Benchmarking Webp format (draft)

Bensuperpc February 16, 2025 [Software] #Features #Webp #Benchmarking #Avif #JPG #JPEG #PNG #JPGXL #JPEGXL #Format

Features (Series)
CAN bus under Linux (draft)
Benchmarking Webp format (draft)
Tutorial on FFMPEG (Draft)
A guide to SFF PCs (Draft)
RTL9210 Firmware and Tools
Mesa GPU drivers
Comparison of SSDs
Evolutions of x86 CPUs (draft)

Introduction

In this article, we will benchmark the Webp against other formats like Avif, JPG, JPEG, PNG, Avif, JPGXL, and JPEGXL.

Webp is a modern image format created by Google, it support lossy and lossless compression, we will benchmark the lossy and lossless compression against other formats.

Setup

Specification	Value
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 8c16t (3.4 GHz / 4.6 GHz)
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6
RAM	64GB DDR4 3200MHz
OS	Manjaro
Compiler	GCC 14.2.1
cwebp	1.5.0
avifenc	1.2.0
cjxl	0.11.1
ffmpeg	7.1.0
Docker Image	docker.io/bensuperpc/multimedia:1.0.0-archlinux-base-20250228

Lossless compression

The dataset for the lossless benchmark is:

~9900 screenshots from Minecraft (720p to 1440p, some 2160p).
~9600 screenshots from Fortnite, Battlefield, 7 Days to Die, and GTA V (1080p to 1440p, some 2160p).
~2100 screenshots from desktop applications (240p to 1440p).

The PNG to Webp lossless compression command is:

cwebp -quiet -metadata all -lossless -exact -z <Compression> -q <Compression> <Input> -o <Output>

The options are:

-quiet: Quiet mode.
-metadata all: Copy all metadata.
-lossless: Lossless compression.
-exact: Use exact mode, keep invisible pixels.
-z <Compression>: Compression level, from 0 to 9, 9 best compression.
-q <Compression>: Compression level, from 0 to 100, 100 best compression.
-mt: Use multi-threading (we don't use it for the benchmark, gnu parallel is used).
<Input>: Input PNG file.
<Output>: Output Webp file.

For PNG to Avif lossless compression:

avifenc --jobs 1 --lossless --speed <Compression> --codec <codec> <Input> --output <Output>

The options are:

--lossless: Lossless compression.
--speed <Compression>: Compression level, from 0 to 9, 9 best compression.
--jobs 1: Number of jobs.
--codec: Use the aom codec, only codec available for lossless compression (11-2024).
<Input>: Input PNG file.
<Output>: Output Avif file.

For PNG to JPGXL lossless compression:

cjxl --num_threads 1 --quiet --effort <Compression> --distance 0.0 --brotli_effort 11 <Input> <Output>

The options are:

--quiet: Quiet mode.
--num_threads 1: Number of threads.
--effort <Compression>: Compression level, from 0 to 9, 9 best compression.
--distance 0.0: The quality, 0.0 is "mathematically lossless".
--brotli_effort 11: Brotli compression level, 11 best compression.
<Input>: Input PNG file.
<Output>: Output JPGXL file.

Sources

cWebp