[HN Gopher] BPG Image Format
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       BPG Image Format
        
       Author : tosh
       Score  : 69 points
       Date   : 2022-03-17 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bellard.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bellard.org)
        
       | throwaway190712 wrote:
       | But how is it pronounced?!
        
         | altairprime wrote:
         | Bay-PEG, of course.
        
         | CharlesW wrote:
         | "Throatwobbler Mangrove".
        
       | morpheuskafka wrote:
       | I thought HEVC already came with a way to encode images (HEIF)? I
       | don't have any experience in this space so I am probably missing
       | something obvious, but I thought HEVC technology was being used
       | for images for a while.
        
         | dividuum wrote:
         | The release date makes the difference: BPG is from 2018, HEIF
         | is from 2020. At least that's the official standard release
         | date according to Wikipedia.
        
           | JonathonW wrote:
           | HEIF was finalized in 2015 and was standardized by ISO in
           | 2017; not sure where you're getting a 2020 date from.
           | 
           | It's been in widespread real-world use since at least 2017,
           | when HEIF support was added to the built-in camera app in iOS
           | 11.
        
             | Dylan16807 wrote:
             | Also BPG is from 2014. 2018 is just the latest release.
        
             | dividuum wrote:
             | Thanks for correcting. Unfortunately I cannot edit my
             | comment now.
        
       | black3r wrote:
       | discussion about this from 2014, when it was brand new and HEIF
       | didn't exist yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8704629
        
         | mark-r wrote:
         | And here's another discussion from 2018:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17587684
         | 
         | Has the patent situation changed any since then? I wouldn't
         | expect so.
        
       | kstrauser wrote:
       | "Yes, yes, another image format by... oh, Fabrice Bellard.
       | Alright, tell me more."
        
         | AbacusAvenger wrote:
         | I swear, the guy must be a genius.
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | Fabrice Bellard is Mozart when most of us can only hope to be
         | Salieri.
        
         | eunikefra wrote:
         | Nothing wrong with it, but at first I thought BPG starts with
         | Bellard
        
         | Dylan16807 wrote:
         | Well yes but no. It's a container but not a compression method.
        
       | FrozenVoid wrote:
       | JPEG2000 looks better to me, these new "videoframe" formats are
       | blurry at higher compression levels and lose detail.
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | I suppose that's what happens with a format originally designed
         | for video --- things that wouldn't be noticeable in a split-
         | second frame but increase compression are valued, whereas in a
         | still image format, it's to be avoided.
        
         | aidenn0 wrote:
         | Indeed, I was looking at encoding black-and-white manga, and I
         | dialed in the quality knob based on "Is the text crisp" "Are
         | cross-hatching textures reasonably preserved" and "Lack of
         | visible artifacts around the edges."
         | 
         | I then compared the file sizes and JP2K won hands down. It also
         | had the advantage of already being supported in PDF, so I can
         | just bundle them up into a PDF for relatively[1] easy reading.
         | 
         | [edit]
         | 
         | Someone pointed me to "Squoosh" and AVIF (which was still very
         | experimental when I previously ran the tests; there was only a
         | single encoder I could find, it took forever and crashed a lot)
         | seems to win over JP2K; a quick estimate makes it look about
         | 30% smaller (My first test image showed up at almost 50%
         | smaller when I tuned it, but experience tells me that I need
         | some padding if I'm just going to point it at a large directory
         | tree).
         | 
         | 1: A few PDF readers have failed to properly render the JP2K
         | pages, but modern poppler and muPDF based readers both seem to
         | handle it fine.
        
       | btrettel wrote:
       | Where did Fabrice Bellard work before 2012? I'm interested in
       | seeing how he funded his work over time.
        
       | cs702 wrote:
       | A natural question I've pondered from time to time is whether
       | Fabrice Bellard is really a time traveler from a more advanced
       | civilization in the future, sent back in time to show us, mere
       | mortals, what humankind will be capable of in the future.
       | 
       | If this sounds far-fetched, consider that he has created not only
       | BPG, but FFMPEG, QEMU, LibBF, SoftFP, TinyEMU, a software
       | implementation of 4G/LTE, a PC emulator in Javascript, the TCC
       | compiler, TinyGL, LZEXE, a tiny program for computing the biggest
       | known prime number, and NNCP, a clever lossless data compression
       | system using deep neural networks (transformers, to be precise).
       | And that's just a partial list of his successful projects.
       | 
       | Any of these projects, on its own, would be considered a notable
       | achievement for an ordinary human being.
       | 
       | Source: https://bellard.org
        
         | mark-r wrote:
         | You forgot my favorite - JSLinux, Linux running _in your
         | browser_.
        
           | userbinator wrote:
           | The comment did mention PC emulator in JavaScript.
           | 
           | ...and he has also written a JS interpreter:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20411154
        
         | mdp2021 wrote:
         | This just proves how the following has happened without many
         | noticing:
         | 
         | Fabrice Bellard has released an Artificial Neural Networks
         | library, LibNC, "C Library for Tensor Manipulation" (
         | https://bellard.org/libnc/ ). Similar to PyTorch, but in sheer
         | C.
         | 
         | It's the library behind that data compressor mentioned: we do
         | not just have the compressor, he gave us the very AI tool. If
         | that does not make one ecstatic... Summary of features:
         | 
         | > _* C API ; * Small library, no external dependency, available
         | for Linux and Windows ; * Define-by-run automatic
         | differentiation engine (same idea as PyTorch) ; * High
         | performance for both CPU (x86) and GPU (CUDA support).
         | Optimized support of float32 and bfloat16 data types ; * CPU
         | backend optimized for inference and small batch sizes ; *
         | Optimized for online learning (i.e. simultaneous evaluation and
         | training) using LSTM or Transformer models ; * Fully
         | deterministic: return the same results at each run ; *
         | Reproducible results (CPU backend only): return the same
         | results regardless the CPU brand and OS_
        
         | CharlesW wrote:
         | I found his Wikipedia entry interesting as well:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard
        
         | eternityforest wrote:
         | We should have a programmer's hall of fame for people like
         | this!
        
           | api wrote:
           | There really aren't enough awards or halls of fame in our
           | field.
        
           | m-p-3 wrote:
           | The Hall of Fame should have his name.
        
         | nix23 wrote:
         | https://bellard.org/mersenne.html
         | 
         | Absolutely astonishing!! A bit like the Bobby Fisher of
         | programming ;)
        
       | TechBro8615 wrote:
       | Title needs a (2018)
        
       | WithinReason wrote:
       | Comparison of this with some more formats (BGP is basically
       | HEIF):
       | 
       | https://eclipseo.github.io/image-comparison-web
        
         | dopa42365 wrote:
         | There's also https://squoosh.app/ by google for comparison.
        
           | aidenn0 wrote:
           | No JPEG-2000 though?
        
       | edward wrote:
       | Can we stop using the Lena image please.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-03-17 23:01 UTC)