Google and Mozilla create JPEG killer (Topic)

The Alliance for Open Media, which includes Mozilla, Google and others, announced a new graphics format that surpasses Apple's JPEG and HEIC formats. The new product, which is still at the testing stage and does not have its own name, is based on AV1 technology (video compression).

The developers noted that AV1 can make a graphic file 15% smaller than using HEIC, which is twice as efficient as JPEG.

The new format allows you to compress the picture without losing quality, keeping all the original pixels. Great for lettering and logos, as well as pictures with a lot of light and dark tones. In the future, full support for animated images may be implemented.

New format is free and does not require licenses

One of the advantages of AV1 technology is that it does not require licensing, which will allow the new format to quickly conquer the market. The growing popularity will also ensure the composition of the alliance, which includes many large Internet corporations, manufacturers of devices and videocontent:Arm, Intel, Nvidia, Hulu, Facebook, Google, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft and Mozilla.

Many members of the alliance have expressed the need to create a new format. The main emphasis is on working with video, but a format for storing photos has also been created. It is planned that, first of all, the new format will replace WebP , created by Google specialists to speed up the work of Internet sites. It is already actively used by many corporations, including Alibaba, Yahoo and eBay. However, in general, the format could not gain popularity, since only Google Chrome fully supports it.

What about HEIC?

The HEIC standard was announced in the summer of 2017 by Apple and is already used in the latest versions of macOS and iOS. The format is based on HEVC (video compression) technology supported by the MPEG consortium. If you compare images of the same quality in JPEG and HEIC formats, the last file will be half the size.

However, HEIC is also not a mass standard, in fact it is only used on Apple devices. If a user, for example, publishes such a photo on the web, it is automatically converted to JPEG format. The situation will not change in the near future, since HEIC is protected by a patent, if the manufacturer wants to use this format, he will have to purchase a license.

The Topic of Article: Google and Mozilla create JPEG killer.
Author: Jake Pinkman