JPEG 2000 Codec: VERY PROMISING

[Jerry Jones]

ANALOG DEVICES, INC. is a company that's producing the chip that records JPEG 2000 video:

http://tinyurl.com/ebmhm

It's now being used in Grass Valley's INFINITY (pro) camcorder:

http://tinyurl.com/rkj8c

It'll be interesting to see if JPEG 2000 makes it into the consumer realm.

It's supposed to be better than H.264.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

Excellent article in BROADCAST ENGINEERING:

http://tinyurl.com/m8xj5

The article referenced by the preceding link mentions the prediction that JPEG 2000 will be used for consumer products.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

Been experimenting with the LEAD JPEG2K soft-codec for a few months now and find it promising indeed, but not enough to unseat H.264....yet. Getting it into firmware is a good start, though IMO wavelet codecs will best be used for distribution.

[Marshmallowman]

Matrox Imaging pro frame grabbers can output to jpeg 2000, if your write the software using their mil library to support their hardware that is.

And it great becasue its an open standard with no licenseing parasites

[Nowhere]

(offtopic a bit, given the forum)

Would be nice if JPEG2000 get it's way, finally, into digicams... (you know, the ones only for pictures)

[Dr Mordrid]

For birthday/XMAS snapshots perhaps, but I don't know any real photographer that would want it as a primary shooting format.

The problem is that with that degree of compression, be it conventional DCT or JPEG2000's wavelets, the resulting image is very lossy. Edit, crop or otherwise manipulate it and you lose a lot. IMO 'tis better to shoot in a less lossy format (RAW, lossless or low-loss JPG etc.) then save the final as JPEG2000.

This is also why I question its use in video cams.

That said it already is being used in security and other apps where long recording times is a premium feature.

[Jerry Jones]

Doc,

It's already being used in high end camcorders.

See these specifications:

http://www.thomsongrassvalley.com/products/infinity/camcorder/

"JPEG 2000 high-efficiency, scalable compression for SD (4:2:2, 10 bit) and HD (4:2:2, 10 bit)."

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

I know, but that still begs the issue of editability. I'm from Missouri on that one.

[Nowhere]

Not worse than standard JPEG in regard to res/qualities used in consumer digicams...ofen better.

[Dr Mordrid]

MJPEG can be run in lossless mode, meaning Huffman compression only and no DC transforms; ~10-12 MB/s for video. That or high bitrate modes where losses are minimal; ~8 MB/s. Absent transforms the quality is very high.

These are done with a relatively low computational overhead, meaning lightweight systems can be used for analog captures, editing etc.

JPEG2000's '"lossless" mode unfortunately has a large computational overhead, so no cigar. Even when used in a capable (read: FAST) system I've seen no quality difference vs. its conventional mode worth writing home about.

On the other hand there already are highly editable MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 profiles.

Unless/until it can offer better high quality modes for editing JPEG2000 is a solution looking for a problem. Just being license free isn't always enough.

The Wikipedia article states it well (emphasis mine);

The aim of JPEG 2000 is not only improved compression performance over JPEG but also adding (or improving) features such as scalability and editability. In fact, JPEG 2000's improvement in compression performance relative to the original JPEG standard is actually rather modest and should not ordinarily be the primary consideration for evaluating the design.

Dr. Mordrid

[Jerry Jones]

I just read another amazing article about GRASS VALLEY and their use of JPEG 2000 in their INFINITY camcorder.

http://tinyurl.com/nkfee

It seems the HUGE advantage to editors - when using JPEG 2000 - is that you can ACQUIRE at top quality.

Then you pull lower resolution files for editing, depending on your target audience.

GRASS VALLEY's editing systems can surely handle JPEG 2000... or at least can edit files derived from the JPEG 2000 source files... right???

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

By the way, GRASS VALLEY utilizes the REV PRO disks (35gb):

http://tinyurl.com/ntfjx

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

More detail on REV PRO disks:

http://tinyurl.com/ntfjx

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

I just read another amazing article about GRASS VALLEY and their use of JPEG 2000 in their INFINITY camcorder.

http://tinyurl.com/nkfee

It seems the HUGE advantage to editors - when using JPEG 2000 - is that you can ACQUIRE at top quality.

Then you pull lower resolution files for editing, depending on your target audience.

GRASS VALLEY's editing systems can surely handle JPEG 2000... or at least can edit files derived from the JPEG 2000 source files... right???

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

MSPro8's Proxy mode lets you do something very similar. If an HD cam is also capale of exporting 16:9 DV (several are) then those can be used as proxies for the HDV sources, with the edits only being applied at export. VASST's Gearshift for VEGAS can also enable using proxies.

[Nowhere]

Doc, I was offtopicing a bit - thinking loud about digicams for making still pictures (we have another forum for that...). In them JPEG2000 would be quite nice...not only because of quality improvement (as you've said, rather small, especially in resolutions/filesizes used) - it would mean support of software, finally. And WWW, IMHO, would find JPEG2000 rather usefull... (if only for the kind of artifacts it produces - I like them much more than JPEG artifacts)