Firefox 3.5 Supporting Open Video Formats

[Esn]

You would think. But it wouldn't be the first and certainly won't be the last time that a proprietary format gained standardization over something more open. You really don't have to look much farther than .GIF to see how hard it is to move from a old proprietary standard to something more open like .PNG. There's no money is open standards, so they only get the voice of the community at large. Closed standards get well paid lawyers.

But PNG isn't a wholly better product than GIF. When I save an image as GIF, I usually get a smaller file size, sometimes dramatically. I haven't yet found a way to change the quality settings of a PNG as it is possible with GIF, at least not in my default image editing program (Paint.NET).

EDIT: Ah, it seems to be my problem... I'm using the last version of the program to support Win2000, which was from 2006 and hadn't yet added that utility for PNG.

Also, until fairly recently, PNG wasn't capable of animation.

 

[lulzfish]

Well, GIF uses lossy compression.
PNG is pixel-for-pixel / lossless compression. It's good for repeated image editing and high-quality stuff, but not for filesize.

JPEG is good for file size, but there's no good bitmap animation standard like GIF had, at least not a lossy one.

 

[grasshoppir]

8-bit png is smaller than a gif.
a gif is lossless.
gif is 8-bit

 

[Kramy]

But PNG isn't a wholly better product than GIF. When I save an image as GIF, I usually get a smaller file size, sometimes dramatically. I haven't yet found a way to change the quality settings of a PNG as it is possible with GIF, at least not in my default image editing program (Paint.NET).

EDIT: Ah, it seems to be my problem... I'm using the last version of the program to support Win2000, which was from 2006 and hadn't yet added that utility for PNG.

Also, until fairly recently, PNG wasn't capable of animation.

I'm using PSP5, which gives full control over PNG compression.

Sometimes people send me stuff that they saved and optimized in Photoshop. I laugh, because PSP5 usually compresses it another 20-80%. :lol: Love those old programs that do their job!

Well, GIF uses lossy compression.
PNG is pixel-for-pixel / lossless compression. It's good for repeated image editing and high-quality stuff, but not for filesize.

JPEG is good for file size, but there's no good bitmap animation standard like GIF had, at least not a lossy one.

GIF is lossless, but 8bit. (256 colour)

JPEG is lossy.

PNG is lossless, but only supports 8/24/32bit.


In my opinion, anything playing through the browser won't play well unless it's pretty tiny! I recall hearing that Theora is 100% CPU decoded.

 

[Ravnos]

Also, until fairly recently, PNG wasn't capable of animation.

I believe you were expected to use MNG for animated pictures, but nobody did that and just used gif anyway.

 

[Squidge]

But PNG isn't a wholly better product than GIF

Depends on what your using it for. GIF is a paletted (256 color) image format compared to PNG which supports paletted, RGB and RGBA. Also, despite the fact that all the relevent patents have expired for the compression technology used in GIF, some web hosts are still cautious about allowing it's use.

Yes, MNG was for PNG animated images, but hardly anyone used/uses it.

 

[PokeParadox]

But PNG isn't a wholly better product than GIF

Depends on what your using it for. GIF is a paletted (256 color) image format compared to PNG which supports paletted, RGB and RGBA. Also, despite the fact that all the relevent patents have expired for the compression technology used in GIF, some web hosts are still cautious about allowing it's use.

Yes, MNG was for PNG animated images, but hardly anyone used/uses it.

Just to point out that technically GIF isn't limited to 256 colours... http://phil.ipal.org/tc.html

 

[Jourdy288]

Yay! Wait, what does this have to do with Pandora?

I am sure you all know Firefox will be used on the pandora for web browsing so i started the thread to find out how this would (if any) benefit us all.

OK, thanks, although I didn't think it belonged where it was...

 

[dflemstr]

But PNG isn't a wholly better product than GIF. When I save an image as GIF, I usually get a smaller file size, sometimes dramatically. I haven't yet found a way to change the quality settings of a PNG as it is possible with GIF, at least not in my default image editing program (Paint.NET).

EDIT: Ah, it seems to be my problem... I'm using the last version of the program to support Win2000, which was from 2006 and hadn't yet added that utility for PNG.

Also, until fairly recently, PNG wasn't capable of animation.

I'm using PSP5, which gives full control over PNG compression.

Sometimes people send me stuff that they saved and optimized in Photoshop. I laugh, because PSP5 usually compresses it another 20-80%. :lol: Love those old programs that do their job!

optipng, available on all platforms, is the best tool for compressing png images. Really easy to use, too, and can be used in batch scripts. You can of course also do manual optimization if you happen to know how the PNG compression works; check out the Git logo for instance to see how small files can get (it uses antialiasing and soft shadows so it's got a big palette):

 

[maddis]

Looks like theres more discussion today over at theregister


Is Google spending $106.5m to open source a codec?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/06/google_vp6_open_source/

 

[Ghanji]

flash and mov aren't open formats.

Well, thats not true:
Adobe to Publish Flash File Format Specs
regards

 

[drclue]

Google is buying the On2 company that
created the VP3 CODEC.

OGG is based upon VP3 which On2 donated
for use with OGG.

On February 17th,2010 The stock holders of On2 will be
voting on Google's offer to
buy the company.

This would remove the major BS argument
about sub-marine patents in OGG
that proponents of h.264 have used in
arguing against an open standard.

Not only that, but VP3 is pretty
long in the tooth as the current version
of On2's CODEC is VP8

As an interesting side note, flash
uses On2's VP6 CODEC for their .flv files.

So in reading the tea leaves, it would sorta go like this.

• Google buys On2
• Google updates OGG to VP8 (better quality than h.264)
• Google open sources the CODEC
• The Internet remains based upon open standards

 

[quote]

KK, that's a big ass bump right thar.