Does the GroupDocs Viewer support .HEIF files yet ? if not any idea when

bboyce · February 2, 2023, 10:52am

Hi,
We have an increasing number of people uploading images from their phones and these are .HEIF files. In the version of the Groupdocs viewer we are running I just get unsupported file format error. Are HEIF files supported? and if not are there plans to as its not just uiphones now, Sony and Fuji cameras are now taking photos in .heif as well so all photographic evidence is currently unable to be displayed in the viewer from any of these sources.

My understanding is that Heif is replacing jpg because of the smaller file size, great bit depth and higher quality.
Thanks for any advice on how to get this to work.
Thanks
Brian
BBoyce@alphatec.net

vladimir.litvinchik · February 2, 2023, 2:25pm

@bboyce

No plans at the moment. See this comment for more details.

bboyce · February 2, 2023, 2:38pm

OK thanks Vladimir for the quick response. Is that mainly because of licensing costs?

vladimir.litvinchik · February 2, 2023, 6:55pm

@bboyce

I believe that the issue is mostly in the licensing terms for commercial products. Also, last time we checked, there were two entities that provide a licensing program but neither entity holds all the patents for the technology. Possibly something has changed since that time. Let me check.

vladimir.litvinchik · February 3, 2023, 1:46pm

@bboyce

The license conditions were reinvestigated in January 2023 but still, we can’t add support for this format. As a workaround, you can use SkiaSharp or Magick.NET to convert HEIF to JPEG or PNG, formats which Viewer is familiar with.