multi HEIF

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Technically it would be possible, then there are other third party royalty free usable libraries available which would handle these formats.

Are there any such libraries unencumbered by patent issues? I noticed that the jpegtoheif hack requires downloading & using the Nokia HEIF reference implementation as part of the project. While that code is royalty free, it is (if I understand correctly) restricted to non-commercial use for evaluation, testing and academic research purposes; so Serif could not use it or anything like it even if it was compiled for the Mac OS.

 

19 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

BTW, MS offers too a free to use HEVC Video Extension which in turn is the foundation for the HEIF format.

Which requires Window 10 & apparently only works on certain hardware configurations. I am sure MS has the licensing issues worked out, just like Apple does, but neither one is providing OS level support for anything older than their most current OS, & I do not see that changing in the future.

[v_kyr]

Don't know if there are currently any specialized usable third party libraries available, but the train just started to roll here and thus we have to see what will be then available sooner or later. - I'm no lawyer, so can't say if that license has implicite usage restrictions. At least this part sounds to me ...

Quote

License Grant. Nokia Technologies Ltd (“Nokia”) hereby grants to you a non-sublicensable, perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this license) license, under its copyrights and Licensed Patents only to, use, run, modify (in a way that still complies with the Specification), and copy the Software within the Licensed Field. For the avoidance of doubt the Licensed Patents shall not include Codec Patents. Codec Patent licenses are neither granted, implied nor otherwise conveyed hereunder.

... as the code could probably be used in terms according to the specs.

28 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Which requires Window 10 & apparently only works on certain hardware configurations. I am sure MS has the licensing issues worked out, just like Apple does, but neither one is providing OS level support for anything older than their most current OS, & I do not see that changing in the future.

I think this is also due to the hardware encode support requirements for the codecs (minimum: iOS = A10 Fusion Chip, macOS = 6th Gen Intel Core CPU), though the software encode should work more or less with all Macs (overall similar requirements here for Windows). - Supporting only the latest OS level means overall less work and stress with backward compatibility for operating system vendors. - Further all that HEVC/HEIC stuff isn't that old at all, if I recall correctly the initial spec is from 2013 and had been reworked 2015, so that's still pretty young compared to other formats here.

 

[R C-R]

I am no lawyer either, but I have to wonder about the implications of the last two sentences of what you quoted ...

Quote

For the avoidance of doubt the Licensed Patents shall not include Codec Patents. Codec Patent licenses are neither granted, implied nor otherwise conveyed hereunder.

... and the other stuff about "Necessarily Infringed" and about "non-commercial purposes of evaluation, testing and academic research."

 

I assume a patent attorney could make sense of it all but I certainly can't. 

[v_kyr]

Recently saw this in a german Wikipedia article about the "High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)":

Quote

Patents and costs

Similar to its predecessor H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC, numerous companies have claims for H.265 / HEVC. [14] Use therefore requires the payment of patent fees to MPEG LA or other patent owners or administrators. The contents encoded with HEVC are royalty free. [15] The licenses cost up to sixteen times more than the predecessor H.264 and the costs are in contrast to its predecessor not limited to the top. Software patents are not considered valid in the European Union, so software solutions such as the VLC media player (at least in the opinion of the VideoLAN organization) do not require a license for HEVC. [17]

The patent pool HEVC Advance created by companies that do not want to be represented by the MPEG LA charges additional fees from the first device. In addition, anyone who makes sales with H.265 content should derive 0.5 percent of its revenues. [18]

• 14 Stephen Shankland: HEVC, a new weapon in codec wars, to appear in September, CNET, 22. August 2012
• 15 MPEG LA Announces License Terms for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265)        (apparently that PDF seems to be empty or ill behaving)
• 16 Christian Kirsch: [2], heise online, 12. August 2015
• 17 Stephen Shankland: VLC steps into next-gen video wars with VP9, HEVC support, CNET, 15. November 2013
• 18 Ferdinand Thommes: Neuer Patentpool fordert höhere Abgaben für H.265, Pro-Linux, 27. Juli 2015

And all that (the footnote references 14 - 18) doesn't sound this promising for establishing sort of a common open standard out of it!

[R C-R]

15 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

And all that (the footnote references 14 - 18) doesn't sound this promising for establishing sort of a common open standard out of it!

Unfortunately, 'open' & 'free' standards are two different things so the former does not necessarily guarantee the latter. 

 

However, as long as Apple & Microsoft deal with the patent/royalty issues, this should not be a problem for end users if the apps they use rely on the OS for HEVC/HEIF support ... which brings us back to which OS versions (& hardware configurations) support that. Since it seems highly unlikely that Apple or Microsoft will add that support to the older OS versions, it seems equally unlikely that Affinity, Adobe, the Pixelmator Team, or any other commercial software developer would try to build the needed support directly into their apps so they could handle HEVC/HEIF files when they are running on an older OS version.

[v_kyr]

If some third party software vendor would have to deal with paying license fees then here, due to just implementing read/write support for the image or video file format, then nobody will do it (especially not the small field players). And since the foundation is to have some already available codec implementation, it's still somehow unclear if HEIF as a container format can be treated differently here.

The following might give a good actual state sum up overview:

• Apple Endorses New Image Format, HEIF

Quote

...
Ozer:  What does this mean for sharing images snapped on your iPhone?

Gill: Until every application supports HEIF, you’ll have to convert your images to JPEG if you want to use them on a website or share with non-Apple computers and devices. The Settings app on iOS 11 will let you select whether you want your photos and videos stored in “High Efficiency” formats (HEIF and HEVC), or “Most Compatible” formats (JPEG and H.264).

At WWDC, Apple outlined its strategy for sharing HEIF photos with other devices: When you share photos via mail or apps, they will always be transcoded to JPEG, since the receiver is unknown and hence might not be able to support HEIF. When you use PTP sharing and AirDrop, the conversion will depend on a process of capability exchange with the receiving device: If the receiving device supports HEIF, no conversion will be performed. Otherwise, the HEIF image will be converted to JPEG.

Ozer: Is there a royalty on HEIF? If so, do we know what it is, or will it be another HEVC nightmare?

Gill: HEIF is a subset of HEVC, as it contains a single HEVC “keyframe” or “I frame”. These are the frames in a video codec that are encoded as a whole, and not predicted from other frames. Therefore, only the HEVC patents that cover still image encoding are relevant to HEIF, and not the patents that deal with frame predictions, motion estimation and compensation, temporal modes, etc.

The current patent pools don’t make a distinction between “still image” patents and the rest of the HEVC patents, so it’s not clear how HEIF can be licensed, other than paying the full HEVC royalties. It makes sense that if the format becomes popular, the patent pools would offer a reduced “HEIF-only” license fee.

That said, I can’t think of many companies that will only use HEIF and not HEVC, since today image and video workflows are tied closely together. Camera vendors such as Canon, Nikon and Sony all make cameras that shoot both still images and videos, software vendors such as Adobe create image and video software, and most online photo service such as Flickr, Snapfish, Shutterfly etc. support both photo and video sharing. In all of these examples, vendors who license HEVC for their video flow will get the HEIF license “for free”.
...

 

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

If some third party software vendor would have to deal with paying license fees then here, due to just implementing read/write support for the image or video file format, then nobody will do it (especially not the small field players).

That is why it seems very likely they will rely on the OS to implement read/write support instead of trying to do that themselves. That way, all the patent pool nightmares become Apple's & Microsoft's problems to deal with, not theirs.

[v_kyr]

Yes and they (third party vendors) can more safely just reuse what the OS vendor offers here. And in case of Apple, it seems their dev frameworks already do contain or offer the needed code infrastructure here, at least according to the WWDC 2017 sessions (Working with HEIF and HEVC ).

But since I'm on an older El Capitan can't check the newer with Xcode 9.2 beta 2 supplied SDKs etc., my Mac system (hardware + software) is sadly too old for that stuff!

 

[R C-R]

8 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

And in case of Apple, it seems their dev frameworks already do contain or offer the needed code infrastructure here, at least according to the WWDC 2017 sessions (Working with HEIF and HEVC ).

But (at least as I understand it) the necessary toolbox API's & frameworks for HEVC support are only available in macOS 10.13 & iOS 11, & some of it is dependent on the presence of an A10 processor and iOS 11.

 

Hopefully, all this will become clearer if/when the format becomes more popular.

[v_kyr]

The Introducing HEIF and HEVC (Presentation Slides PDF) does list the minimum configuration encode & decode support for iOS and MacOS, they distinguish there between 8-bit and 10-bit hardware or software encoding/decoding. - Software based decoding should be available on all iOS devices and Macs, software encoding on all Macs. Other than that those sessions so far just told:

- HEVC playback is supported everywhere on iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra
- Opt in to create HEVC content using capture and export APIs
- HEIF decode is supported everywhere on iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra
- Capture HEIC files using the new AVCapturePhoto interface

 

[R C-R]

So basically, support is limited to iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra?

[v_kyr]

Actually it seems so. - It's like with other changes/features too here, which are mostly always only available and supported on the latest newest hardware and OS versions.

[dutchshader]

Now there is software that supports heif on windows

https://www.zoner.com/en/heif-format

[walt.farrell]

44 minutes ago, dutchshader said:

Now there is software that supports heif on windows

https://www.zoner.com/en/heif-format

Yes, but it depends on support within Windows 10. Specifically, it requires Windows 10 version 1703 (Creators Update) or newer. And, if you have version 1709 (Fall Creators Update) then you must have specific hardware. So Zoner is most likely simply supporting additional capabilities on Windows 10, and like Apple, Microsoft is requiring specific hardware depending on the OS level you're running.

[HochdruckHummer]

IMHO HEIF is the best thing that could happen to digital pictures to save storage while keeping high picture quality. Please don't stand in that formats way. Please integrate HEIF support for reading and exporting. 

[S_affinityuser]

Hello all,

There has been a lot of discussion about how it is difficult to support HEIF on all platforms, and on all operating system versions. But we all recognise that HEIF is a great new format, with lots of saved storage space. It would be good if Affinity apps could just support it on the platforms where it is possible (e.g only on MacOS 10.13 and only on iPad). I’m sure everyone will understand that it isn’t possible to have it on every platform, and that it isn’t affinity’s fault.

I believe it is now possible to read HEIF, but exporting is just as important. Please implement this only on the platforms that support HEIF, PLEASE...

[R C-R]

20 hours ago, S_affinityuser said:

It would be good if Affinity apps could just support it on the platforms where it is possible (e.g only on MacOS 10.13 and only on iPad).

That would not be good for cross-platform compatibility or for compatibility with older OS versions, both of which are important features of the Affinity apps.

[S_affinityuser]

On 26/02/2018 at 6:38 AM, R C-R said:

That would not be good for cross-platform compatibility or for compatibility with older OS versions, both of which are important features of the Affinity apps.

I’m confused. I’m not sure where the compatibility issue is when exporting an .afphoto to a .heif? .afphoto file would still exist, and can be used on another hardware/operating system to export to .jpeg, .png etc. in the future...

Let the hardware decide what is possible or not possible. Otherwise software innovation cannot occur. I’d agree with you if the .afphoto file becomes unusable in older OS/different hardware - but this cannot be the case for a simple export...?

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, S_affinityuser said:

I’m confused. I’m not sure where the compatibility issue is when exporting an .afphoto to a .heif?

Most requests here for supporting HEIF include both reading and exporting the format.

[S_affinityuser]

On 28/02/2018 at 7:07 PM, R C-R said:

Most requests here for supporting HEIF include both reading and exporting the format.

Reading is now already possible on hardware that support it....

[joro_abv]

Android P announced with HEIF support too. This thing is getting popular now.

[Oval]

Other apps can import .heic since last year. Will we get this in 1.7, please?

[Oval]

Even Lr Classic can import and export HEIF now.

[Steps]

Windows 10 since build 1803 also got native HEIF support.

To sum it up HEIF is available to the latest versions of MacOS, Windows, iOS and Android.

I think there is enough reason that Affinity should fully support it on all platforms.

What is the reason not to do that? License costs?

[v_kyr]

42 minutes ago, Steps said:

Windows 10 since build 1803 also got native HEIF support.

Though AFAIK you have to explicitely download it, it's not installed as default. - See:

• HEIF Image Extensions