File com­pres­sion is a key tech­nol­o­gy for dig­i­ti­za­tion, as it can sus­tain­ably relieve the resources of network-based in­fra­struc­tures. The new image format AVIF aims to make data traffic more efficient and replace the widely used JPEG format in the long term. Compared to JPEG, AVIF com­press­es files more ef­fi­cient­ly and provides higher image quality. Major global cor­po­ra­tions in the digital industry are in­ter­est­ed in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new image format.

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What is AVIF?

A con­sor­tium of leading digital economy players was founded in 2015, tasked with the im­prove­ment of image file com­pres­sion. The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), whose members include Amazon, Cisco, Facebook, Google (including YouTube), Mozilla, Microsoft, Netflix, Intel, AMD, Tencent and Apple, focuses on data traffic online. Because images use up over half of the average bandwidth of a website, improved image com­pres­sion not only benefits the per­for­mance of in­di­vid­ual websites, but the overall per­for­mance of the web is optimized because smaller files ac­cel­er­ate data traffic, reduce energy con­sump­tion, and use less storage space.

For the new tech­nol­o­gy to become es­tab­lished as a standard, it should not incur any licensing fees and should be freely usable as an open source format. In March 2018, AOMedia published the spec­i­fi­ca­tion of a new free video codec. Since then, a final first version of AOMedia Video 1 (AV1 for short) has been of­fi­cial­ly launched.

The in­dus­tri­al con­sor­tium’s efforts have resulted not only in a license-free, open video codec for moving images, but also in the AV1 Image File Format (AVIF) for still images. AVIF combines the efficient com­pres­sion al­go­rithms of the AV1 video codec with the container tech­nol­o­gy of the HEIF format (High Ef­fi­cien­cy Image File), that has been used by Apple for some time now. The HEIF container format provides a uniform and stan­dard­ized basis for the exchange, storage (e.g., spec­i­fi­ca­tions for metadata) and trans­mis­sion of AV1-coded image content.

In that sense, there is some overlap between AVIF and HEIF. The image formats use different com­pres­sion methods for the coding of image data. Instead of AV1 com­pres­sion, the HEIF format pre­dom­i­nant­ly uses the HEVC (High Ef­fi­cien­cy Video Coding) video format. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly the video com­pres­sion standard H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is used.

Fact

The HEIF container tech­nol­o­gy used by AVIF is a special version of the basic media file format ISOBMFF. The ISO/IEC Base Media File Format (formally also called ISO/IEC 14496-12) specifies, for example, how metadata is created and stored and how in­di­vid­ual images and image sequences are processed (e.g., as nested image in­for­ma­tion for efficient streaming). The ISO standard provides a general and generally binding structure for mul­ti­me­dia and container files, for example, important pre­req­ui­sites for the in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty of an image format (the ability to work with other systems and tech­nolo­gies). ISOBMFF was defined in 2001 by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).

AVIF combines high quality com­pres­sion with func­tion­al variety that aims to meet the re­quire­ments for a con­tem­po­rary image format. Lossless and lossy com­pres­sion are both possible. In an alpha channel, as with other image and graphic formats ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion on trans­par­ent image areas are stored. Objects released by trans­paren­cy data are used in user in­ter­faces, collages, or company logos, for example.

In addition, AVIF supports extended color spaces (Wide Color Gamut, WCG) and functions such as grain­i­ness, color un­der­sam­pling, and HDR (High Dynamic Range). HDR tech­nol­o­gy is the basis for high-contrast images that enable uniform bright­ness and strong colors and contrasts. AVIF is ideal for HDR, as it can go beyond the usual 8-bit color depth of standard dynamic range images (SDR) (10-bit, 12-bit and higher color depths are possible). Not only HDR in­for­ma­tion, but also in­for­ma­tion on the color gamut can be shared via metadata. Animated sequences – similar to GIF an­i­ma­tions (Animated GIFs) – are also possible (support of multi-layer images for image elements and image sequences).

Overview of the ad­van­tages of AVIF

AVIF offers many ad­van­tages. Among its major ones are:

  • The AVIF format is supported by big players of the digital economy which drive its continued expansion.
  • AV1 and AVIF formats are open source codecs. There are no ad­di­tion­al costs for using AOMedia tech­nol­o­gy. This doesn’t just benefit the big players, but the entire open source community.
  • The fact that AVIF is free of charge is a major advantage over the HEIF format, which is currently still a preferred format for Apple.
  • The AVIF format meets the re­quire­ments of a modern image format by combining high image quality (es­pe­cial­ly for HDR images with greater color depth than 8 bits) and many functions (similar to HEIF, the format is superior to the JPEG format in this regard).
  • Compared to the es­tab­lished JPEG format, AVIF currently reduces the image size by an average 50 percent (similar to the com­pa­ra­bly efficient HEIF format). In addition, AVIF is more efficient than its com­peti­tor WebP, which has failed to establish itself.
  • Highly efficient AVIF com­pres­sion reduces the load times of websites, conserves network bandwidth, and reduces data streams for video-on-demand, cloud, and web space providers.
  • Many AVIF ad­van­tages extend beyond its online use. Image archives, pho­tog­ra­phers, printers, etc. can also benefit from the format’s de­vel­op­ment to receive higher res­o­lu­tion images that relieve available resources.
Image: AVIF image format compared
AVIF is highly efficient – similar to the HEIF format. Compared to JPEG com­pres­sion, AVIF reduces image size by an average 50 percent. A JPEG file would require twice the storage to achieve a similar quality. / Source: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/webp-avif-com­par­i­son.html and internal research

Current support for AVIF

Compared to the popular JPEG format, which has been around since the early 1990s, AVIF is a rel­a­tive­ly new file format for static images. The newcomer has yet to prove itself in practical tests. It is therefore difficult to reliably predict the future of the image format. However, due to its many ad­van­tages, the chances of a na­tion­wide im­ple­men­ta­tion are high.

Since the image format and video codec are still in de­vel­op­ment, further op­ti­miza­tions are likely, for example, in terms of playback quality and the reduction of file sizes. Pre­sum­ably, the demands on the hardware will be reduced through code op­ti­miza­tions. AVIF is just as demanding as HEIF in terms of encoding (transfer or con­ver­sion of an output file into AVIF format using an algorithm) and decoding (decoding of encoded file in­for­ma­tion, e.g., for op­er­a­tional image pro­cess­ing or image display on the screen).

The video-on-demand provider Netflix is an important pioneer in the ap­pli­ca­tion of the new tech­nol­o­gy. The streaming spe­cial­ist is currently testing the AVIF format in order, for example, to convert the platform’s user interface from SDR to HDR (e.g., to improve previews). A gradual in­tro­duc­tion of the format is planned, whereby it is used for a con­tin­u­ous­ly in­creas­ing number of content and platforms.

Browsers and operating systems are also getting used to the new tech­nol­o­gy. Opera (as of version 71) and Google Chrome (as of version 85) already support the format natively; Apple Safari does not yet support it. With Mozilla Firefox (as of version 77), manual con­fig­u­ra­tion is necessary. Once you set the flag image.AVIF.enabled in about:config (in the address bar of the browser) to true, Firefox can display in­di­vid­ual AVIF files. Microsoft Edge continues to struggle with the new image format. Because the current version (version 86) uses the Chromium engine by Google, AVIF support for the Windows 10 browser may only be a matter of time.

Windows 10 users can already work with the new image format and convert AVIF files in its Paint program. The cor­re­spond­ing free AV1 Video Extension is available for in­stal­la­tion from the Microsoft store. The paid Paint.NET app has already in­te­grat­ed an AVIF file type plug-in. Windows users can open AVIF files and even save image files in the format (e.g., for the website). The free image pro­cess­ing software GIMP supports the AVIF format as of version 2.10.22.

You can already integrate AVIF images into your website today. A temporary solution that in­te­grates AVIF into websites as an al­ter­na­tive to the standard JPEG requires only a bit of HTML code. The HTML tag <picture> is used to this end. It serves as a container that holds several image sources (<sources>) for one image (<img>). If the browser does not support images in WebP or AVIF format, the lowest image element is read out as a so-called fallback option. You can then specify a JPEG version of the image, which is supported by all common browsers:

<picture></picture>
	<source srcset="img/mypicture.AVIF" type="image/AVIF">
	<source srcset="img/mypicture.webp" type="image/webp">
	<img src="img/mypicture.jpg" alt="Description of picture">
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Summary – a promising successor of JPEG

AVIF has all the pre­req­ui­sites to establish itself suc­cess­ful­ly and define a new image standard online to replace JPEG. Once the remaining technical hurdles are resolved (e.g., slow and resource-guzzling coding processes), the mul­ti­func­tion­al image format and the AV1 video codec offer high quality. Finally, this is also an important step towards sus­tain­abil­i­ty, as AVIF conserves energy, and network and storage resources.

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