Microsoft Move to be the End of JPEG? 447
jcatcw writes "Microsoft Corp. will submit a new photo format to an international standards organization. The format, HD Photo (formerly known as Windows Media Photo), can accommodate lossless and lossy compression. Microsoft claims that adjustments can be made to color balance and exposure settings that won't discard or truncate data that occurs with other bit-map formats."
What's the catch? (Score:5, Interesting)
PNG with bzip2 compression? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Meh (Score:3, Interesting)
FTFA:
"Microsoft said HD Photo's lightweight algorithm causes less damage to photos during compression, with higher-quality images that are half the size of a JPEG."
PNG has well known limitations when it comes to photographs.
Size is a big one of them.
If JPEG can't microsoft can't (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not the format, stupid. It's the license. (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft, just like any other vendor on the planet, is free to submit anything they like into standards bodies, and ask that they be accepted or considered for use in the world. If Microsoft's new format is useful, fantastic, we all should start using it.
But if, and only if, that format comes free from the burden of licensing or copyright. We've seen how damaging these restrictions can be to simple file format (remember ARC? And all the fun that went on with GIF?) - If Microsoft is releasing an idea for folks to use and adopt? Excellent. If they're pushing an internal format that they hold a patent on, and are requesting other vendors to adopt it? Then it's simply Microsoft once again trying to dick over the industry. And I can't see how it can possibly work under those circumstances.
They don't have the big stick they used to. This is no longer 2000, where the corporate juggernaut simply needed to wave it's financial might and the net doth tremble before it. Microsoft has to tread carefully on an increasingly powerful free software world.
We'll see how this goes. Me, I'm waiting to hear more information.
Um, no. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, never mind Microsoft. Let's look at the audio arena. The royalty-free OGG format should have bumped off MPG, but still device manufacturers are all too happy to pay Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft to use MP3. In fact, it's still hard to find devices that support OGG at all. The moral of the story is that it's really hard to get anyone to commit development costs to support a new standard, let alone beat out one that's widely supported, even if you are giving away the tech for free.
Re:Nup, No, Nada. (Score:3, Interesting)
As for Microsoft's format, if it's not freely usable I don't see it taking off, and others have said it can't be used in GPL style projects, so it's clearly not for me.
It might be nice to have a format that compressed better than JPEG and had higher quality. Does JPEG-2000 render in web browsers?
D
Re:Would you want your images succeptable to GPL (Score:1, Interesting)
Code = Software
Codec = Process
Data = Product
If you GPL the code and GPL the codec and the Data is a mix of the Codec and Product where does the GPL stop? I'll have to look at GCC's license to see how they do the same because technically i could edit a binary and not edit the code but still be subject to the GPL correct?
Re:Nup, No, Nada. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, they are using RAW data in the manner you outline, THEN they use TIFF for storing and transporting these images. TIFF is the industry de-facto. So, MS's little format might compress data better. It's not likely going to do much that TIFF can't be adapted to do.
Re:GPL doesn't extend to user data (Score:3, Interesting)
The MP3 patent lawsuits are based on a claim of software patents for the encoding and decoding of data. Not on the end results of either operation.
Nobody, or at least nobody of any standing, has tried to claim that Fraunhoffer's software patents on MP3 mean that they can assert any sort of ownership or control over files that contain MP3-encoded data.
256 vs trillions of colors (Score:3, Interesting)
What I meant was within the context of supporting transparency - PNG supports nice multiple levels of transparency, which was a huge boon over GIF if you have to deal with transparency. Sadly, IE 6 and below didn't support it right, which made it less attractive. So the huge advantage there was basically nixed.
Though, there's no good reason not to use PNG with transparency anyway. There's a few hacks out there, including automatic ones (javascript iterating over all PNG images, replacing them in-line with new ones that use a directx display filter), that are perfecly safe to use. But the damage was already done, I daresay. Hopefully IE7 is slowly changing that, but if MS pushes this format enough.. bleh
Re:Would you want your images succeptable to GPL (Score:5, Interesting)
I think, in part, you're confusing patents and copyright (for example, your discussion of MP3s), and I think, in part, you're trying to extrapolate the GPL as if it were copyright law.
So, let's step back a bit and try to untangle exactly what's going on. When you use a codec, you're using a piece of software. The codec itself is protected under copyright and possibly under patents. In any event, the actions the codec carries out are not in themselves creative. By this, I mean, the transformations are deterministic with an intended output; creativity could be said to be non-deterministic (ie, originality) with an intended output. Copyright only extends to works that are the result of a creative process. To that end, nothing a codec does could itself be copyrighted; if it could be, the codec itself would be the copyright owner, not the writer of the codec; of course, such a codec would seemingly fill the requirements of a partial AI, so I think the concerns of copyright would not exactly be high on the list of discussion.
Having said all that, we get into the issue of something like the MP3 codec. The concern with it, as related to the GPL, has more to do with the GPL having provisions about patents. Patents, as you likely know, apply to a process, not a specific implementation. This, of course, can be a huge issue with something like the GPL because a large point of the GPL is to allow for the redistribution of GPLed code. If only some people were allowed to legally redistribute the code, by paying patent royalties, then the "network" of involvement to improve GPLed code would be a lot less webbed and a lot more hierarchical (or, it'd be a lot more illegal). Because of this, the GPL requires that all distributed code that implements a patent include royalty-free redistribution covering that patent. Because the MP3 code is patented and there is no royalty-free redistribution allowed (no matter what is said about trying to include an exception for open source), gpled mp3 codecs are illegal, if for no other reason than the distributor of the gpled code is granting others a privilege he doesn't have.
Having said all that, there's nothing illegal about the mp3 format or inherently legal about mp3s themselves. But given the fact that you can't include an mp3 encoder or decoder with a totally GPL software distribution, MP3s have been frowned upon in the free/open software world. On top of that, of course, is the excessive piracy of music (and note, this is further proof that codecs don't change copyright; if they did, the codec maker would be the one suing over all the CD->MP3ed music, not the RIAA and its members) in MP3 format, as it was the first to make it readily possible to share music (commercial and otherwise) over the internet that has basically made MP3 synonymous with pirated music. The last thing many in the free software world want is to have the appearance that the GPL is all about "getting free (as in beer) stuff", even if it's through illegal means.
PS - Things like the gcc include an exception about the GPL not applying as a result of using gcc to compile a program precisely to avoid confusion over the issue; this is somewhat humorous as there are many places were a transformation application of one sort or another will copy small fragments of itself into the destination application, which you seem to recognize. The one overriding principle to always remember is that copyright applies first. The GPL is subordinate to the rules of copyright. So is every other, proprietary license. Now, if you wanted something with more fuzzy lines, one could discuss the linking of libraries. But, that's a whole other discussion.
Re:Nup, No, Nada. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not entirely true
Re:Nup, No, Nada. (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista supports 128 bit internal rendering of gfx (Score:4, Interesting)
It is possible that in 2009, people will be buying wide gamut, high dynamic range displays in numbers, so it will become evident that the old graphic file formats aren't going to look as good anymore. HD Photo can fill that need by having the high bit rate for more expressive colors, as well as offering compression comparable to JPEG so that it can be used online. It also offers the flexiblity to trade files uncompressed for maximum detail.
I suppose everyone can use a format like OpenEXR for high bit info, but I don't think it compresses as well as HD Photo.
Nevertheless, I am going to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt that they're not going to sue people for decoding HD Photo. However, I don't know how flexible they will be with people encoding it. I think now the general industry has wisened up to close formats and now will consider open formats from now on.
Re:PNG with bzip2 compression? (Score:4, Interesting)
TIFF had a problem like that in it's early days when the name was said to stand for "Thousands of Incompatible File Formats". The same things happens today when I try to open a
Re:Vista supports 128 bit internal rendering of gf (Score:5, Interesting)
Before Windows Vista, the OS was limited to 8 bits per channel (RGB) OUTPUT for the video card. The video card will only get 8 bit of data per channel from the OS, so even if you have a nice ATI card that can do 10 bit per channel (RGB) output from the port, it's still being fed 8bpc data.
Cards from Matrox that can output 10 bit grayscale for 10 bit monochrome displays use DirectX and special drivers to overcome this limitation. Matrox video cards also support 10bpc in Photoshop using a special plugin/driver. However, you have to run the plugin and switch away from the Photoshop interface to see the extra bit of colors.
I know that OpenGL can do high bit rendering, like in the case of the nVidia Quadro cards, or just using floating point representation. The Quardo uses 128 bit precision for all the fancy 3d effects. However what you're seeing on screen is limited by 8bpc output of your video card (though a quadro supports 12 bit output)
Windows Vista supports 128 bit at the OS level. That means you can have a video card that can output 10bpc (for 30 bits total) and it will contain real information that let's say a nice HDTV can read (using HDMI). Or you can just open a regular RGBA image (32 bits) and using a some sort of 3d program to do fancy compositing using different textures and store the information in 128 bit (or the lesser formats; look at MSDN for the various encoding schemes) for speed.
The point is, Vista has the headroom to really display images that contain more than 8bpc (RGB). I'm hoping that Linux would follow suit (it will once HDR displays become commercialy viable) and I believe Mac OS X Leopard will also have this high bit output support (though I have not found any evidence of that yet.)
Re:PNG with bzip2 compression? (Score:4, Interesting)
On the down side, just because it says
On the plus side, it means we're still using .avi, years later -- because it's not tied to any specific codecs that will probably become obsolete over time.
I wanted to hate DNG, but liked it instead. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know whether Adobe will pull it off, but I hope that it succeeds, or at least survives.
TIFF is a huge mess. Let's face it; it's a gigantic cockup. Anyone can write TIFF files, but they're nearly impossible to "read" in the sense that a user is going to expect: if I say that my application will "read TIFFs," they're going to expect that anything with a TIF extension is going to get read. And that's almost never the case; you can pack just too much stuff into the container.
(Although container formats have a certain elegance to them from a geek perspective, I'm not sure they're all they're cracked up to be. The number of times I've gotten a video file that I don't have a codec for, but have no way of knowing about until I try to open it, because the codec is concealed inside the MOV or AVI container, or similar problems with TIFs, is beyond number. There's some good sense in eliminating container formats, or at least tying the file extension and other metadata, not to the container, but to the codec inside.)
What I hope that Adobe can do, is give us some neutral ground that the various camera manufacturers can agree to use, so we can break away from the per-manufacturer RAW file formats, and the TIFF morass for interchange.
DNG already has support in probably the biggest single application of consequence, and that's Photoshop, and now they've got quite a few camera manufacturers on board, and the specification is open so there are FOSS implementations. Ed Hamrick's excellent VueScan scanning software produces them, too, and perhaps SilverFast will join the party sometime soon. If they can get the middle-market of consumer and prosumer cameras on board, then I think it will have a chance at achieving dominance from the imaging sensors on down the chain.
There's a lot to be said for it; anyone can implement it, but at the same time, there's some centralized control over the format, so that every Tom, Dick, and Harry can't build on their own crappy extension to the format and create the sort of Balkanization that's plagued TIFF. Hopefully, this will mean that people can implement it, and be confident that if they say that their app will 'read DNG,' that it will actually read all the various types of DNG files that users will throw at it.
If that's the only thing that DNG did, it would be a huge step forward.
Like PNG killed off GIF? (Score:3, Interesting)
It may simply become the "other format" supported on every camera (alongside JPEG, RAW or even TIFF) the same way Ogg is the "other format" supported on MP3 players (also supporting WMA, AAC). I doubt they have wild new technology in there that will make it hard to support all of them at once.
MS Proposing an image format? (Score:2, Interesting)