targa or BMP

ffxdean · Post by **ffxdean** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 6:59 am

Well i have no idea where this goes but here it is anyways. Which is better quality and more flexible to use for animation?

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 7:25 am

Unless Targa is a lossy format (which I'm not sure about, having barely worked with that type of image), then it shouldn't matter, although I've never seen a program that has support for the things save for maybe The GIMP.

BMP in this sense (I'm assuming VirtualDub's image sequence save) is almost always uncompressed - no quality loss whatsoever. Just make sure that your Compression settings are on Uncompressed RGB because otherwise it will try to save the bitmaps with whatever video codec you have active and you won't be able to open them.

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 7:35 am

Here we go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truevision_TGA

At least according to that article, I can't see how using Targa or BMP would make much of a difference.

post-it · Post by **post-it** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:11 pm

TGA, TIFF, PNG = LossLess.

BMP, GIF, JPG = Lossy.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:26 pm

... and how can you make BMP lossy?

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 5:19 am

Scintilla wrote:... and how can you make BMP lossy?

The only way I can think of is to drop the color depth.

But you could do the same thing to TIFF and PNG which technically would also make them lossy too.

post-it · Post by **post-it** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 7:38 am

ffxdean wrote:Well i have no idea where this goes but here it is anyways. Which is better quality and more flexible to use for animation?

.. it took a while to find it .. TarGA

I refer to the studies done and then implemented by Stefan Eckart ( one of the primary First MPEG Encoding Programmers from the 1990's ) who defined the differences in ALL formats of images, "MPEG works best for 24 bit TrueColor images. Use Targa (Targa and .TGA are trademarks of Truevision Inc.) format files (usually identified by a .TGA suffix). Both top-down and bottom-up scan orders are supported." .. the subject being referred to was I, P, B, Intra.mat and Inter.mat compression for ISO 11172-2 encoding of Single Layer Mpeg I and other constructions of Mpeg Formats.

.. you .. you really don't want to know what was said about .BMP's T_T

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 11:32 am

@Post-it:

You know, I'm pretty sure the OP was talking about still images (using the word "animation" in the sense that the source is animé, not that s/he wants to store more than one frame per file).

If that's true, then things like P-frames, B-frames, and shoving the frames into MPEG containers are totally irrelevant.

You still haven't answered the question about how .BMP can be lossy (barring reduction of bit depth, which you can also do with Targa anyway), and if .BMP and Targa are both lossless, then what's the difference?

post-it · Post by **post-it** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 12:44 pm

@Scintilla:

.. the studies that were done on BMP and TGA were tested at 24bit color. what was revealed, and was understood by anyone who was on-line in 1993 including myself, is that TGA TIFF and PNG could not be incomplete ( corrupt ) and viewed. formats like GIF BMP and JPG's "could" be viewed when incomplete ( corrupt ) and they were then assessed "as being Lossy"
.. the studies were re-evaluated in 1999 and the same conclusions were reached! what is interesting to note from the 1999 study is one more test that confirmed -again- the Lossy state of BMP's were the "Lack of Bit-MaP's to retain their structures" when Edited more than three times ( Degradation )
[[ it was found that TGA's could retain their structures up to 14 edits before Degradation could be measured. ]] which I still say today must have had something to do with the Editors being used `more than the Formats being tested.

.. I bought those programs back then plus had PhotoWorks 3.0 and Paint Shop Pro 3.0 as well.
using Paint Shop Pro 3 .. BMP's and TGA's both failed after two edits.
using PhotoWorks 3.0 .. the studies were comfirmed.
using Portable Bitmap Format of Jef Poskanzers PBMPLUS package confirmed this too.
using Image Alchemy took quite a while to convert BMP's to TGA but could never convert the quality from TGA's to BMP's -- which I thought was rather silly!
using EagleImage .. the degradation is MORE than quite apparent T_T

hmmm . . I'm guessing that it all depends on "what Editor" your using as to the Amount of Degradation that will be noticeable or not .. and if your Image Editor is using the guideline's ( Patented Licenses ) for the different Formats .. and its designed structures ( as stated by those Patents ) properly! .. otherwise, ALL Conclusions are Invalid

Org Profile · Post by **LantisEscudo** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 1:47 pm

I'm going to need a link to these studies, post-it. Those conclusions seem really sketchy to me, especially given that definition of "lossy."

Plus, if PNG was involved, it can't have been from 1993, since PNG as a format didn't exist until 1996.

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targa or BMP

targa or BMP

Re: targa or BMP