HEIF plug-in

[hesynergy]

Howdy!

When can we expect the HEIF plug-in?

http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/iphone/what-is-heif-3660408/

Thanks, and kind regards to our DEV and fellow users!

Chas

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

The developer is Irfan Skiljan, but he does not visit this user-to-user forum AFAIK. If several users show an interest in a Feature Request, I will often forward the suggestion to him, but I see no interest from anyone in this topic.

You can contact him directly to see what he thinks (Help, About IrfanView), and let us know what he says.

[Clutchplate]

The developer is Irfan Skiljan, but he does not visit this user-to-user forum AFAIK. If several users show an interest in a Feature Request, I will often forward the suggestion to him, but I see no interest from anyone in this topic.

You can contact him directly to see what he thinks (Help, About IrfanView), and let us know what he says.

Since iOS 11 Beta supports this format (and annoyingly actually defaults to it), I now have a number of photos I can't view. It'd be great to have this file format supported.

[chris@]

I guess we will see that soon, while MS is coming up with this image format as well:
Introducing High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) in Windows 10

[chris@]

I guess it's getting hot on this HEIC / HEVC topic. Just found another bit regarding Android P:
HDR VP9 Video, HEIF image compression, and Media APIs

Android P adds support for HEIF (heic) images encoding to the platform. HEIF still image samples are supported in the MediaMuxer and MediaExtractor classes HEIF improves compression to save on storage and network data. With platform support on Android P devices, it’s easy to send and utilize HEIF images from your backend server. Once you’ve made sure that your app is compatible with this data format for sharing and display, give HEIF a try as an image storage format in your app. You can do a jpeg-to-heic conversion using ImageDecoder or BitmapFactory to obtain a bitmap from jpeg, and you can use HeifWriter in the new Support Library alpha to write HEIF still images from YUV byte buffer, Surface, or Bitmap.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

@Chris, you seem to have a bee in your bonnet. Three posts only about this feature request, which has already been submitted to Irfan Skiljan and rejected for now at least.

HEIF uses patented stuff ... people do not think about that => maybe later

Maybe it will happen later.

[JSJB]

I understand there may be significant legal issues here, but just as an FYI, per Microsoft:

"Additionally, any application that uses WIC, WinRT Imaging APIs, or the XAML Image control can now add similar support for viewing single HEIF images." https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexp...or-skip-ahead/

Not sure how that changes things.

[chris@]

In case you want to add HEIC/HEIF support now to your windows, here is what you can have today for free:
Install HEIC support to your OS

[stanley21]

Hello there. Gimp is adding support for HEIF. Along with Windows, Android and Apple it looks like it's getting more and more popular. It would be really beneficial to have support directly in IrfanView

[Dick Holford]

My wife's iPhone now 'does' HEIC, so I would definitely like support for it. I am using Microsoft Photos and Copytrans (see above), but I'd much prefer to be able to use Irfanview for everything. I don't see many options out there to save a photo in heic format - is this more difficult technically, or does it run into copyright issues (as hinted at by Bhikkhu earlier)?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

As Irfan Skiljan said: "Maybe later."

From the release history, the average gap between releases is about 7 months, and 4.51 was released at the end of February 2018. I have not heard any rumours, but we can expect a new release sooner rather than later. No promises though, there have been gaps of up to 14 months between previous releases.

When it is released, we will see if he managed to find a way around the licensing issues. Remember that IrfanView is freeware for non-commercial use and charity use, so there are no funds to finance licensing fees if they are required.

[Jacal]

I would wait for Apple to make it an open source, free, completely documented standard. It would be a small step for humanity, but a big one for Apple. If good enough, it would last longer than the corporation.

[Ryusennin]

Apple has nothing to do with HEIF, it belongs to the MPEG group which asks developers for a licence fee (HEIF is based on HEVC/h265 which is definitely not open source). There will probably be a ffmpeg/x265 free alternative down the road, but that could take months and its legality will always be debatable.

Maybe one day the competing (and licence-free) AV1 codec will finally pick up some speed and gain popularity over h265 (remember that Apple recently joined the Alliance for Open Media).

[Jacal]

Thank you for the explanation.

[dabotinsky]

I think using WIC is the easiest way to support HEIF although we need to use the latest Windows 10.