Developer comes up with bpg compression format as ‘jpeg replacement’

Developer Fabrice Bellard, responsible for the ffmpeg library, among other things, has built a new image compression format based on the HEVC video codec. The bpg format could make images up to half the size of the jpeg format.

Bellard’s bpg format uses parts of the hevc encoder in ffmpeg. This allows images of a comparable quality to be made half as small as when using the jpeg standard. The bpg format, or better portable graphics, offers the same color formats as jpeg and also offers support for an alpha channel. Also rgb, ycgco and cmyk color models are supported and color depths between 8 and 14 bit are possible.

Using a javascript decoder, existing browsers can decode images compressed with bpg. Lossless compression is also possible and metadata such as exif and icc profiles can be embedded in the bpg container. According to Bellard, bpg is even slightly faster than images made more compact with the HEVC codec, because the header is smaller. The source code of the new compression format is freely available for Windows and Linux.

It is not yet clear whether the format will be widely supported. Google introduced the webp format in 2010, but its use on the web in particular is still lagging behind. Other formats that compress better on average than jpeg are jpeg 2000 and re-jpeg.