I don’t know what a .webp file is but I don’t like it. They’re like a filthy prank version of the image/gif you’re looking for. They make you jump through all these hoops to find the original versions of the files that you can actually do anything with.
But requirements for audio hasn’t changed that much, and overall it’s a much older and thus mature technology, that there isn’t much left to figure out. Consumer CD format with 16bit 44.1kHz has been around for 40 years, and you don’t need much better quality than that. So there isn’t much left to figure out.
But images and videos are different. 20 or 30 years ago you didn’t need to commonly send 20 MPix HDR photos and HD to 4k videos over the internet. Shoehorning formats that were made for 640x480 pictures and tiny silly clipart animations just doesn’t make sense, especially with all the development that’s been made in that time. Newer compression techniques can help, but you can only do so much.
Err…nothing in the file format spec restricts jpg to a particular size. I would actually argue that this undermines your point – bandwidth was incredibly limited in the 90s compared to what I see today.
Simple example: a 640x480 image is (at least) 307,200 bytes = 0.3M, so it takes at least 5.4 seconds to transmit over a 56k modem. A 4k image, same color depth, is 16000000 bytes = 15M. On a gigabit connection (what I have), that takes about 0.02 seconds.
I was taking more about quality than size in this particular comparison. In 1993 you were happy to squeeze through an image in any quality almost.
It goes hand in hand tho.
If you can compress a 50 MPix, 16-bit, high dynamic range image from a modern high-end DSLR to a reasonable size with a better algorithm and format, you’d also have an easier time squeezing a crappy 640x480 pic to an even smaller size. We just couldn’t do either so well 30 years ago.
Heh, in 1993 I wasn’t online at all. '97 or '98 is more like it in my case.
That’s a fair point, too, better image quality for a given size. I was more focused on raw bandwidth demands.