nokiatech

heif

C++2017–2021

nokiatech / heif

heif

High Efficiency Image File Format

Creative & Media

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6Distinct people

13Mentions

0Explicit recommenders

1.8KGitHub stars

REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

High Efficiency Image File Format

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

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Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year13 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2017-06-05 20:36:38 UTC to 2021-01-10 01:14:03 UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges

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Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Comments
2017	2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	2
2018	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	5	5
2019	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	2
2020	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	3	3
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1

What Hacker News says

13 sources

niftich·Jan 10, 2021

AVIF is a format that puts an AV1 bitstream into a HEIF container. You're thinking about what AOM said about AV1 [6], not AVIF; they should not (and in fact do not) make that claim for AVIF -- which builds on HEIF that isn't their work -- though you ought to judge the situation for yourself [7]. I am not a lawyer, and I realize there's a fine line between genuine concern and spreading FUD, but in the spring of 2019 I looked into the patent situation around the HEIF container itself [1] -- the container upon which AVIF builds -- and skimmed through the 5 US patents I found, which cover some techniques that can be used in the format. Most of them can probably be avoided for the purposes of an AVIF file, but patent US20160232939A1 [2] in my reading seems to be about in-container signalling to express relationships between a "static media ite

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m" and "one or more entities" that together "form a group", and "indicating, in the file, a grouping type for the group". The patent appears to be written in a way to allow this definition to encompass, say, a thumbnail and a bunch of frames thereafter, or, say a master image and a set of pictures derived from it, or alternate camera angles of the same thing. Some of these techniques sound like stuff we've seen before, but as is common in patents, the precise wording of claims is often key, and this is where patent lawyers come in. A thorough look of the AVIF specification [3] and the patents registered with the MPEG LA about this format [1] is likely wise before any widespread deployment that makes use of advanced features of the HEIF container; using it to hold exactly 1 'one-layer' still-image is probably fine. Additionally, in my reading [5], the HEIF reference software released by Nokia [4] includes a patent grant for non-commercial evaluation, testing and academic research only. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19874321 [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160232939A1/ [3] https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-avif/ [4] https://github.com/nokiatech/heif/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19874368 [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=AV1&oldid=9976507... [7] https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-avif/issues/2

In AVIF support enabled by default in Firefox 86

oefrha·Jun 23, 2020

Of course any format can be decoded in js or wasm, that’s not an advantage and doesn’t tell us anything. The most important thing for a format is probably vendor buy-in. Why would anyone choose this over HEIF, which also uses HEVC (optional), is backed by MPEG (like it or not, MPEG represents the industry), and has vendor buy-in from Apple and Google? (I know it’s not supported in the browsers, at least not yet, but you can also use a library.) Also, the latest news entry: > (Apr 21 2018) Release 0.9.8 is available Edit: Spoke too soon. “Official” HEIF JavaScript port measures ~500-600k gzipped, so 56k gzipped is an advantage. https://github.com/nokiatech/heif/tree/gh-pages/js

In Is WebP really better than JPEG?

Rebelgecko·May 21, 2020

IIRC, you have to use special flags when you compile from source to get HEIC support. And just because it's available doesn't mean you can legally use it. For example, the HEIF container's reference implementation is pretty explicit about not allowing commercial use [0]. The MPEG consortium lists over 7000 patents on their webpage for HEIC[1]. Making sure that you're bit infringing on those patents and/or working out a license deal with the patent cartel is a nontrivial amount of work. [0]: https://github.com/nokiatech/heif/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT [1]: https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/hevc-att1.pdf

In Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

niftich·Mar 9, 2020

I am not a lawyer, and I realize there's a fine line between genuine concern and speading FUD, but in the spring of 2019 I looked into the patent situation around the HEIF container itself [1] -- the container upon which AVIF builds -- and skimmed through the 5 US patents I found, which cover some techniques that can be used in the format. Most of them can probably be avoided for the purposes of an AVIF file, but patent US20160232939A1 [2] in my reading seems to be about in-container signalling to express relationships between a "static media item" and "one or more entities" that together "form a group", and "indicating, in the file, a grouping type for the group". The patent appears to be written in a way to allow this definition to encompass, say, a thumbnail and a bunch of frames thereafter, or, say a master image and a set of pictures

Read the rest

derived from it, or alternate camera angles of the same thing. Some of these techniques sound like stuff we've seen before, but as is common in patents, the precise wording of claims is often key, and this is where patent lawyers come in. A thorough look of the AVIF specification [3] and the patents registered with the MPEG LA about this format [1] is likely wise before any widespread deployment that makes use of advanced features of the HEIF container; using it to hold exactly 1 'one-layer' still-image is probably fine. Additionally, in my reading [5], the HEIF reference software released by Nokia [4] includes a patent grant for non-commercial evaluation, testing and academic research only. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19874321 [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160232939A1/ [3] https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-avif/ [4] https://github.com/nokiatech/heif/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19874368

In AVIF for Next-Generation Image Coding

niftich·May 10, 2019

Your statement that "Nokia has licensed their HEIF patents under royalty-free terms" is not true, because the license-in-question's [1] grant is "to, use, run, modify (in a way that still complies with the Specification), and copy the Software within the Licensed Field." Licensed Field is defined to be: "(...) the non-commercial purposes of evaluation, testing and academic research in each non-commercial case to use, run, modify (in a way that still complies with the Specification) and copy the Software to (a) generate, using one or more encoded pictures as inputs, a file complying with the Specification and including the one or more encoded pictures that were given as inputs; and/or (b) read a file complying with the Specification, resulting into one or more encoded pictures included in the file as outputs." It is pretty clear from this

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reading that their patent grant is for non-commercial evaluation, testing and academic research only. [1] https://github.com/nokiatech/heif/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT

In It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

clouddrover·May 10, 2019

Nokia has licensed their HEIF patents under royalty-free terms: https://github.com/nokiatech/heif/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT So that solves that problem. Which other patents is HEIF encumbered by?

In It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

clouddrover·Mar 29, 2018

No, the container format is independent of any video format patents. Nokia licenses their HEIF implementation under royalty-free terms: https://github.com/nokiatech/heif/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT

In AV1 Release

robert_foss·Mar 28, 2018

Nothing practical is precluding AV1 from being included, however: > HEIF is a visual media container format standardized by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) So corporate politics will surely prevent it from happening. That being said I did file a bug report: https://github.com/nokiatech/heif/issues/46

In AV1 Release

clouddrover·Mar 28, 2018

> All the more disappointing to see both Google and Microsoft embrace HEIF for images HEIF itself is a container format. It currently supports JPEG, H.264, and H.265 bitstreams: https://github.com/nokiatech/heif Nothing precludes AV1 from being contained in a HEIF file.

In AV1 Release

clouddrover·Jan 21, 2018

I think HEIF itself is royalty-free: https://github.com/nokiatech/heif It's the formats you use inside of HEIF (such as H.264 and especially H.265) that can require royalty-payments, although HEIF can also contain JPEG. Apple will probably just add AV1 support to HEIF. Apple joined the Alliance for Open Media and maybe AV1 based images will be their first AV1 application.

In Photo format from Google and Mozilla could leave JPEG in the dust

clouddrover·Jan 10, 2018

HEIF itself is an image container format that supports a number of different image formats (like HEVC, AVC, and JPEG): https://github.com/nokiatech/heif Apple could and probably will add AV1 support to their HEIF implementation in the future.

In The Fight for Patent-Unencumbered Media Codecs Is Nearly Won

clouddrover·Jul 25, 2017

I'm not certain, but I think HEIF itself is royalty-free. HEIF is just an image container format. The current implementation of HEIF supports JPEG, H.264, and H.265. So, yes, if you use H.264 or H.265 inside HEIF then you have all of those attendant patent licensing issues. But if you use JPEG inside HEIF or if someone implements support for VP8 or VP9 or eventually AV1 then I think you should be able to use HEIF royalty-free. The GitHub repository is at: https://github.com/nokiatech/heif The "License Grant" section of LICENSE.TXT sounds like it grants a royalty-free patent license to the HEIF format itself, exclusive of any codec patent licenses as you'd expect. So I think once VP9 or AV1 support is added HEIF may be a nice container format for images.

In Pik – a new lossy image format for the internet

TD-Linux·Jun 5, 2017

The license in the provided implementation seems to be a custom, non-commercial, non-OSI-approved license [1]. It also includes a patent grant, but excludes codec patents, making it even more useless (Nokia can't license other people's HEVC patents, of course). It's based on the LGPL-licensed libde265 library. [1] https://github.com/nokiatech/heif/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT

In HEIF – High Efficiency Image File Format