Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 23rd May 2010 09:41 UTC
Now that Google has opened up VP8, the big question is obviously how it'll hold up to H264. Of course, VP8 already wins by default because it's open source and royalty free, but that doesn't mean we should neglect the quality issue. Jan Ozer from StreamingMedia.com has put up an article comparing the two codecs, and concludes that the differences are negligible - in fact, only in some high-motion videos did H264 win out. As always, this is just one comparison and most certainly anything but conclusive. Update: Another comparison. I can't spot the difference, but then again, I'm no expert.
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RE[3]: H.264 vs VP8 comparison
by Lennie on Sun 23rd May 2010 15:22
in reply to "RE[2]: H.264 vs VP8 comparison"
Member since:2007-09-22
RE[4]: H.264 vs VP8 comparison
by Neolander on Sun 23rd May 2010 17:40
in reply to "RE[3]: H.264 vs VP8 comparison"
Member since:2010-03-08
I think you should compare gif to png. That's more inline with the usage pattern.
Yes, but as far as I know PNG did not exist at that time. GIF was a superior format on the 256-color screens in term of compression vs image quality, but JPEG was safer.
(True, PNG beats them all, I use this format for just about everything which doesn't require layers or animation ^^ But at the time, there was a compromise about compression quality vs licensing quality)
Edited 2010-05-23 17:45 UTC
RE[4]: H.264 vs VP8 comparison
by sorpigal on Mon 24th May 2010 11:13
in reply to "RE[3]: H.264 vs VP8 comparison"
Member since:2005-11-02
PNG was created when patent fears about GIF began to seem reasonable. It is not reasonable to compare PNG and GIF therefore because for many years there was no such option; the choices were JPEG and GIF, or to take a chance that the client would support some other format and have the bandwidth to download it.
PNG is superior to GIF in almost every way. It does not animate and under certain very specific scenarios has inferior compression. Other than those it is superior.
PNG is superior to JPEG in image quality, being lossless, but for photographic imagery compresses much less well.
Today GIF is used almost exclusively for its animations, since no other means of animation is natively supported by all browsers.
RE[3]: H.264 vs VP8 comparison
by miker on Mon 24th May 2010 17:34
in reply to "RE[2]: H.264 vs VP8 comparison"
Member since:2009-07-08
You could't be more wrong. Comparing GIF to JPEG is slightly more meaningful than comparing MP3 to DivX, they are two different formats intended for different purposes.
Gif is a lossless 8-bit (usually) color indexed format that is great for simple computer graphics and illustrations. JPEG is a lossly (with exceptions) 24-bit format that is great for photographs but terrible for illustrations.
RE[4]: H.264 vs VP8 comparison
by Neolander on Mon 24th May 2010 19:04
in reply to "RE[3]: H.264 vs VP8 comparison"
Member since:2010-03-08
You could't be more wrong. Comparing GIF to JPEG is slightly more meaningful than comparing MP3 to DivX, they are two different formats intended for different purposes.
Gif is a lossless 8-bit (usually) color indexed format that is great for simple computer graphics and illustrations. JPEG is a lossly (with exceptions) 24-bit format that is great for photographs but terrible for illustrations.
Gif is a lossless 8-bit (usually) color indexed format that is great for simple computer graphics and illustrations. JPEG is a lossly (with exceptions) 24-bit format that is great for photographs but terrible for illustrations.
I know what GIF is. However, let's go back to those times. When you were making an average personal website (that looked horrible), if you wanted to put a little graphic as a button, you had two choices :
-> Gif (smaller file size in most cases, pretty close to the original file, supports animation)
-> JPEG (big or ugly, no animation)
So GIF was the superior format for most little images on the web. JPEG is good for photographs, but it can also be used for illustrations, even though it does a terrible job. And it became used so in the time where Unisys went amok.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2010-03-08
Media quality is not a major issue on the internet, as long as the gap is small (it's the case here). Licensing quality is one.
Remember the Unisys episode : GIF was certainly superior to JPEG in its time about compression ratio vs quality...