New universal codec, Basis, may replace JPEG

[Graham42]

Binomial has been working on a universal compressed texture format and is partnering with Google to open source it as a Khronos standard.

 

Quote

The Basis Universal texture format is 6-8 times smaller than JPEG on the GPU, yet is a similar storage size as JPEG

Having a universal standard is a huge boon to developers because they can take advantage of GPU performance without the overhead of all the different GPU formats. Adopting the format should help with mobile game performance, but is also applicable to other platforms too.

Honestly I don't understand enough of it but it looks like this is possibly the successor to JPEG down the road.

Sources: 
Binomial Twitter - Lots of news posts related to the release being reshared here

Google Open Source Blog Post

Hacker news comment on the benefits of compressed textures

Update: Here's a video dives in and explains this better than what I originally understood. 

 

Edited May 23, 2019 by Graham42
Add additional video link

[Fnige]

JPEG to BASIS converter. Contains ads you won't want to see

[givingtnt]

Please make the extension .bs

because I want to save Final.bs
and upload Final.bs

 

And above all, give the .bs to the client !

 

Quote

The client demands all the .bs !

 

[Bouzoo]

1 hour ago, givingtnt said:

Please make the extension .bs

because I want to save Final.bs
and upload Final.bs

Totallynotbs.bs

[Master Disaster]

This seems relevant

 

[PlayStation 2]

But will it allow transparency and better compression than JPEG like how game textures make use of lossy compression and an alpha channel?

[justpoet]

4 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

But will it allow transparency and better compression than JPEG like how game textures make use of lossy compression and an alpha channel?

Sounds like you want PNG

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, justpoet said:

Sounds like you want PNG

...eh, maybe. I have a thought in my head of what the format'd be like but I dunno how to describe it and I doubt it'd be practical.

[mr moose]

19 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

This seems relevant

 

In this case thought he aim is not to make a universal standard, but to make a better alternative and have it an open standard.   The claims it might replace JPEG is because it is better not specifically because it is open per se.

[DrMacintosh]

48 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

But will it allow transparency and better compression than JPEG like how game textures make use of lossy compression and an alpha channel?

.png bro

[DrMacintosh]

Nothing is wrong with .jpg. Do we really need another standard?

[Tech Enthusiast]

As a developer I would love to see a real "standard", not just "another standard".

If this thing can replace all the other crap, without sacrificing quality, I would be all over it. Right now, it is kind of standard to support like half a dozen or more formats. Would really help to have the one to rule them all.

[LAwLz]

I don't think it's that accurate to say it will replace jpeg. This seems to be specifically for textures, not really regular images you take with your phone, or memes or whatnot. So while it will may replace jpeg inside games, I doubt we will see it everywhere.

 

 

20 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Nothing is wrong with .jpg. Do we really need another standard?

There are a ton of things wrong with .jpg.

Old and inefficient.

Lacks a ton of features which would be useful (like animations or lossless mode).

There have been some patent issues with it.

Clearly visible macro blocks at higher compression levels.

Completely butchers text.

 

Apple doesn't even use jpeg for the images captured by iPhones anymore.

 

 

.jpeg is most likely on its way to being replaced anyway. AOMedia is working on an image format called AVIF. It's already getting implemented in Windows, Chrome, and a bunch of other programs. Chances are Apple will switch to it too once they get hardware encoders and decoders in place.

Here is a comparison website if you want to see the difference for yourself:

https://people.xiph.org/~tdaede/av1stilldemo/

 

and a summary from me:

Spoiler

AVIF could potentially become the standard image format, replacing PNG, GIF and JPEG in the future.

 

 

AV1 is a video codec developed in collaboration by Microsoft, Google, Apple, Cisco, Netflix, Amazon, AMD, Nvidia, Intel and a bunch of other companies.

 

AVIF, is exactly the same as AV1, except it encodes just a single frame and places it inside a HEIF container. What it means is that it could potentially replace JPEG, a really old and terrible standard by providing higher quality images, at smaller file sizes, which can be decoded and encoded faster, using less power, while also supporting more features and functions.

It can also replace PNG because it also supports lossless compression (the main feature of PNG).

And it can replace gif because, since it's based on a video codec, you can have really high quality animation at a fraction of the file size, without stupid color limitations, of a gif file.

 

Some highlights of AVIF:

 

• Royalty free, and free for anyone to use. No need to worry about patents or anything of the sort. Since it's backed by a ton of massive companies, support for it will most likely be widespread as well.
   
• Support for multiple images inside a single file. For example if you take a burst photo with your camera they could all be saved inside a single file. Or maybe you have a bunch of vacation photos and want to send them all to someone? You can put them all inside a single file and send that (like sending a gallery inside a single image file).
   
• Non-destructive image editing. The format supports saving modifications of the image as transform operations rather than overwrite the color value of pixels. What this allows for is a Photoshop style "history" of edits of the image, saved within the meta data of the image. So instead of destroying the original file when you edit a photo, the original can be preserved within the meta data of the image file.
   
• Save multiple images, apply a transform to them and then present the end result to the user. The most obvious and common example of this will probably be HDR photos. When you take an HDR image, your camera actually captures ~3 images and combine them into a single one which is then saved. With this, you could save all three images into the file, and then when someone opens it the file contains instructions for how to mix all images together. This obviously creates a larger file than our current way of creating HDR images, but it allows for more flexibility (and we can still save HDR images the normal way as well, this is just an additional feature that can be used).
   
• Thumbnails can be embedded into the image file. Right now if you create a website which has a bunch of thumbnails, you need two images. One thumbnail which is displayed on the website, and one full size one which is displayed when the image is clicked. Those two images could be the same file with this format.
   
• For most standard pictures, an AVIF file will be less than half the size of a JPEG with the same quality, or twice as high quality at the same file size.
   
• Since it's an actual video format, it can replace GIF in the same way WebM is superior to GIFs. Much smaller file sizes, no stupid color limitations, support for higher frame rates, HDR, all that stuff.
   
• Support for lossless compression.
   
• Support for transparency.
   
• Since it's based on AV1, encoding and decoding of the images can be handled by the same hardware encoders/decoders that will start appearing in GPUs in the coming years. This means really fast encoding and decoding time.

 

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

 

  Hide contents

-snip

 

 

Sounds like a lot of foundational changes trying to happen all at once. HEVC hasn’t even taken off yet, I doubt we will see this take off either. 

[D13H4RD]

Inb4 my Fuji X-T3 still uses JPEGs and RAFs

 

Then again, it does HEVC, so who knows. 

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

Sounds like a lot of foundational changes trying to happen all at once. HEVC hasn’t even taken off yet, I doubt we will see this take off either. 

HEVC hasn't taken off because no one feels like buying the rights to use it.

Except for Apple, apparently. /shrug

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Are you saying we should lack standards?

I’m saying that we have too many “standards” and as a result we effectively have no standards. 

[D13H4RD]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

HEVC hasn't taken off because no one feels like buying the rights to use it.

Except for Apple, apparently. /shrug

That's an issue for me. 

 

Because if I try importing a HEVC video from my X-T3 to a video editing program that has not yet been updated to support HEVC, it can't do anything about it 

[handymanshandle]

well a lossy png would be interesting so I guess that's what I'd be interested in seeing Basis being. Kinda like what @Dan Castellaneta was getting at

[Banshee4711]

15 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Are you saying we should lack standards?

I have read your system specs ;)

[Banshee4711]

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

And?

Just messing with you

[Bananasplit_00]

Didnt we agree to all use AV1s photo derivative already? idk why this exists

[RejZoR]

There was also JPEG XR that also never took off...

[vanished]

There's been plenty of superior options available for a long time already and they have all failed to replace it so I see no reason this will be different.  That doesn't mean we should just give up, but I think we should have realistic expectations about adoption.  Also, am I the only one left completely lost by the OP?  Makes absolutely no sense to me.  Something about GPUs and textures but really isn't coming together...

[RejZoR]

Well, we'll eventually have to replace it. JPEG is getting REALLY old and while it has good quality at 99 or 100 quality, anything below that has some serious artifacts going on and size is quite huge when using high quality levels. Might not sound like much if photo is 5MB, but sending that through e-mail regularly and it becomes annoying if higher quality image could only be 2MB.