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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Quackdoc]

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...

[OneTimeShot]

Even when you look at the images at full size, the AVIF image isn't any less acceptable than the JPEG image. Especially since the JPEG image has absolutely terrible blocking. The fact that the AVIF image is 1/4th the size of the JPEG image is more than a fair trade off.

20kb rather than 80kb for a similar quality image... We are *almost* at the the point where it's worth thinking about picking a newer format than JPEG Maybe for 4k/8k images?

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

[AmericanLocomotive]

Even when you look at the images at full size, the AVIF image isn't any less acceptable than the JPEG image. Especially since the JPEG image has absolutely terrible blocking. The fact that the AVIF image is 1/4th the size of the JPEG image is more than a fair trade off.

[Quackdoc]

Those sizes... are interesting. But they show the images at a width of ~800px while it is encoded at 1920px. What modern codecs can do really well is smooth details away (and they do a pretty good job at that). My point is, you can trivially encode the image at 800px width into 37kb and have an acceptable quality. Even if you upscale again to 1920px it looks better then JPEG encoded to the same size with the full resolution. On the other side, I wouldn't call the 18kb AVIF "acceptable" at full resolution.
AVIF/WebP are easier to use, because you don't have to downscale the image to get a good compression. They are better for sure. But they are not that much better then those comparisons make you believe.

That's not really relevant, the point is the compression:quality ratio compared to other compressed encoding methods, as long as each of the methods are encoded similarly it should scale somewhat equivalently. bar cases like as shown lossless. but thats what they have the original for, so you can see the quality, just take a look when you match the file sizes of even webm vs avif, the difference is massive, also Im not sure why the 18kb avif wouldn't be acceptable. im sure most people looking at it wont find too much of an issue with it.

[AmericanLocomotive]

...I never said because WebP is worse than PNG. I was simply commenting that Google, a major proponent of WebP (and its successor) doesn't even support WebP on one of its major products. Google receives ~9-10 billion in yearly revenue from G-Suite. So not as profitable as their advertising network, but not exactly small potatoes either.

[cl333r]

The G-Suite for Education is being used by almost 100 million students globally, and Google Slides is a huge component of that.

Then why in your opinion Google Slides doesn't support WebP. One can't say "because WebP is worse than PNG" because the opposite is true. So what's the reason - lazy Google employees?

[Mathias]

found a great write up here
https://jakearchibald.com/2020/avif-has-landed/

Those sizes... are interesting. But they show the images at a width of ~800px while it is encoded at 1920px. What modern codecs can do really well is smooth details away (and they do a pretty good job at that). My point is, you can trivially encode the image at 800px width into 37kb and have an acceptable quality. Even if you upscale again to 1920px it looks better then JPEG encoded to the same size with the full resolution. On the other side, I wouldn't call the 18kb AVIF "acceptable" at full resolution.
AVIF/WebP are easier to use, because you don't have to downscale the image to get a good compression. They are better for sure. But they are not that much better then those comparisons make you believe.