
AVIF for Next-Generation Image Coding - el_duderino
https://netflixtechblog.com/avif-for-next-generation-image-coding-b1d75675fe4
======
webmobdev
It's a cool coincidence that this came up just when I was considering how to
create more space in my disk.

I have around 20GB of image files from my old graphic designing projects. It's
20 GB now because 2-3 years back I had gone on a similar "spring cleaning" of
my drive and converted a lot of image files to JPEG2000 format (mostly
lossless). At first I tried to do the conversion with MacOS Preview, but it
kept hanging / crashing as it couldn't handle some of the large files.

Luckily, I came across the free J2K Photoshop plug-in -
[https://www.fnordware.com/j2k/](https://www.fnordware.com/j2k/) \- that
offered more features than Preview's JPEG2000 export did, and was also faster.

This time, I am debating whether to convert all these JPEG2000 image files to
HEIF. I experimented in converting a 166 MB TIFF file using Preview. The
JPEG2000 (lossless) output was 16.9 MB. The HEIF (lossless) output was 8.9 MB!

But Preview still seems to be buggy with large files, and it got hung in
converting a huge image file (around a GB). (I tried GIMP but it crashes too
while converting huge files). Another issue I noticed with Preview conversion
to HEIF is that it doesn't use the original profile (if any) embedded in the
image file, and converts it.

So I am looking for a good HEIF converter that also retains profiles.

Ofcourse, I am still debating whether it would be wise to convert to HEIF.

Choosing and converting to JPEG2000 was an easier choice as it is a standard
and has been around for a long time. And there are softwares that still
support it.

After all, 10 years down the lane, you don't want to be stuck with a file
format that you can't even open! Between HEIF and AVIF wonder which one will
outlast the other?

~~~
floatingatoll
heif_enc (or heif-enc if Homebrew) from libheif offers lossless and maintains
profiles. I saw the same 50% reduction versus TIFF.

ImageMagick convert still damaged color profiles (refuses to write them,
afaict?), as of a month ago.

~~~
webmobdev
I noticed a strange issue with GIMP libheif plug-in - some of the converted
images look a little washed out (any such noticeable colour change is
ofcourse, unacceptable). But macOS Preview converts them perfectly without any
such colour difference. I suspect libheif to be buggy.

~~~
floatingatoll
I only had success with the command-line utility. Attempting to use libheif
embedded in other tools did not succeed. I assume this is because the other
tools implemented libheif before it supported ICC and have not kept up with
the times.

------
theandrewbailey
I've been playing around with AVIF for a few months, and I've been impressed
that it's about twice as efficient as JPEG. I can't wait to see how JPEG XL
compares to it, and to have web browsers support one (or both).

