[theora] NHW Project development

Thu Dec 2 22:09:33 UTC 2021

Wow very impressive work!

Yes that's a lot of work, that's why I am looking for sponsoring on the
Internet (as the industry is not interested) to work full-time on NHW, like
for example adapt to any image size.NHW is for now a 512x512
proof-of-concept, but I find that it is a convincing prototype compared to
AV1/VVC, so maybe some people could be interested in seeing NHW developed a
little more?

Cheers,
Raphael

Le jeu. 2 déc. 2021 à 22:53, Andrey Filippov <andrey at elphel.com> a écrit :

> Raphael,
>
> Some 15 years ago I implemented limited functionality Theora in our
> cameras FPGA (it took me 6 month of hard labor), and then gave up - it is a
> very crowded space and it is difficult to compete with more advanced
> codecs. And for our other work we anyway need almost raw image data, so we
> are using JPEG-based JP4 format (https://community.elphel.com/jp4) that
> we originally developed for Google Books to compress raw Bayer mosaic
> images. Last few years we work with the thermal images that need 16 bit, so
> far uncompressed TIFF files. We need lossless 2:1 compression (current
> recording bandwidth is about half of the image data rate (4 channels of
> 640x512x60fps, 16 bits), but it will be something simple (prediction by 4
> neighbors), and no video. Nature of the thermal images is different from
> that of the conventional RGB - there is no scaling with exposure and
> environmental temperature causes shift of the pixel values, not scaling.
>
> We did not post the latest results yet, the last blog is here -
> https://blog.elphel.com/2021/07/calibration-of-the-lwir16-camera-prototype/
>
> Andrey
>
>
>
> ---- On Thu, 02 Dec 2021 14:34:25 -0700 *Raphael Canut
> <nhwcodec at gmail.com <nhwcodec at gmail.com>>* wrote ----
>
> Hi Andrey,
>
> Thank you for your answer.Actually, NHW is very low-power so I think it
> could be geared toward any hardware.But actually I don't have hardware
> skills, so NHW is not a real hardware project for now maybe? I agree with
> you that it is extremely difficult (for me) to build a community around
> NHW, I'm certainly very bad/underskilled at it.Any help is welcome!
>
> Cheers,
> Raphael
>
> Le jeu. 2 déc. 2021 à 21:13, Andrey Filippov <andrey at elphel.com> a écrit :
>
> Raphael,
>
> I do not believe it is possible to build a viable community around most
> hardware projects except super-universal based on very cheap/high-volume
> products like Pi or Arduino. We see the commercial benefits of Free
> Software/Open Hardware as it adds value to the hardware as users are ready
> to pay extra for the Freedom.
>
> Andrey
>
> ---- On Thu, 02 Dec 2021 12:59:34 -0700 *Raphael Canut
> <nhwcodec at gmail.com <nhwcodec at gmail.com>>* wrote ----
>
> Hello,
>
> I know there is no community around NHW, but I would have liked to know
> what you would like to see improved in the NHW codec.I know its results are
> not perfect for now compared to high-end AV1/VVC codecs for example, but
> could be ok giving its extremely fast speed.-However on high quality
> images, I notably like its good results because of its neatness.-
>
> Regarding things to improve, there is the problem of aliasing, I have
> started some quick experiments as I mainly find that aliasing appears in
> NHW along "low-contrast edges", but I have also seen some very impressive
> results of directional filters like the ones used in CDEF filter in AV1,
> because they estimate the "strong edge direction" and align all the pixels
> on that "strong edge direction" which could depixelize/remove aliasing.I
> have also started to implement a banding detector (with its main analysis
> on the 128x128 wavelet DC image) in order to remove banding, and it's only
> the beginning but I have promising results.I have also started to improve
> the entropy coding scheme of the wavelet DC part, for now I have a very
> fast processing that gives another 1KB saving on that part in average, but
> I have an error on some few images, I don't think I contradict the
> compression and information theory principles, I think it is more a corner
> case that I did not see for now and so that I don't handle, but it takes a
> lot of time... I'll also have to better handle the chroma channels and
> notably add chroma from luma technique.
>
> Some people also tell me that the priority now is to adapt NHW to any
> image size, but actually this is the boring task for me currently, and I am
> a little reluctant for now.
>
> All that to let you know that I really like more to work on my codec, and
> so I would like now to work full-time on it again, but there is always the
> big problem of the salary at the end of the month.As the industry doesn't
> show interest in NHW, I would like to ask sponsoring for this project on
> the Internet.But some people told me that I failed to create a community
> around NHW, and with just 27 followers on GitHub and 8 followers on Twitter
> (that's very weak), I can not hope more than 10dollars/per month of
> sponsoring/donation.
>
> Do you think this solution/sponsoring is possible? Or on the contrary, NHW
> will be just a spare time hobby, because there is nothing more to expect
> out of it?
>
> Any help/opinion is very welcome!
>
> Cheers,
> Raphael
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