Who is Fabrice Bellard?
The history of BPG is inseparable from its inventor. Fabrice Bellard is one of the most unusual figures in modern software history — a French programmer who, working alone and without any formal research structure, writes projects that shape entire industries.
Bellard's résumé is impressive. FFmpeg (2000) — the universal video codec library that today sits inside every smartphone, every browser, every streaming platform. QEMU (2003) — the most important open-source hardware emulator, which made cloud computing technically possible in the first place (Amazon EC2 is built on QEMU derivatives). TinyCC — a C compiler in 100 KB. Bellard is famous for such solo projects with industrial impact.
2014: Bellard releases BPG
In December 2014, Bellard introduced BPG (Better Portable Graphics). His announcement was characteristically sober: a new image format that delivers significantly smaller files than JPEG at comparable quality. The web community reacted with astonishment — Bellard's demo page showed side-by-side comparisons in which BPG files were often 30–50 % smaller than optimal JPEGs.
The technical foundation was elegant. BPG used the intraframe compression of HEVC (H.265, then the newest video codec, see our HEIF/HEIC history). Unlike WebP, which was based on the older VP8 (see WebP history), BPG reached for the most modern codec available and packed it into a simple container.
The JavaScript decoder trick
Bellard's ingenious move was a JavaScript decoder. Browsers did not support BPG natively; but Bellard shipped a decoder as an asm.js JavaScript library that could decode BPG files in any modern browser and display them in a canvas. Web developers did not have to install a plug-in or wait for a browser update — they could use BPG immediately.
The decoder was admittedly large (roughly 200 KB of JavaScript) and slower than a native decoder, but it worked everywhere. In 2014 this was one of the first serious demonstrations that modern codecs were deployable as JavaScript packages. WebP had never attempted this; AVIF later built on the very same concept.
The web enthusiasm of 2014–2015
For several months BPG was the tech topic of the moment. Hacker News and Reddit were full of discussions, web developers experimented, small self-hoster sites served BPG images. One particular punchline: BPG reached efficiency figures that WebP could not match because of its older codec heritage — 5–10 % smaller files than WebP at the same quality, often more.
Bellard also demonstrated animation in BPG, similar to GIF but with full HEVC compression. 10-bit depths and an alpha channel were possible. Bellard built a complete arsenal of modern image-format features — alone, in just a few months.
The patent problem
BPG's fate was sealed, however — and Bellard knew it. HEVC is patent-encumbered. Three different patent pools (MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, Velos Media) demand license fees for use of the codec. Anyone who wanted to build a BPG decoder into their browser software would have had to deal with all three pools.
For a solo developer like Bellard this was a theoretical problem; for Google, Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple it was a concrete economic risk. Apple could afford HEVC and later used it in HEIC, but for a cross-platform web format it was too expensive.
Bellard himself was clear about it: BPG would never become a web standard as long as the patent problem remained unsolved. He described it himself as a "proof-of-concept" — a demonstration of what was technically possible. Adoption was to come through vendor initiatives such as Apple's HEIC, which could solve the patent problems commercially.
BPG as a siren call to the industry
BPG's real influence lay not in its direct adoption, but as a signpost. Bellard had demonstrated that modern video codecs also make excellent image formats. Apple picked up the point in 2017 and brought HEIC (a HEIF container with the HEVC codec) to the iPhone. The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) picked up the point and created AVIF in 2019 (a HEIF container with the AV1 codec, see our AVIF history).
A detail worth noting: Bellard's BPG container was conceptually very similar to HEIF — both use ISO BMFF structures and package HEVC intraframes. In many respects BPG was an independent precursor of what was later standardized industrially as HEIC and AVIF.
BPG today: archive status
In 2026 BPG is a historical artifact. Bellard's official BPG page still exists (bpg.bellard.org), the tools are available, the JavaScript decoder works. But no browser supports BPG natively, no modern image-processing software outputs it, no one seriously serves BPG images on the web. Anyone who comes across a BPG image converts it to modern formats — JPG, WebP or AVIF.
Bellard himself has moved on. He later worked on LZ-based compression methods and on language models for extreme text compression. BPG remains an example of his method: a single individual can build, with clear concepts and robust engineering, a format that is technically competitive — and then fail on the non-technical factors (patents, politics, adoption).
What we learn from BPG
- Technical superiority is not enough. BPG was better than JPEG and WebP at the time of its appearance. It failed anyway.
- Patents are the invisible filter. Format standards often live or die on licensing questions, not on code quality.
- Solo developers can shape without dominating. Bellard's BPG influenced HEIC and AVIF without ever becoming a standard itself.
- Browser nativeness is indispensable. JavaScript decoders work technically, but they have no performance leverage and never become a mainstream default format.
When BPG is the right choice
Practically never. In 2026 BPG is a historical format with no current web application. The only relevant scenarios are: format migration of old BPG archives to modern formats, academic study of codec history, tech trivia. For current web delivery the right choice is AVIF (for maximum compression) or WebP (for maximum browser coverage). You will find an overview of modern format choice in our image format comparison.
Sources
Fabrice Bellard — BPG project page · ITU-T H.265 — HEVC specification · Wikipedia — Better Portable Graphics · Fabrice Bellard — personal website · Hacker News — BPG discussion 2014 · MPEG LA — HEVC Patent Portfolio License · Bellard, F., "BPG Image Format Specification", bellard.org 2014.