re-encode existing jpeg content into the newer format without any image loss. Existing browsers and apps can’t render jpegXL without adding a new decoder.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Existing browsers and apps can’t render jpegXL without adding a new decoder.

Why is that a negative?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Legacy client support. Old devices running old browser code can't support a new format without software updates, and that's not always possible. Decoding jxl on a 15yo device that's not upgradable isn't good UX. Sure, you probably can work around that with slow JavaScript decoding for many but it'll be slow and processor intensive. Imagine decoding jxl on a low power arm device or something like a Celeron from the early 2010s and you'll get the idea, it will not be anywhere near as fast as good old jpeg.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But how is that different to any other new format? Webp was no different?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Google rammed webp through because it saved them money on bandwidth (and time during page loading) and because they controlled the standard. They're doing the same thing with jpeg now that they control jpegli. Jpegli directly lifts the majority of features from jpegxl and google controls that standard.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

That's a good argument, and as a fan of permacomputing and reducing e-waste, I must admit I'm fairly swayed by it.

However, are you sure JPEG XL decode/encode is more computationally heavy than JPEG to where it would struggle on older hardware? This measurement seems to show that it's quite comparable to standard JPEG, unless I'm misunderstanding something (and I very well might be).

That wouldn't help the people stuck on an outdated browser (older, unsupported phones?), but for those who can change their OS, like older PC's, a modern Linux distro with an updated browser would still allow that old hardware to decode JPEG XL's fairly well, I would hope.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Optimized jpegxl decoding can be as fast as jpeg but only if the browser supports the format natively. If you're trying to bolt jxl decoding onto a legacy browser your options become JavaScript and WASM decoding. WASM can be as fast but browsers released before like 2020 won't support it and need to use JavaScript to do the job. Decoding jxl in JavaScript is, let's just say it's not fast and it's not guaranteed to work on legacy browsers and older machines. Additionally any of these bolt on mechanisms require sending the decoder package on page load so unless you're able to load that from the user's cache you pay the bandwidth/time price of downloading and initializing the decoder code before images even start to render on the page. Ultimately bolting on support for the new format just isn't worth the cost of the implementation in many cases so sites usually implement fallback to the older format as well.

Webp succeeded because Google rammed the format through and they did that because they controlled the standard. You'll see the same thing happen with the jpegli format next, it lifts the majority of its featureset from jpegxl and Google controls the standard.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

The video actually references that comic at the end.

But I don't see how that applies in your example, since both JPEG and JPEG XL existing in parallel doesn't really have any downsides, it'd just be nice to have the newer option available. The thrust of the video is that Google is kneecapping JPEG XL in favor of their own format, which is not backwards compatible with JPEG in any capacity. So we're getting a brand new format either way, but a monopoly is forcing a worse format.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

They're confusing backwards and forwards compatible. The new file format is backwards compatible but the old renderers are not forward compatible with the new format.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

JPEG XL in lossless mode actually gives around 50% smaller file sizes than PNG

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Oh damn, even better than the estimates I found.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My understanding is that webp isn't actually all that bad from a technical perspective, it was just annoying because it started getting used widely on the web before all the various tools caught up and implemented support for it.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago

I just wish more software would support webp files. I remember Reddit converting every image to webp to save on space and bandwidth (smart, imo) but not allowing you to directly upload webp files in posts because it wasn't a supported file format.

If webp was just more standardized, I'd love to use it more. It would certainly save me a ton of storage space.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)

So… your solution is to stick with extremely dated and objectively bad file formats? You using Windows 95?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (10 children)

For what it is? Nothing.

Compared to something like JPEG XL? It is hands down worse in virtually all metrics.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I think this might sound like a weird thing to say, but technical superiority isn't enough to make a convincing argument for adoption. There are plenty of things that are undeniably superior but yet the case for adoption is weak, mostly because (but not solely because) it would be difficult to adopt.

As an example, the French Republican Calendar (and the reformed calendar with 13 months) are both evidently superior to the Gregorian Calendar in terms of regularity but there is no case to argue for their adoption when the Gregorian calendar works well enough.

Another example—metric time. Also proposed as part of the metric system around the same time as it was just gaining ground, 100 seconds in a minute and 100 minutes in an hour definitely makes more sense than 60, but it would be ridiculous to say that we should devote resources into switching to it.

Final example—arithmetic in a dozenal (base-twelve) system is undeniably better than in decimal, but it would definitely not be worth the hassle to switch.

For similar reasons, I don't find the case for JPEG XL compelling. Yes, it's better in every metric, but when the difference comes down to a measly one or two megabytes compared to PNG and WEBP, most people really just don't care enough. That isn't to say that I think it's worthless, and I do think there are valid use cases, but I doubt it will unseat PNG on the Internet.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I’m not under the impression it would unseat PNG anytime soon, but “we have a current standard” isn’t a good argument against it. As images get higher and higher quality, it’s going to increase the total size of images. And we are going to hit a point where it matters.

This sounds so much like the misquoted “640K ought to be enough for anybody” that I honestly can’t take it seriously. There’s a reason new algorithms, formats and hardware are developed and released, because they improve upon the previous and generally improve things.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My argument is not "we have a current standard", it's "people don't give enough of a shit to change".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

People don't need to give a shit, you just need websites and servers and applications to produce and convert images to the new format and the rest will happen "by itself'

It should be pretty much invisible to the users themselvea

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And I suppose sysadmins and application developers are not people?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why would you think that sysadmins and application devs wouldn't want to use JPEG XL?

I'm a developer and I like the format

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Because I am a developer and I have also been a sysadmin, and I really do not care. Yes, the format is good but I'm not particularly excited for it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You're thinking in terms of the individual user with a handful of files.

When you look at it from a server point of view with tens of terabytes of images, or as a data center, the picture is very different.

Shaving 5 or 10% off of files is a huge deal. And that's not even taking into account the huge leap in quality.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

jpeg xl lossless is around 50% smaller than pngs on average, which is a huge difference

https://siipo.la/blog/whats-the-best-lossless-image-format-comparing-png-webp-avif-and-jpeg-xl

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Soo they added webp and AV1, which aren't that much better then old jpeg, especially with the modern jpeg encoder JpegLi. But JpegXL is out of the question.

Those examples all have a good reason that does not apply here. Browsers already support multiple formats and added a few in the last decade.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Compared to something like JPEG XL? It is hands down worse in virtually all metrics.

Only thing I can think of is that PNG is inherently lossless. Whereas JPEG XL can be lossless or lossy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

I haven’t dug into the test data or methodology myself but I read a discussion thread recently (on Reddit - /r/jpegxl/comments/l9ta2u/how_does_lossless_jpegxl_compared_to_png) - across a 200+ image test suite, the lossless compression of PNG generates files that are 162% the size of those losslessly compressed with JPEG XL.

However I also know that some tools have bad performance compressing PNG, and no certainty that those weren’t used

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

It has a higher bit depth at orders of magnitude less file size. Admittedly it has a smaller max dimension, though the max for PNG is (I believe) purely theoretical.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

So what your saying is that I should save everything as a BMP every time. Why compress images when I can be the anchor that holds us in place.

By us I guess I mean the loading bar

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

That's why all my files are in TGA.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Forgive my ignorance, but isn't this like complaining that a PlayStation 2 can't play PS5 games?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

All the cool kids use .HEIF anyway

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

I use jpeg 2000

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

You can't add new and better stuff while staying compatible with the old stuff. Especially not when your goal is compact files (or you'd just embed the old format).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Isn't that the same as other newer formats though?

There's always something new, and if the new thing is better, adding/switching to it is the better move.

Or am I missing something about the other formats like webp?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

You have to offer something compelling for everyone. Just coming out with yet another new standard™ isn’t enough. As pointed out earlier, we already have:

  • jpeg
  • Png
  • Webp
  • HEIC

What’s the point of adding another encoder/decoder to the table when PNG and JPEG are still “good enough”?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

PNG and JPEG aren’t good enough, to be honest. If you run a content heavy site, you can see something like a 30-70% decrease in bandwidth usage by using WebP.