Microsoft set to take over the world!

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Microsoft set to take over the world!

Post by bradavon »

Okay not quite but they have decided in their infinite wisdom that we need yet ANOTHER graphic format.

It will have native support in Vista and will be compatible with XP but NO word on older Windows or crucially Apple MAC/Linux support.

The computer industry is littered with redundant formats. Anyone use Kodak's PCD format?

* JPEG - Excellent compression, excellent to very good quality (not suitable for professional camera work)
* TIF - Average compression, near perfect to excellent quality
* GIF - Average compression, lousy quality but smaller and the same quality as JPEG when dealing with vector images and images with the same/lower than 256 colours, animated too.

What market is WMP supposed to be for? Who asked for it? JPEG, TIF and GIF are all well over 20 years old (or at least 10 years).

WMA:

Microsoft thought we needed another Audio format so created WMA which has a virtually unanimous bad reputation (personally I like it when dealing with very low bit-rate files) + of course it was the start of DRM Music :shock:

WMV:

Microsoft also thought we needed another Video format so created WMV. There's nothing wrong with it per say but it cost to license the world uses DivX or Xvid and for official use QuickTime Movie already very much suffices.

This time however the world is so 95% set on JPEG I really can't see it taking off. Most are more than happy with the quality and file size too. Sure no doubt we'll be seeing Digital Cameras which support both JPEG and WMP in the future though, it's already happening with WMA but thanks to the Ipod not very much.

This will be another OGG (point proven if most here don't even know what it is). FYI it's an MP3 competitor which the makers say is "better" quality than MP3 I say bollocks. It's barely supported and sounds the same.

More info: http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/w ... ents/9691/
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Post by Kurgan »

As you've said, JPEG and TIF are the industry standards. The first allows decent quality at a non-professional usage and size level and the latter is used if you want to seriously work on a picture and don't mind the high file size.

For the record, I hate WMA and WMV. WMV looks terrible when compared to MPG or even AVI, and the only benefit seems to be its reduced file size. This is all well and good, but if the picture is so bad, why bother? WMV HD looks alright, but when the high-quality QuickTime already exists, unless it massively reduces file size without compromising picture quality (which it doesn't) what's the point?
Aside from the obvious 'We're Microsoft and we're going to stick our fingers into every pie!' answer, that it :)

Oh, and OGG was pretty useless. :D
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Post by bradavon »

For the record, I hate WMA and WMV
Both have been designed to be small first, quality second. Especially in the case of WMA you may hate it but it does beat MP3 at very low bit-rates (I use it on my 6Gb Mini MP3 Player, it's great for that).

But size before quality doesn't exactly bode well.
WMV looks terrible when compared to MPG or even AVI
Definitely agreed BUT have you checked out those HD WMV clips on the Microsoft site? They look awesome. It's not the format it's the suppliers who tend to use it for crappy streaming media.

When you say AVI presume you mean DivX and Xvid? AVI is different from all other video formats in it being just a container for whatever codec you wish to pump into it. For example AVI encoded with Indeo video would be awful.
only benefit seems to be its reduced file size.
Which doesn't mean much when I've never ever heard anyone complain of JPEGs file size. You can get a 4Gb SD card for £70 (expensive but in reach).
This is all well and good, but if the picture is so bad, why bother?
Yeah it's an odd test. They use really high compression so it looks awful but "claim" it can look better than JPEG at smaller file sizes. I don't buy it, like I said they say the same about OGG.
WMV HD looks alright, but when the high-quality QuickTime already exists
Does it really look that much better? I can believe you QuickTime has always been quality first (which is pretty much Apple's philosophy).

Agreed the QuickTime format is much better I hate that annoying buffering on WMV files which no other formats needs.
Oh, and OGG was pretty useless. Very Happy.
Check out the Audiophile forums people wet their pants over it. As far as I'm concerned only MP3 and PCM WAVE have any use (FLAC is even more useless).

WMA has made some inroads and so to has WMV a little but I can't see WMP taking off it has less need than both of those put together (WMA was partially invented to give us DRM :shock: ). Who really uses WMV though???
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Post by Kurgan »

Definitely agreed BUT have you checked out those HD WMV clips on the Microsoft site?
Nope. The only thing I've seen in WMV HD format is the trailer for Miami Vice, which I did think looked pretty damn good.
When you say AVI presume you mean DivX and Xvid?
Yup, pretty much :)
Does it really look that much better? I can believe you QuickTime has always been quality first (which is pretty much Apple's philosophy).
At top resolution (1080p) and with a display to match, QuickTime's HD look outstanding. WMV HD, as I said, looks pretty nifty, but I've not seen enough to do a proper comparison. I might have a look-see on Microsoft's site to check it out a little more.
Check out the Audiophile forums people wet their pants over it. As far as I'm concerned only MP3 and PCM WAVE have any use (FLAC is even more useless).
I'm with you on that. I used to have my MP3s at 128kb, but now re-ripped them at 192, as space (and this is my argument about the unnecessary compression of WMV) is no longer an issue with the capacity of hard drives and music players nowadays.
I keep seeing FLAC around various places and think, well, what's the point?
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Post by bradavon »

It's interesting you cite 192Kbps as CD quality as this has become the standard for CD quality whereas 128Kbps was considered CD quality a few years back.

The MP3 standard hasn't changed, neither has the CD standard, speaker and audio codec quality hasn't changed to any great degree so why the shift to 192Kbps?

Personally I can tell the difference between 128Kbps and 96Kbps MP3 (the rules aren't the same for WMA) easily and especially on a portable player. The bass is all lost with 96Kbps BUT 128Kbps and 192Kbps sound the same to me. Will one day we all consider 192Kbps bad quality and use 224Kbps? The point of MP3 is small file sizes.
I keep seeing FLAC around various places and think, well, what's the point?
It's lossless but compressed so smaller than WAVE but being compressed must means it's their is a quality drop and besides why worry about file size when you're dealing with perfect quality.

In short it's a format which doesn't know what it trying to achieve.
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Re: Microsoft set to take over the world!

Post by slasher13 »

bradavon wrote: This will be another OGG (point proven if most here don't even know what it is). FYI it's an MP3 competitor which the makers say is "better" quality than MP3 I say bollocks. It's barely supported and sounds the same.

More info: http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/w ... ents/9691/
Ooooo Bradavon, that is fighting talks. Especially to an indie developer writing a game. The one thing is that if you are developing a game and you use .mp3, you will have to pay a licence, however .ogg files are not patent, therefore no licenced needs to be paided. The quality is on par of .mp3 without any restriction. It is open source. Support for OGG files has even been in some RAD tools like Purebasic, Darkbasic, Blitz Basic. (Purebasic is excellent for Win32, Darkbasic is a bit crap, Blitz Basic, while supporting only direct x 7 is stable and fast)

BTW in the list, you forgot PNG which is IMO an excellent format, no lossless compression :)
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Post by Kurgan »

bradavon wrote:It's interesting you cite 192Kbps as CD quality as this has become the standard for CD quality whereas 128Kbps was considered CD quality a few years back.
The MP3 standard hasn't changed, neither has the CD standard, speaker and audio codec quality hasn't changed to any great degree so why the shift to 192Kbps?
Well, I didn't say it was CD quality, nor do I think it's going to be as good as CD. I always thought 320k was meant to be CD quality, but I could be wrong. I use 192k as it's the first bitrate (with the audio equipment/speakers I use) at which I can't really tell the difference between CD and MP3. I can tell the difference between 128 and 192, especially on acoustic and electronica, and so I went with the upgrade.
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Post by EvaUnit02 »

Lossless compression is moot. Most normal human can't get detect it. Usually it's only Rainman-like autistics. Stubborn nerds who are full of their own shit (eg Linux users) who like to imagine that they hear/see the difference don't count.
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Post by slasher13 »

EvaUnit02 wrote:Lossless compression is moot. Most normal human can't get detect it. Usually it's only Rainman-like autistics. Stubborn nerds who are full of their own shit (eg Linux users) who like to imagine that they hear/see the difference don't count.
To be honest, sometimes in images yes you are detect it. Specially if you save the quality of the image less than 75%. Around some scenes when saving jpeg you will see some blocking effect, . In the past I have seen this when doing some indie projects

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Post by bradavon »

Linux users are just jealous of Windows (and Apple Macs) user base.

I don't believe for a second they're virus, spyware or firewall proof. It's just no hacker bothers to attack them. The comptabile software is a joke too (in comparison). I'm sure it's good but as of Windows 2000 so is Windows.
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Post by Kurgan »

To be fair, the same thing about Linux being virus-proof can be said of Apple Macs. They probably aren't completely virus-proof, but that doesn't bother me as I'll take not having to deal with viruses now and deal with it later if and when it becomes an issue, provided (and this is the important point) I'm not hampered software-wise.
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Post by EvaUnit02 »

The only reason that Windows is a massive virus writer target is becuz they have the biggest install base (like 85-90% of the OS market). If Lunix or CrapOS had significantly larger install bases (i.e. comparable to Windows), then they'd be targetted as often too.
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Post by bradavon »

slasher13 wrote:To be honest, sometimes in images yes you are detect it. Specially if you save the quality of the image less than 75%. Around some scenes when saving jpeg you will see some blocking effect, . In the past I have seen this when doing some indie projects
Agreed when it comes to images but Eva was talking about audio. I'd never go below 75% but generally use 85%.
slasher13 wrote:Ooooo Bradavon, that is fighting talks. Especially to an indie developer writing a game. The one thing is that if you are developing a game and you use .mp3, you will have to pay a licence, however .ogg files are not patent, therefore no licenced needs to be paided.
I didn't realise you still needed to pay a licence but aren't there other license free formats? Besides everyone would have to install a codec for your OGG files to work.
Kurgan wrote:I always thought 320k was meant to be CD quality, but I could be wrong.
That really depends who you ask and where they source they information. Obvisously none of them are actual CD quality but perceived CD quality is possible.
Kurgan wrote:To be fair, the same thing about Linux being virus-proof can be said of Apple Macs. They probably aren't completely virus-proof
But there ARE Mac virus' so it's already an issue for you, just nowhere near as many. A decent virus checker shouldn't have any affect on performance.
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Post by romerojpg »

Well I only use Jpeg at the moment for my thousands of images, RAW is interesting as are Photoshop files, but really everyone uese Jpeg and thats about it. So really its not needed in a crowded market with many flops every year which dont catch on at all.

When your working with a few hundred MB big jpegs its hard to tell any loss at all.

I just sent a 30MB jpeg off to get printed as a poster, it looked ok, but up close wasnt too good as I dont take photos in RAW like I suposed to, I stick with Jpeg still as RAW eats memory. I would have thousands of GB on my hard drive if I was taking RAW images on my camera, Jpegs still take up tens of GB mind you :(
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Post by bradavon »

Photoshop is a propriety format that only it and a handful of programs can open, it offers nothing TIFF doesn't. It's best to be avoided. The same goes for Corel Photo-Paint's PCD format.

RAW is uncompressed right? And the advantage it's support natively by many digital cameras. If so fair enough.

Personally once I have the photos on my hard disk and I've done what I'm going to do with them I recompress them through Corel Photo-Paint which always reduces them by at last 1/3 without any noticeable quality loss. Digital Cameras never compress photos anywhere near enough.
slasher13 wrote:BTW in the list, you forgot PNG which is IMO an excellent format, no lossless compression :)
I didn't forget it I didn't include it. It's TIFF under a different name.

There isn't really a standard for professional image formats but TIFF seems to be the closest. It's been around one of the longest.
Jpegs still take up tens of GB mind you
Does it matter when hard disk prices are so cheap?
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Post by romerojpg »

Digital Cameras never compress photos anywhere near enough.
Crikey man! thats the wrong thing to say, they compress them FAR to much and ruin most images when you look closely. Compression is the bane of digital cameras and if you want perfect quality images you wont get them from many cameras as they over compress them, even my camera gets on my tits and they come out at about 3-4MB each picture in jpeg.


and yes HD prices are a joke at the moment, so cheap they may as well give them away :D
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Post by IronMonkey »

bradavon wrote:
slasher13 wrote:BTW in the list, you forgot PNG which is IMO an excellent format, no lossless compression :)
I didn't forget it I didn't include it. It's TIFF under a different name.
Eh? TIFF is a high-end uncompressed format. PNG is by definition a "portable network graphic". It combines the best aspects of GIF & JPEG, such as animation & millions of colours. It also features relatively tiny file size - something which TIFF does not...
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Post by romerojpg »

Tiff takes up gigantic amounts of memory they come to about 30MB per picture on my camera, which is wayyy to much if you dont have the memory to process them, my 512 MB Ram doesnt like big files and once you start work in Photoshop files can become a few hundred MB's in a matter of minutes and my just doesnt take it.
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Post by slasher13 »

bradavon wrote:
slasher13 wrote:Ooooo Bradavon, that is fighting talks. Especially to an indie developer writing a game. The one thing is that if you are developing a game and you use .mp3, you will have to pay a licence, however .ogg files are not patent, therefore no licenced needs to be paided.
I didn't realise you still needed to pay a licence but aren't there other license free formats? Besides everyone would have to install a codec for your OGG files to work.
Yes its really annoying, you still have to pay the licence. Actually you would not need to install the codec, if you are using C++ Library or RAD tools, then the code to actually play the ogg file is built within the exe file. Makes the exe a bit bigger, but I reckon it is worth it. Also you could just have the .dll part of the ogg with you .exe file.
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Post by bradavon »

romerojpg wrote:Crikey man! thats the wrong thing to say, they compress them FAR to much and ruin most images when you look closely.
Blame that on the memory card makers not the digital camera.
IronMonkey wrote:Eh? TIFF is a high-end uncompressed format. PNG is by definition a "portable network graphic". It combines the best aspects of GIF & JPEG, such as animation & millions of colours. It also features relatively tiny file size - something which TIFF does not...
Sorry my bad. I've only tried it a couple of times and the file size is nowhere near as good as JPEG.

Was it needed though? No. There's no problem using both JPEG and GIF. GIF looks awful for photos but wasn't designed for that purpose it does a perfectly good job for vector images and animated gifs.

TIFF doesn't need to have small file sizes as it's meant for professional photo editing, besides if you use LZW compression on TIFF images they shrink to a reasonable size.
romerojpg wrote:Tiff takes up gigantic amounts of memory they come to about 30MB per picture on my camera
Your camera can store TIFF images? Are you sure?

Huh on the one hand you're complaining about file size and at the same time you're saying I've got it all wrong for wanting more compression. You do like contradicting yourself don't you :wink:
romerojpg wrote:my 512 MB Ram doesnt like big files and once you start work in Photoshop files can become a few hundred MB's in a matter of minutes and my just doesnt take it.
This is a common problem when dealing with large photos. The same happens in Corel Photo-Paint (as powerful but much easier to use, Adobe Photoshop is overrated).
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Post by slasher13 »

bradavon wrote:Was it needed though? No. There's no problem using both JPEG and GIF. GIF looks awful for photos but wasn't designed for that purpose it does a perfectly good job for vector images and animated gifs.
Also remember GIF still has a patent (which runs out August of this year) and is only restricted to 256 colours. Like Bradavon says only useful for animated gif :D
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Post by bradavon »

And vector based images which are by nature under 256 characters. You'll find those are smaller file size than JPEG can achieve.

That's a patent to AOL right?
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Post by slasher13 »

Gif is patent by
IBM has also patented the LZW algorithm, but has never enforced this patent. According to the Free Software Foundation that patent will expire on August 11, 2006 in the United States.
As far as i see, GIF uses the lzw algorithm which IBM has a patent to. Not sure about vector based images
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