Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 30th Sep 2010 23:04 UTC
A few months ago, Google open sourced the VP8 video codec as part of the WebM video project, to create a truly Free/free unencumbered video format for the web as an answer to the non-Free/free patent-encumbered H264 format. Today, Google launched a new image format for the web, WebP, which aims to significantly reduce the file size of photos and images on the web.
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RE[5]: Comment by hornett
by Gusar on Fri 1st Oct 2010 21:35
in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by hornett"
Member since:2010-07-16
Dark Shikari doesn't care about "web video" per se, he's just interested in high quality.
And btw, x264 is *already* dual licensed and being sold. Lots of companies want it. And you know why? Because it's simply that good.
As another commenter said, if you don't trust DS results, do your own test. These conspiracy theories regarding DS here at osnews are quite silly to me.
(if that last sentence gets this comment downvoted, so be it. won't chance the fact that by constantly accusing DS of bias, you're doing nothing but actually showing *your* bias)
Oh, and regarding using a motion picture... here's what Dark himself said (yes, it's advisable to read all the comments to his blog post):
"That video is taken on 65mm film by a camera that costs more than most houses — it is higher quality than almost any image taken by any “photo camera”. I highly doubt your average Creative Commons images even have a quarter the detail that an Arriflex 765 can take."
Edited 2010-10-01 21:39 UTC
RE[6]: Comment by hornett
by Valhalla on Fri 1st Oct 2010 22:29
in reply to "RE[5]: Comment by hornett"
Member since:2006-01-24
Dark Shikari doesn't care about "web video" per se, he's just interested in high quality.
If h264 becomes the 'web standard' he and other x264 devs will stand to make more money from licencing x264 then they would otherwise. so be it. won't chance the fact that by constantly accusing DS of bias, you're doing nothing but actually showing *your* bias)
Again, he has money to make on the success/dominance of h264, I am always VERY sceptical when people with a monetary interest claim their technology is much better than the competition.
Oh, and regarding using a motion picture... here's what Dark himself said (yes, it's advisable to read all the comments to his blog post):
"That video is taken on 65mm film by a camera that costs more than most houses — it is higher quality than almost any image taken by any “photo camera”. I highly doubt your average Creative Commons images even have a quarter the detail that an Arriflex 765 can take."
"That video is taken on 65mm film by a camera that costs more than most houses — it is higher quality than almost any image taken by any “photo camera”. I highly doubt your average Creative Commons images even have a quarter the detail that an Arriflex 765 can take."
Well, A) that is his words B) it is ONE image, hardly makes for a serious study by any measurement. Also, I wonder what codec the video was encoded in, if it was in h264 then it would seem logical that in reencoding a still frame from it x264 would be favored since it uses the same compression technique as the source (note, I do not know what codec was used for the original video from which the frame was captured, I am just assuming it was h264, I may be dead wrong here). Also, why did he use jpgcrush on the jpg image? It seems to me that he wanted to be able to use a higher quality setting for the jpg while keeping it at the same file size as the webp file. I don't know exactly what jpgcrush does (other than optimizing the file size obviously) but I guess the added compression time from using that is why it's not normally part of standard jpeg compression and chances are the same techniques used in jpgcrush could be applied to a webp image to make it smaller while keeping the same quality. Again, this test smells tailored to me. Again, I will await a serious study using a wide range of non-lossy images.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
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.More News »
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2006-01-24
Competitor? The very same guy also wrote a VP8 decoder for the ffmpeg project from scratch.
He's an active contributor to both worlds. I don't see him competing with his own software.
If you don't trust him, feel free to repeat his tests and compare the results.
He is a competitor. He is pushing X264 as the web standard for video, and he and other x264 devs are trying to get permission to dual-licence x264 so that they can charge money for propriety projects that want to incorporate x264. The fact that he and some other developers (he wasn't alone) wrote a vp8 decoder for the ffmpeg project does not change this.
No, good old Dark Shikaru has a little too much personal interest in x264 vs webm/webp for my taste. Also, why the heck did he use a motion video frame as source? Smells like a tailored test methinks.
I'll look forward to totally independant comparisons using a wide range of raw images (so that it won't favour either encoder) which can then be compared quality-wise between jpg and webp when encoded to the (near as possible) same file size.
Like I said earlier though, even if webp would prove to be a better format in terms of size/quality than jpeg I seriously doubt it will gain any traction. Jpeg dominates the web by being supported everywhere and being 'good enough' in terms of quality/size. I believe a new format would have to be so much better (quality/size, no submarine patent threat, permissive licencing) that it's simply a no-brainer to do the switch from jpeg even with the pain of transition, and I really don't see that webp is or ever will be that. Time will tell.