For immediate release

May 9, 2006

Contact: Alex Saveliev
Title: Author
E-mail: alex@j2k-codec.com

J2K-Codec 1.9 Facilitates Shift to JPEG2000 to Expand Game Developer Opportunities

Reduce the Size of the Installation Package and Achieve Professional Image Quality in Games and Applications that Display Images

If you are involved in the development of games or any other program that displays images, the newest version of J2K-Codec will be a valuable addition to your software development kit. J2K-Codec is a software component that offers you the easiest way to add JPEG2000 support to application. Based on wavelet technology, JPEG2000 is a revolutionary image compression standard which is designed to replace the old JPEG format. Among its advantages is better image quality at the same size, lossless compression with no effect on image quality, good image quality even at very high compression ratios, transparency and translucency support.

“In games, graphics usually take a significant part of the overall program size, and JPEG2000 allows you to reduce this amount and achieve better image quality,” says Alex Saveliev, author of J2K-Codec. “The Internet has become the major distribution channel for small teams and independent software developers. Therefore keeping your installation package size to the minimum is very important because not everyone among your customers has a T1 connection, and Web traffic is not free. It's obvious that customers will be reluctant to download the game, if its installation package is, for example, over 10 Mb. However 7.0 Mb will do pretty well.”

The best way to add JPEG2000 support is provided by J2K-Codec which has been specifically designed with the game developer in mind. The component offers you the feature set needed for game development, including the frame component, the class system which is nicely wrapped up for the ease of use. With the special 1-Call shortcut functions and C++ wrapper classes, you no longer need to read numerous pages and figure out mysterious function parameters to start using it. J2K-Codec works 46 times faster than the free, open-source libraries such as JasPer or OpenJPEG and with the same speed as other commercial products. On top of all this is the price which is not unreasonably high as it is with most other commercial products, only $49.

“Initially, J2K-Codec was designed for home use when we wanted to overcome the functional limitations of JasPer and add more levels to our game,” says Mr. Saveliev. “In creating J2K-Codec, we put much emphasis on speed, ease of use and game development support. When this codec was successfully used in our own game, we decided to turn J2K-Codec into the commercial component to help game developers solve similar problems and compensate for the development expenses as well. Later on, we added ActiveX, VisualBasic, C# and Delphi support, many examples of how to use it, the installer, support for different data sources, including file, memory, exe-file resources. And now all these tools are available to all game developers.”

J2K-Codec Benefits at a Glance

Easy-to-use, reliable and inexpensive JPEG2000 decoder;

High speed which is much faster than in JasPer or OpenJPEG;

Optimized for game development;

Better image quality at the same file size;

25%-35% smaller file sizes at comparable image quality;

Good image quality even at very high compression ratios, over 80:1;

Lossless compression mode (identical to original image);

Transparency and translucency (alpha-channel) support;

Easy way to get 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc., of original image.

Pricing and Availability

J2K-Codec 1.9 runs under Windows 95/98/NT4.0/Me/2000/XP/2003. It is distributed royalty free at $49 (USD). The registered version includes Dynamic-Linked Library and ActiveX control, detailed and easy-to-read documentation, several samples in C, C++, C#, VisualBasic, VB.NET and Delphi and a collection of test images. Registered users are entitled to free updates and technical support. A fully functional demo version of J2K-Codec is available as a free download at http://j2k-codec.com/j2k_codec.zip.

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Product page link: http://j2k-codec.com
Download link: http://j2k-codec.com/j2k_codec.zip
E-mail: alex@j2k-codec.com