Are you aware that you have a new compression in your pocket?
The latest iOS on your smart phone and iPad already embeds a new compression inside the camera functionality. If you take pictures and then view them on the smart device itself you may not notice anything unusual. However, when you export these images to your computer you may notice a new file format with an ‘HEIC’ extension, not ‘JPEG’ as before.
The HEIC extension refers to a compression known as High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF). This is a component of the new High Efficiency Video Compression (HEVC) standard, popularly known in the CCTV industry as H.265.
The HEIF is a new image compression format which has been developed by the MPEG imaging experts in 2015. It is now used by Apple as a default image compression in their latest iOS operating system (starting from v.11). Google is planning to include the same in their latest Android OS.
The HEIC format refers to an Image compression that is a two-dimensional (Horizontal x Vertical pixels) compression of still images. The HEVC format refers to a video compression which deals with motion images (three-dimensions: Horizontal x Vertical x Time) and sound.
The HEIC file format can be decoded by newer operating systems, beginning with Mac OSX High Sierra (v.10.13), Mojave (v.10.14) and Windows 10 (v.1803 and later).
Since the new compression formats are very new some users may find it challenging to open and edit such photos or videos with their default (older) photo-editing programs on their computers…Click here to read full article.
