This change improves the compression ratio.
Explanation:
In the original version of Crunch all the blocks are grouped into chunks of 2x2 blocks. Each chunk can have one of 8 different types. The type of the chunk determines which blocks inside the chunk share the same endpoints (for example, all the blocks inside the chunk share the same endpoints, or blocks in the right column share the same endpoints, or all the blocks have different endpoints, etc.). Encoding of endpoints equality is usually cheaper than encoding of duplicate endpoint indices. The used 8 chunk types do not cover all the possibilities, but they can be efficiently encoded using 0.75 bits per block (uncompressed).
The modified algorithm no longer uses the concept of chunks in the output file format and is based on an alternative approach. Endpoints for each block can be either copied from the left nearest block (reference to the left), copied from the upper nearest block (reference to the top), or decoded from the stream (reference to itself). Note that this is a superset of the original encoding, so all the images previously encoded with the original algorithm can be losslessly transcoded into the new format, but not vice versa. Even though the new endpoint equality encoding is more expensive (about 1.58 bits per block, uncompressed), it provides more flexibility for endpoint matching inside the former "chunks", and more importantly, it allows to inherit endpoints from outside the former "chunks" (which is not possible when using the original chunk encoding). The blocks are no longer grouped together and are encoded in the same order as they appear on the image.
Note:
This modification alters the output file format and makes it incompatible with the previous revisions.
Testing:
The modified algorithm has been tested on the Kodak test set using 64-bit build with default settings (running on Windows 10, i7-4790, 3.6GHz). All the decompressed test images are identical to the images being compressed and decompressed using original version of Crunch.
[Compressing Kodak set without mipmaps]
Original: 1582222 bytes / 28.903 sec
Modified: 1548791 bytes / 28.818 sec
Improvement: 2.11% (compression ratio) / 0.29% (compression time)
[Compressing Kodak set with mipmaps]
Original: 2065243 bytes / 36.978 sec
Modified: 2017245 bytes / 36.846 sec
Improvement: 2.32% (compression ratio) / 0.36% (compression time)
Alexander Suvorov
974fab40a5