Comment by Nanopolygon
3 months ago
AVIF/AV1 is a codec that encodes both lossy and lossless files very slowly. JXL is significantly faster than AVIF. But AVIF provides better image quality than JXL even at lower settings. However, AV2 will require much more power and system resources for a small bandwidth gain.
> But AVIF provides better image quality than JXL even at lower settings.
I don't think that's strictly true.
The conventional reporting has been that JXL works better at regular web sizes, but AVIF starts to edge out at very low quality settings.
However, the quality per size between the two is so close that there are comparisons showing JXL winning even where AVIF is supposed to out perform JXL. (e.g. https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2023/jpegxl-vs-avif/)
Even at the point where AVIF should shine: when low bandwidth is important, JXL supports progressive decoding (AVIF is still trying to add this) so the user will see the images sooner with JXL rather than AVIF.
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There is one part where AVIF does beat JXL hands down, and that's animation (which makes sense considering AVIF comes from the modern AV1 video codec). However, any time you would want an animation in a file, you're better off just using a video codec anyway.
To be fair, those comparison image size aren't small enough. Had it been 30 - 50% of those tested size AVIF should have the advantage.
But then the question is should we even be presenting this level of quality. Or is it enough. I guess that is a different set of questions.