Mozilla Firefox Appears Ready To Enable AVIF Image Handling Support By Default

[juarezr]

That's weird. They dragged on with WebP support for five years before finally enabling it, now with AV1F they are almost rushing.

VP9 is now universally supported unlike AV1 whose support is laaaaaaacking.

Indeed WebP/VP9 support is widespread while AV1/AVIF support is lacking in all software except browsers, FOSS image/video conversion tools (ffmpeg, vlc ), and a couple of image tools. Also hardware support for WebP/VP9 still lagging H264/H265 for example.

However circa 2014, when WebP support was added to Chrome, that was not the case. It had no support except Chrome at that time.

While some consider Mozilla to drag on with the WebP support, in 2014 the future was not clear about patent licensing and ecosystem support.

Also counting for Mozilla undervaluation of WebP, there happened a big improvement in jpeg encoding with the mozjpeg release.

But the scenario for AV1/AVIF is totally different:

1. AOM supporting base is huge and includes everybody big enough from hardware/software companies, content providers, and media companies, with the exception of some people that will loose patent revenue like the AVC/VVC patent pools and also Apple.
2. AV1 hardware decoding is currently shipping in the current generation of products like smartTVs, Graphics cards for computers, and most recent smartphones SOCs and additional chips.
3. AOM got the FOSS community support backing it.

[juarezr]

At the end of the day, JPEG is the 28 year-old image format that just keeps on truckin'

that's just pretty much because of lazy devs and the curse of backwards compatibility... the general users use jpeg because its familiar, they could be given any number of formats and 90% of the time default to jpeg... even when they want "The best quality possible"... and of course, many programs and devices dont support "modern" formats like webp despite it being objectively superior in most cases and 10 years old now...

You are right when says that general users don't know how to get "the best quality possible" and programs and devices lack support for advanced encoding/decoding codec/formats.

But maybe this is not "lazy devs" fault at all because:

1. Image and video codecs are a patent landmine and the are many companies and trolls using their IP to gather money from you through hardware/device royalties, streaming fees and other forms of monetization.
2. Even if a small developer/company could create a innovative feature, it would be at risks of being drowned by litigation and competitors pressure.
3. The situation is that so bad, that even the companies with patent IP could'nt agree and form a single patent pool. Today it's uncertain to how one must pay HEVC royalties.
4. A "general user" certainly want that a picture taken today could be viewed in the next 20 years.
5. Think about what format can have this level of forward compatibility ?
6. AV1/AVIF appears to be overcoming these issues with AOM broad support and cooperation, royalty-free licensing, strong patent defense tactics, and open source development best practices.

[Quackdoc]

1. Many of royalty free codecs exist, Webp/VP8 is one of them, just use one of them and list jpeg as not reccomended

2.they dont need to innovate. implementing alreadt existng features is not innovation.

3.see above

4. forwards compatibility is a non issue with the majority of picture formats. they are generally not likely to be removed from programs unless they are uber obscure or its a shoddy program

5.webp, tiff/exif etc.

6. Av1 is still infantile, its been nearly 30 bloody years since jpeg came out, webp for instance is objectively better in almost all regards.