JPEG2000 Coming Soon

Sonny writes "In a few months time, internet users will be able to make use of the JPEG2000 standard which, its developers claim, enables web graphics to be downloaded much faster than is currently possible. This will not only make graphics-heavy web pages easier to download, it will also preserve image quality. The JPEG standard compresses image files which are then transmitted across the web faster than uncompressed files. Now, researchers at universities around the world have developed JPEG2000, the next-generation image-compression technology under the auspices of the International Standards Organisation. It is the first major upgrade of the standard since it first appeared in the early '90s. What is also important about the technology is its ability to send files without loss of data, which is not the case with current JPEG files. To take advantage of a JPEG2000, web browsers will need a Plug-In for either Internet Explorer or Netscape browsers. These free plug-in's are expected to be available later this year. The extension for the new files will be ".jp2"."

It's obvious where this is going.

[checkitout]

If we aren't all using PNG right now, there's no way we're gonna be using jp2

I think we're just stuck with jpeg and gif for about the next 5-10 years, until browsers in general get reinvented.

Stupid extensions

[binner1]

Why .jp2??? Why not .jpeg2. This legacy DOS naming convention drives me nuts. Not even Windows is crappy enough to still require 8.3 filenames.

I still cringe when I see default.htm. It's a frickin' html file, name it properly.

-Ben

Re:Stupid extensions

[checkitout]

Why .jp2??? Why not .jpeg2.

Because they're latching onto the idea (and popularity) of .mp3 and we dont have a .mpeg3 extension in active use.

Slow to change ...

[Jobe_br]

I don't want to be a nay-sayer in any way, but I predict that this will catch on about as quickly as PNGs replacing GIFs. Most professional quality sites still use GIFs instead of PNG, even though tools such as Adobe's Imageready and Macromedia's Fireworks have supported the PNG format alongside GIFs for a while now AND most major browsers support PNGs natively (which wasn't the case not too long ago, with IE4, I believe).

Until the .jp2 format doesn't require a plugin for 99% of the browsers out there, it won't be widely used, IMHO. Of course, I could be wrong and the .jp2 format might not even be meant for wide-spread adoption, and mainly for particular niche uses (such as viewing hubble images or replacing the need for lossless TIFFs).

Just my $0.02.

Never late.

[Electrawn]

If my digital camera can squeeze out 5 extra pictures ...great.

Many places are STILL on dial up and will continue to be.

Any new technology that compresses well can only be a good thing.

I think it'll catch on

[Zuna]

Don't think that just because it causes the user to download a plugin that web developers will be afraid to use it. After all, just look at Flash.

However, I think it'll really catch on whenever the next versions of the browsers are released with standard support for JPEG2000.

Patents, Patents and more Patents

[JohnA]

According to this EE Times article [eetimes.com], there are several patents that are licensed "royalty free" to implementers of the JPEG2000 Part 1 specification. Sound familiar?

I remember a similar promise made about LZW compression in the GIF standard by Compuserve. What is to stop these companies from requiring license fees at some arbitrary point in the future once the technology is widely used?

Additionally, there doesn't seem to be very much due dilligence performed in regards to other patents over the techniques utilized in the standard. Even if all of the known patents are licensed royalty-free, there exists the very real possiblity that a submarine patent will be exposed, after the standard is widely utilized, of course.

Of course, this won't matter once all of our PCs are replaced with sealed, SSSCA-compliant, government issued "convergence appliances"... :-)

libjpeg

[NotoriousQ]

web browsers will need a Plug-In for either Internet Explorer or Netscape browsers.

or some of us that compile our own code and use dynamic and static libraries, the change would be as transparent as recompiling libjpeg.

just another reason I like open source.

Re:Stupid extensions

[Snowfox]

Why .jp2??? Why not .jpeg2. This legacy DOS naming convention drives me nuts. Not even Windows is crappy enough to still require 8.3 filenames.

Just because names can be made longer doesn't mean that they should.

.jp2 is sufficiently clear, and it won't clutter diretory listings. Save the longer, more descriptive extensions for more obscure things.

Re:It's obvious where this is going.

[Anonymous Coward]

If porn sites start to use JPEG2000 it will become a standard rather quickly!
That's how the world works my friend...

New IE Exploit

[AX.25]

I can't wait for the new IE exploit using the jpeg2000 activeX control (sense IE now doesn't support netscape style plugins).

Re:Stupid extensions

[TotallyUseless]

i think .jpg2 would be much clearer than .jp2. most files that start with a .j and arent a .jpg are java or javascript files up till now, at least in webwork. for someone not in the industry it can get confusing fast. why not make use of one more character, and make it completely clear to everyone what it is? anyone that knows what a jpg is will know what a jpg2 is, but they may not know what a jp2 is. just a thought

Interesting point.

[Chasing Amy]

You have an interesting point--bandwidth is getting more dear, now that the pyramid-scheme banner advertising revenue outfits have been going tits-up. However, I just don't see most website owners risking their livelihoods by implementing an image format which most of their customers, plugins or no, may not be able to read--particularly since so much of web layout is done using images these days instead of text.

Think about it--how many users are set to automatically download plugins as needed? Almost none because of security reasons. herefore, some active decision is needed on behalf of the user to actually install the plugin or not. What will be the user's reaction if he goes to the site of WidgetCo, doesn't know what to do with this dialogue box about installing stuff (especially if he's been told be friends or company that installing strange software can be dangerous, or if he's been molested by the likes of CometCursor), says "No", and gets a page of big X's where all the buttons and banners should be? Well, it might well be to go to the site of WidgetBiz instead to get his widgets there.

This is why I really don't see JPEG2k taking off. It's a risk most companies won't take--you don't want your users not being able to use your site. Look how long it took Flash to become as common as it is today--many years, and then only because it started shipping by default with Windows.

I have no doubt that IE7 will have JPEG2k support--poor and half-hearted support. As with most Microsoft products it'll probably take the until the second major release to get it right, so let's say IE8 will have fully implemented JPEG2k support out-of-the-box. How many years will it be until that's out? And how much further along will available bandwidth be by then?

I could well be wrong, but I just don't see this taking off. Unlike Flash did, it doesn't bring anything spectacularly new to the table--a few people have been talking about the visual effects you can get using wavelet images, but those same effects are common (if poorly implemented) Flash effects today, in addition to the many other effects Flash does. So that leaves us with the better compression over JPEG as its big marketing point...and I just don't see that being enough to get website owners to risk alienating end users. So *at least* until great JPEG2k support ships with IE out of the box, and that version of IE is common, I don't see JPEG2k going anywhere except into some niche markets.

Re:Mozilla & jpeg2000

[WasterDave]

...meaning, of course, that in order to be able to implement JPEG2000 we need a patent licencing authority - JPEG-LA, anyone? Of course, they would want to charge 0.001c/download and everyone goes running back to DCT.

Seriously, this is exactly the position in video compression right now. Dire, in other words.

Dave

Stupid names

[t_allardyce]

Are the three extra 0's really necessary? why is it called JPEG2000 when the year 2000 was 2 years ago? why do people insist on stupid marketing hype names? why the f/* can't it just be called JPEG v2 or JPEG2? WHY? This is the problem with our world, just like iBook and easyJet, why do people have to come up with this out-dated, over-used, "oh I'm so arty" bull shit? It's not cool, its not fun. Names don't suddenly become boring and grey if you don't string words together or not capitalize the first letter. We're not writing code, and most of the people who do come up with these names are not really geeks so they don't have any excuses such as 'I never name variables with spaces' or 'I never capitalize names or 'i's'. Lots of systems don't have problems with spaces (especially Win. 9x where I see way to much of this) anymore so why do people do it? its just annoying to the point of making a perfectly sane person write a long post ranting about it.

I wouldn't mind normally, but if this is going to be used for the next 10 years, lets not give it a stupid name.

I'm sure this has already been mentioned but I couldn't be bothered to go through 200 posts.

Now I must prepare to be modded down

Re:Smart Extensions

[Zalgon 26 McGee]

Er, shouldn't that be:

/usr/bobby/school/english/reports/steppenwolf . oc

The directory structure should be descriptive as well, so the filenames can be trivial.

Re:Wow. This couldn't have been timed better

[Anonymous Coward]

...lack of a free implementation...

Why do standards bodies produce documents? Why don't they produce code instead? A reference implementation under a royalty free license would go very, very far towards getting the standard adopted. As it is, standards bodies produce documents, and 10 years later there exist a handful of implementations...

Why not run the development of the reference implementation and standard document like an open source project with an initial closed (open to experts who are part of the standards body) phase? Afterwards, open up the code and development mailing lists so that people can discuss the implementation, suggest bug fixes, etc.

I want to see an ISO sourceforge, and one for ANSI, with a project for each of their standards... How about an OSI approved ISO license?

Perhaps the REAL future lies with open projects like OGG, that create codecs and file formats freely usable by anyone (and freely embeddable by anyone due to the BSD license). These large standards bodies will always have to charge royalties to support themselves.

But will ogg always be 17 years behind, chasing the most recently-expired software patent?

Re:PNG *is* a god-send.

[David Eppstein]

It may be that we just haven't learned to see the JPEG2000 artifacts, unlike JPEG which we're much more familiar with.

On the dpreview page [dpreview.com], the highest-quality (1Mb) files of JPEG and JPEG2000 look very similar, but even at the next lower setting (568k) the JPEG2000 has started to blur the subtle texturing on the watch faceplate into smooth blankness. Maybe ok for web viewing but not what I'd want happening automatically when I save a full-resolution image from my digicam.

That said, at anything below the 1M file size on that page, the JPEG2000's clearly look better than the corresponding JPEG's.