Building a New Image Format

Re:Building a New Image Format by ZeroGravitas on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @07:40AM (#4813987)

I don't see what a new format would bring to this problem, in the end you only want to send one image to each visitor, so you probably want a server side program that can transform one big image into various smaller size images. You don't actually want to be shifting all the various sizes around as a bundle.

(And WebP's real killer feature is lossy-photo + alpha at the same time, that's where there's a real gap in the market at the moment, in between PNG and JPEG.)

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Re:Building a New Image Format by SeppoErviala on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @08:03AM (#4814057)

I'm enthusiastic about animation support. It's mind-boggling that we are still using an image format from 80s with crappy compression and limitation to 256 colors.

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Re:Building a New Image Format by objclxt on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @08:44AM (#4814156)

What about the <video> tag? I guess it's nice that WebP support animation as well, but that's what the video tag exists for. Shoe-horning in frame-by-frame animation in an image format when you can just use video (or the canvas, if you want to do something key frame based) seems like a bad idea to me.

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head where it's preferable is if you needed to do a video with an alpha channel. But this is more codec related than a problem with the concept itself.

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Re:Building a New Image Format by SeppoErviala on Thursday November 22, 2012 @04:03AM (#4818060)

Have you seen how people use gif animations? Video is completely different format than animated images in today's internet. If video formats were preferable, things would have already changed.

Animated images have several advantages:

-Almost all places that support images support also animated image

-Can be downloaded and reposted (as opposed to canvas)

-No worry about audio, there is no audio

-Seamless looping

-Auto play everywhere

-Variable frame rate

These features could be achieved in a video format, but how would you convince websites that support images to support video with these characteristics?

For example, I would never let people upload autoplaying, looping videos as their avatars or as part of their comment unless I could be 100% sure that there will be no audio. I would have to inspect the video for audio and I would need different handling for images and videos.

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Re:Building a New Image Format by acdha on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @09:08AM (#4814254)

Until Mozilla finally ships H.264 using <video> means you have to double-encode every single file, once using comparatively primitive tools, or use Flash as a fallback for Firefox and IE8. Until then, GIF files are much easier to work with.

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Re:Building a New Image Format by altrego99 on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @08:42AM (#4814152)

What's the benefit of a photo-compression with animation support, compared to actual movie formats (H.264)?

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Re:Building a New Image Format by SeppoErviala on Thursday November 22, 2012 @03:50AM (#4818043)

Can be used in places that only support images. Can be used in places that don't want audio. Variable frame rate. Auto play enabled by default. Designed to loop continuously.

Have you seen how people use gif animations?

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