[The E]

Nothing has been decided yet.

[mjn.mixael]

EFF container with JPG support? Yes? No?

[chief1983]

I don't particularly ever want to see jpeg used again...

[mjn.mixael]

 

What is your reasoning?

When I get home, I am going to post a side by side comparison of a screen from one of my anis....

EDIT: -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a link to a page on my server with 5 images. I rendered out this frame using JPG - hi quality, PNG, BMP, JPG - low quality and then saved out the frame from the current ANI. I then took each image and flattened the compression into a BMP file so that you couldn't cheat.

http://www.lunardigitalproductions.com/compare.php

Here are the file sizes of the rendered images...

JPG-HI - 114KB
PNG - 199KB
BMP - 575KB
JPG-LO - 30KB
ANI-FRAME - 195KB

I want you to tell me which ones are which... then tell me why JPG is a bad choice given that a video file format doesn't seem likely.

[Rga_Noris]

I have no idea which one is supposed to look best, but I would say the top one looks the best and the last one looks the worst.

Although the last one is clearly worse than the others, the other four are nearly identical. The only reason I picked the top is because the colors seem slightly more vibrant with better contrast.

Aside from the bottom one, all of the others seem to have negligible differences.

EDIT: With much staring, the second from the lowest is the second-to-worst. I see no difference between 02 and 03.

[qazwsx]

as a guess as to which formats used:
4. JPEG-LO, appears blocky.
5. ANI-FRAME, made obvious by the limited color pallet, results in banding, may look better with dithering, but that isn't the point of the exercise...
1. 2. 3. are indistinguishable to me, being unable to tell the difference between PNG and BMP is expected, as both are lossless formats. However, 1. appears slightly more vibrant, and due to being the different different one of three, I would expect this one to be JPEG-HI, however, this may just be because of what Rga_Noris has said.
hell, any* 24 bit (32bit? possible transparency suppourt?) image format would be better than what's being used at the moment :\

*hyperbole.

[Nuke]

What is your reasoning?

When I get home, I am going to post a side by side comparison of a screen from one of my anis....

EDIT: -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a link to a page on my server with 5 images. I rendered out this frame using JPG - hi quality, PNG, BMP, JPG - low quality and then saved out the frame from the current ANI. I then took each image and flattened the compression into a BMP file so that you couldn't cheat.

http://www.lunardigitalproductions.com/compare.php

Here are the file sizes of the rendered images...

JPG-HI - 114KB
PNG - 199KB
BMP - 575KB
JPG-LO - 30KB
ANI-FRAME - 195KB

I want you to tell me which ones are which... then tell me why JPG is a bad choice given that a video file format doesn't seem likely.

its obvious which one tha ani is. you can tell from the horrific banding. its also obvious where low quality jpeg is. as for the others, youd be hard pressed to find compression artifacts, it would require lots of squinting and even zooming in to fotoshop to be sure. mind you you are looking at these frames for 1/15 or 1/30th of a second during playback, so i think in the end you could do medium compression (by photoshop's scale) and the improvement over ani would be enough use it instead. also since the size of the frame is a fraction of an ani frame, you could double your framerate for an even better animation.

i admit my test should have been done with a 24 bit source image instead of an upsampled 8 bit, so that the compressor would get a full range to work with. but i wanted to show a quick and dirty sampling of what kind of compression you could get with various formats. also i kind of wanted to proove that dxt1 was the optimal choice, but when i put up the numbers for jpeg, i figured the jpeg format would be much better for this application.

[Galemp]

Mike, try the same thing with one of the tech CB anis we've been rendering. JPG hates wireframes and line drawings but is better at blended areas of color.

[mjn.mixael]

Galemp: I render out all my ANIs as JPG first already... Everything you've seen committed on SVN was at one point a JPG sequence.

I push for JPG because, believe it or not, professional video studios use it quite frequently. It is a great format for getting rid of picture information we don't need, especially the higher quality versions on the compression.

[pecenipicek]

its just dumb.


if your are doing any kind of video post-render editing that isnt just resizeing and similar stuff, you will hit the artefacts barrier horribly.



and if you're going for high quality, then doubly so.





I myself support MNG in this case.


My reccomendation? keep the MNG as-is. keep the eff as a standalone text file alongside the mng in which you can define various keyframing stuff, along with the good old type, fps and frame number...

[mjn.mixael]

its just dumb.

if your are doing any kind of video post-render editing that isnt just resizeing and similar stuff, you will hit the artefacts barrier horribly.

and if you're going for high quality, then doubly so.

 

In all my video production experience... nevermind.. it's not worth it...

[Nuke]

if mng works, it can support jpeg compression, so i would guess that the size would be about the same, it also gives you the option of lossless, and transparency. but il believe it when i see it.

using container-stored jpegs. post render editing would best be done by rendering to a lossless format, do your editing, then batch convert to jpeg for the final product. you never do editing to your lossy compressed images, its just bad practice. you produce your master set and then convert to your distribution format. its the same way i go about texturing.

[Fury]

You people are going backwards in the discussion it seems.

Since FSO already supports DDS, JPG, PNG, TGA, ANI, BMP, PCX, all those are irrelevant. Discussion about JPG is irrelevant because it's already supported. What should be discussed is addition of a container. MNG itself is a container like GIF and ANI, yet supports both PNG and JPG compression.

So unless you want to go with a container format that can hold all supported image file formats, you're better off with just getting MNG support done. Either solution leaves the choice of compression type to the modders, so the question is which one is easier to implement? I'd say MNG because specification already exists.

[mjn.mixael]

You people are going backwards in the discussion it seems.

Since FSO already supports DDS, JPG, PNG, TGA, ANI, BMP, PCX, all those are irrelevant. Discussion about JPG is irrelevant because it's already supported. What should be discussed is addition of a container. MNG itself is a container like GIF and ANI, yet supports both PNG and JPG compression.

So unless you want to go with a container format that can hold all supported image file formats, you're better off with just getting MNG support done. Either solution leaves the choice of compression type to the modders, so the question is which one is easier to implement? I'd say MNG because specification already exists.

Hmmm... seems you are right... Thanks.

[Fury]

Since someone's going to bring this up anyway, I should add that MNG does not address one of the issues a container format should. Namely effects and maps. Both require a container that can hold DDS. But I doubt this is of any real concern, because eventually FSO engine should advance beyond using such inefficient method for displaying animated effects and maps. And since both are loaded to RAM on mission load anyway, I doubt container for effects and maps have any practical advantages beyond cleaner effects and maps directories.

I'll leave explanation of animated effects and maps in modern games to those who know the technical implementation better.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Actually a container or an upgrade for .eff that would allow things like playing only certain frames, attaching a different -glow, -shine, -normal etc maps (right now if you want the same -glow on more then one effect the -glow has to be copied and loaded twice) would be welcome as well.  So it's not just about a clean directory (which I'm all for).   

[Nuke]

i would only worry about animated interface graphics for now. mainly because effects and the like should be handled with a material system proper.

[pecenipicek]

its just dumb.

if your are doing any kind of video post-render editing that isnt just resizeing and similar stuff, you will hit the artefacts barrier horribly.

and if you're going for high quality, then doubly so.

 

In all my video production experience... nevermind.. it's not worth it...

yes, because you are right by default now? you make relatively good anims. doesnt mean they are perfect, good enough or that you actually know the right and proper way how to do it. so drop the elitism already, and stop supporting a format that shouldnt EVER be used for anything animated or in-game.

[Rga_Noris]

Knock it off. He argued his point well by providing shots that most agree are all comparable in quality. You came up with "its just dumb." and very little else.

He isn't right by default, he's right by evidence.

[pecenipicek]

Knock it off. He argued his point well by providing shots that most agree are all comparable in quality. You came up with "its just dumb." and very little else.

He isn't right by default, he's right by evidence.

thank you for not reading my post.

if your are doing any kind of video post-render editing that isnt just resizeing and similar stuff, you will hit the artefacts barrier horribly.



and if you're going for high quality, then doubly so.