Comment Huffman alternative (Score 1, Informative) 135
I worked as a part-time assistant in Data Structures and Algorithms course 10 years ago in Helsinki University of Technology.
JPEG is a lossy compression algorithm. It does not preserve the image. It creates these blocks of image data and then compresses them using Huffmann encoding. Same encoding is used in zip-files.
Dropbox's algorithm uses these same blocks JPEG algorithm produces (meaning, that the information is still lost in compression), but uses a clever way to compress them and ditches Huffmann encoding entirely.
So, the old process was:
1. Encode image into coefficients (lossy)
2. Encode coefficient blocks with Huffmann encoding
The new process is:
1. Encode image into coefficients (lossy)
2. Encode coefficient blocks with Lepton
Pfft.. too little, too late. JPEG is "good enough" and I don't want a huge clusterfuck of incompatibility problems with my libraries.
JPEG is a lossy compression algorithm. It does not preserve the image. It creates these blocks of image data and then compresses them using Huffmann encoding. Same encoding is used in zip-files.
Dropbox's algorithm uses these same blocks JPEG algorithm produces (meaning, that the information is still lost in compression), but uses a clever way to compress them and ditches Huffmann encoding entirely.
So, the old process was:
1. Encode image into coefficients (lossy)
2. Encode coefficient blocks with Huffmann encoding
The new process is:
1. Encode image into coefficients (lossy)
2. Encode coefficient blocks with Lepton
Pfft.. too little, too late. JPEG is "good enough" and I don't want a huge clusterfuck of incompatibility problems with my libraries.