Could JPEG2000 Finally Take Off In 2020? It's A Possibility With High Throughput HTJ2K

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Could JPEG2000 Finally Take Off In 2020? It's A Possibility With High Throughput HTJ2K

While the standard is now two decades old and has yet to unseat the JPEG image standard in popularity, there is renewed interest in JPEG2000 with High Throughput JPEG 2000 (HTJ2K) and finally seeing increased software support. Collabora's Aaron Boxer thinks that JPEG2000 could finally be going mainstream...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=JPEG2000-In-2020

[brent]

I'm very skeptical. JPEG2000 doesn't offer tangible compression ratio improvements over JPEG. Sometimes it's slightly better, sometimes it's worse. It's a wash. JPEG2000 offers additional features, but compression ratio always has been the driver for the adoption of new media compression formats, and that is where JPEG2000 fails. So... I just don't see it.

[bug77]

The thing is, with the increased DPI on monitors these days, JPEG already is indistinguishable from uncompressed*. If you're not improving compression, you don't have a case.

*I know it's not the same thing as uncompressed.

[ndegruchy]

I'm very skeptical. JPEG2000 doesn't offer tangible compression ratio improvements over JPEG. Sometimes it's slightly better, sometimes it's worse. It's a wash. JPEG2000 offers additional features, but compression ratio always has been the driver for the adoption of new media compression formats, and that is where JPEG2000 fails. So... I just don't see it.

Yeah, it's a major uphill battle to get people to switch from a ubiquitous format like JPEG. Even Google struggles getting WebP going in places other than browsers.

[modpunk]

I doubt that JPEG2000 will gain much traction. In the meantime there there is the AVIF image format which is derived from the AV1 codec. There is a lot of interest in AV1 as it isn't a patent minefield and browsers are already supporting it [1][2]. If you have AV1 support, supporting AVIF is pretty easy [3].

I've just implemented AV1 support in darktable.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo.../releasenotes/
[2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo.../releasenotes/
[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1443863

[bug77]

Yeah, it's a major uphill battle to get people to switch from a ubiquitous format like JPEG. Even Google struggles getting WebP going in places other than browsers.

Remember, you'd need to get support built into phones and cameras, too. I very much doubt the camera industry will do the legwork without sizeble benefits to be had.
A useful addition would be HDR, because that's what seems to be taking off now, but iirc, that covered by another spec (JPEG XR?).

[brent]

JPEG2000 also supports high color depths and huge image dimensions. But these are special niche applications and it's already used in those. This hasn't helped even a little bit to establish JPEG2000 as a general-purpose image compression format, though.

[birdie]

AVIF is the future. JPEG2000 is too late for the game.

AV1 Image File Format (AVIF)
The AV1 Image File Format (AVIF) is a specification for storing images or image sequences compressed with AV1 in the HEIF file format.[147] Version 1.0.0 of the specification was finalized in February 2019.

AVIF supports features like:

• High dynamic range[147]
• 8, 10, 12 bit color depth[148]
• Lossless compression and lossy compression
• Monochrome (alpha/depth) or multi-components
• Any color-space including: wide color gamut, ISO/IEC CICP and ICC profiles
• 4:2:0, 4:2:2, 4:4:4 chroma subsampling
• Film grain

[ms178]

First, there is certainly a need for better picture compression. Just try to upload all your documtens for a job application with a reasonable quality and a hard limit on 2 or 4 MB (as mandated by a lot of public employers over here and that is not per file but for EVERYTHING combined - and don't laugh at me, ancient workflows and legacy IT are still a thing in my sector).

And for this reason alone, I scanned all of my important documents and saved them as JPEG2000 files, but unfortunately JPEG2000 is not a widely supported format (especially in the public sector). A better option with more industry support behind it is just around the corner (as was already mentioned by others, I think AVIF has the best chance to de-throne JPEG), hence I cannot see a bright future for JPEG2000 to get any meaningful traction.

[brent]

I'm not super convinced that AVIF is the future, either. There are competing specs that are very good, for instance FUIF, PIK and JPEG XL. These are properly optimized for still images and not just a container for AV1 I-frames. They are royalty-free, too.