[comp.graphics] JPEG

jtc@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca (J.T. Conklin) (11/15/90)

In article <velasco.658597478@beowulf> velasco@beowulf.ucsd.edu (Gabriel Velasco) writes:
>From: Kim_Orumchian@NeXT.COM
>>Images that are compressed and played back by a
>>NeXTdimension are not going to look as good as those produced frame by
>>frame on a dedicated video production system. 
>
>Why?  This is not a flame.  I am really wondering where the deficiency is.  Is
>it in the hardware?  The software?  The compression algorithm?  The original
>poster was talking about producing the sequences frame by frame.

>I am not at all familiar with NeXTdimension's JPEG compressed images.  What
>type of algorithm do they use?  Is it delta modulation?  Run length encoding?
>Send only changes from one frame to the next?  Selective color mapping?

In short, JPEG is a lossy compression algorithm.  That means that some
information is discarded when an image is encoded, and the reconstructed
image is different than the source image.  For a lot of images, "close"
is good enough, so lossy compression is a win.

The following is from Larry Press's "Compuvision or Teleputer"
article in the September '90 CACM which describes JPEG in a 
bit more detail.

	The JPEG compression algorithm runs in two steps, a discreet
	cosine transform on a sliding 8x8 pixel window followed by
	Huffman encoding.  The first stage discards some information,
	so reproductions are not exact.  Color information is sampled
	at a lower rate than lumanance information (since color changes
	are more gradual in natural images than lumanance changes), and
	high-frequency color information, which the human eye is 
	relatively insensitive, is discarded.

    --jtc

-- 
J.T. Conklin	UniFax Communications Inc.
		...!{uunet,ubc-cs}!van-bc!jtc, jtc@wimsey.bc.ca

ricks@EE.MsState.Edu (Rick Schumeyer) (11/16/90)

>In short, JPEG is a lossy compression algorithm.  That means that some
>information is discarded when an image is encoded, and the reconstructed
>image is different than the source image.  For a lot of images, "close"
>is good enough, so lossy compression is a win.

I believe there is an extension to the JPEG standard to allow lossless
compression.  I don't have the details in front of me, but I'm pretty
sure that DPCM is used after the DCT if lossless is desired.  



--
Rick Schumeyer
ricks@ee.msstate.edu
Drawer EE, Mississippi State, MS, 39762.	(601)325-3660

gregorya@cutmcvax.cutmcvax.cs.curtin.edu.au (Andrew Gregory KBS351) (04/24/91)

This is my first post, so here goes...

A friend recently told me about a new graphics compression techinque
called JPEG.  My questions are:
   1) What is it?
   2) Is there source or an algorithm for it?
   3) Is there a standard for it yet (like GIF)?

My friend said it could do a lot better than GIF compression.

Any information would be a great help.

Cheers.

pete@saturn.ucsc.edu (Peter Hughes) (05/24/91)

        I know this question has come up before, but it would be very useful
to get any info available.  Does anyone know what sort of public domain or
commercial JPEG compressors/decompressors exist for unix boxes?
	I will gladly post a summary.

	pete@saturn.ucsc.edu