Hi, I'm Gianni. I build video & image compression technology for a more beautiful Internet.
oavif is a new approach to target quality encoding in image compression, designed around smarter convergence strategies and quicker scoring to be as fast as possible. Why? Target quality encoding is one of the highest impact use cases for image compression. A target quality encoder framework aims to produce an image encoded at a particular quality set by the user according to some metric or visual…
The best open source video and image compression algorithms have improved significantly over the past year, and developer tools have miraculously kept up with this rapid pace. There has never been a better time for video. Purpose When you work on anything, I think it is worth thinking about why you are working on it aside from whether or not it provides some instant gratification. Thinking about…
Comparing video encoders involves using synthetic metrics to assess visual quality, helping generate data that can be visualized. Plotting encoder performance in different ways helps determine the best encoder for specific implementation needs. Why? Comparing video encoders isn't hard; in fact, it is usually quite easy. However, it is very often done incorrectly. That's a bit of an…
SVT-AV1-PSY, a community fork of the SVT-AV1 video encoder, was created to enhance perceptual quality and ease of use for AV1 encoding. I co-created and currently maintain the project. Our new goal is to merge our features into SVT-AV1. Why? If you aren't familiar with codecs or AV1, I'm not sure why you're on my site. Nevertheless, here's some background: AV1 is a modern video…
How tiny can very tiny banner images get? Why? My friend Haylin introduced me to 88x31 images and I completely fell in love with them. She told me that this weekend I should add some to my site, so I ended up making a couple of custom ones and peering with friends on this site's home page. Fun times. However, there was a catch. It bothered me that these images were all PNGs and ( shudders )…
Writing a fast and simple QOI encoder; illustrated with code examples, a spec breakdown, and step by step implementation instructions. Note: the code for this project on GitHub has changed, but all of my commentary here remains valid. Why? I started writing C as my first programming language in October. While I have other projects labelled under the programming tag on this site, a friend was the…
Comparing the efficacy of various lossless data compression algorithms on text data, comparing time to compress vs output size. The algorithms tested include ZIP, 7-zip, XZ, Brotli, Zstandard, and zpaq. Lossless Data Compression While I've covered image compression a decent amount in these sorts of blog posts, I wanted to dive into generic lossless data compression a bit more to see what this…
A brand new JPEG implementation from Google – called jpegli – supports the use of a perceptual colorspace to improve compression efficiency. How does it fare against other codecs, like WebP and AVIF? XYB JPEG This is going to be a shorter post because I have done this kind of visual quality evaluation three times now, so if you're not sure what you're reading, please look at my Image…
JPEG is old, but a new perceptually optimized encoder just became available from Google called jpegli. Like the mozjpeg encoder aimed to outperform older JPEG implementations, jpegli aims to push the format to its limits in terms of compression efficiency. Why? JPEG is a really neat codec. It has served us super well for a number of years. JPEG's ingeniously simple design that divides an…
This article compares Nvidia's NVENC encoder to Intel's QSV encoder for AV1, as well as for other codecs. Who will win? Please be aware that this page contains JPEG XL images. In unsupported browsers, images may not load properly. Why? Nobody really knows which hardware accelerated AV1 encoder is better right now. There are other resources available, but they don't use good metrics.…
A collection of the images I used for the blog post published on the same day as this one, lossily compressed with JPEG XL. All images are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The current debate surrounding AVIF versus JPEG XL needs some third-party quantitative data to support arguments on either side. I've compiled a dataset of 27 high-resolution photographic images to compare performance across them all at a wide fidelity range. Why? To start things off, I have been a fan of the AVIF image format since I heard about it, not long after I started learning about…
Let's compare browser performance across a variety of architectures, operating systems, and browsers. Which browser is the most performant? Why? The web browser Thorium claims to improve upon Chromium's (and by extension, Chrome's) browser performance significantly. I think Thorium's a really neat browser, & I commend their continued support for the fantastic JPEG XL codec when…
In this test, we will compare the latest Aviator release to the latest Handbrake release in terms of visual quality per bit. Note: rAV1ator isn't compared in this test because it is based on different underlying technologies that would be hard to compare directly to Aviator & Handbrake, especially for very short clips. Overview This blog post illustrates a comparison between Aviator 0.2.0 &…
Aviator aims to enable simple, accessible AV1 encoding for everyone with a GUI powered by a fast AV1 encoder. Why? First, you can install here . To enable simple, accessible AV1 encoding for the masses via Flathub. See my post about rAV1ator here for the rav1e + av1an based version of this utility. Aviator has used SVT-AV1 & FFmpeg for a while, but has been missing a couple key features including…
rAV1ator, a powerful AV1 encoding GUI, sees its 1.0 release. Edit (Feb 11, 2023): This version of Aviator is now called rAV1ator & is distributed outside of Flathub. Instructions to install are below, & the page has been edited to reflect the sitation. Edit 2 (Mar 8, 2024): rAV1ator is not to be confused with rAV1ator CLI , which is a different tool based on different underlying technologies for…