6 ms·

Data Formats: 3D, Audio, Image

78 points by gbarletta 2y ago

surfingdino 2y ago
Handy resource. Thanks. Is see IFF is missing from that list. Used to be popular in the Amiga world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_File_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_File_Format
- thrdbndndn 2y ago
  Lots of popular formats are missing (JPEG, PNG) so I guess the author focuses more on ones that are not "too well-known"?
- steve1977 2y ago
  Well there are formats like AIFF and WAVE, see here: https://paulbourke.net/dataformats/audio/ https://paulbourke.net/dataformats/audio/ These are more or less direct descendants of IFF so to speak (WAVE being based on RIFF, which is essentially little-endian IFF), the page also mentions as much: "Audio IFF conforms to the "EA IFF 85" Standard for Interchange Format Files developed by Electronic Arts."
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    IFF was a popular image format at the time.
    - steve1977 2y ago
      Would that have been ILBM specifically? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILBM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILBM I wasn't using Amigas at that time, I had an Atari... I vaguely remember Targa files (.tga)
      - surfingdino 2y ago
        DeluxePaint used IFF. Here's a good writeup https://sandervanderburg.blogspot.com/2012/06/iff-file-format-experiments.html https://sandervanderburg.blogspot.com/2012/06/iff-file-forma...
danwills 2y ago
Good old Paul Bourke! Amazing how many interesting things he's covered on his site! Love that it's basically static html too, always nice and snappy!
- mandibeet 2y ago
  A treasure trove of information
dhx 2y ago
If this is of interest, Wikidata contains a huge amount of data on file formats. For example, [1] is a huge list of file formats and [2] is a list of documentation or source code (structs etc) describing file formats. Other data includes links to other file format information databses such as PRONOM, LOC and NARA, magic sequences to identify files of a particular format, and links to source code as parsers of file formats. Where most people would say "It's a JPEG file", the data within Wikidata breaks that down into the detail of different versions of JFIF, SPIFF, EXIF, etc that are all have different internal formats, even though the file extensions and media types are common. [1] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Informatics/Structures/File_formats/List https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Informati... [2] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Informatics/Structures/File_formats/List_of_documentation https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Informati...
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  I got my hopes up for understanding TIFF better, but alas I could not find any references I hadn't seen before. I have trouble generating anything but the most basic TIFF without getting into trouble with various consumers.
- mpeg 2y ago
  If you notice, a lot of the more esoteric 3D formats listed on wikidata link right back to the paulbourke.net site from this post, it's a small world!
gardaani 2y ago
Another good web site for media data formats is https://wiki.multimedia.cx https://wiki.multimedia.cx
kevthecoder 2y ago
Nice list. USD (Universal Scene Description) has been renamed to OpenUSD. Part of the motivation was to make it easier to search for. Not all the official docs have been updated yet though.
- mandibeet 2y ago
  A strategic move
- david_for_you 2y ago
  Given USD is in the list, I am a little bit surprised that alembic (.abc) isn't.
Emdubu 2y ago
No mention of DICOM which is the de facto medical image format. It also supports ECG.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
eastof 2y ago
This is awesome! I haven't found this detailed of a description of the vox format in one place anywhere. This will help me a ton on my hobby project for which I wrote my own vox library to write files.
pabs3 2y ago
Its down right now but the ArchiveTeam file formats wiki is pretty good too. http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/ http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/
gssa 2y ago
[flagged]

78 points by gbarletta 2y ago

Handy resource. Thanks. Is see IFF is missing from that list. Used to be popular in the Amiga world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_File_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_File_Format

thrdbndndn 2y ago
Lots of popular formats are missing (JPEG, PNG) so I guess the author focuses more on ones that are not "too well-known"?
steve1977 2y ago
Well there are formats like AIFF and WAVE, see here: https://paulbourke.net/dataformats/audio/ https://paulbourke.net/dataformats/audio/ These are more or less direct descendants of IFF so to speak (WAVE being based on RIFF, which is essentially little-endian IFF), the page also mentions as much: "Audio IFF conforms to the "EA IFF 85" Standard for Interchange Format Files developed by Electronic Arts."
- surfingdino 2y ago
  IFF was a popular image format at the time.
  - steve1977 2y ago
    Would that have been ILBM specifically? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILBM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILBM I wasn't using Amigas at that time, I had an Atari... I vaguely remember Targa files (.tga)
    - surfingdino 2y ago
      DeluxePaint used IFF. Here's a good writeup https://sandervanderburg.blogspot.com/2012/06/iff-file-format-experiments.html https://sandervanderburg.blogspot.com/2012/06/iff-file-forma...

danwills 2y ago

Good old Paul Bourke! Amazing how many interesting things he's covered on his site! Love that it's basically static html too, always nice and snappy!

mandibeet 2y ago
A treasure trove of information

dhx 2y ago

If this is of interest, Wikidata contains a huge amount of data on file formats. For example, [1] is a huge list of file formats and [2] is a list of documentation or source code (structs etc) describing file formats. Other data includes links to other file format information databses such as PRONOM, LOC and NARA, magic sequences to identify files of a particular format, and links to source code as parsers of file formats. Where most people would say "It's a JPEG file", the data within Wikidata breaks that down into the detail of different versions of JFIF, SPIFF, EXIF, etc that are all have different internal formats, even though the file extensions and media types are common. [1] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Informatics/Structures/File_formats/List https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Informati... [2] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Informatics/Structures/File_formats/List_of_documentation https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Informati...

actionfromafar 2y ago
I got my hopes up for understanding TIFF better, but alas I could not find any references I hadn't seen before. I have trouble generating anything but the most basic TIFF without getting into trouble with various consumers.
mpeg 2y ago
If you notice, a lot of the more esoteric 3D formats listed on wikidata link right back to the paulbourke.net site from this post, it's a small world!

gardaani 2y ago

Another good web site for media data formats is https://wiki.multimedia.cx https://wiki.multimedia.cx

kevthecoder 2y ago

Nice list. USD (Universal Scene Description) has been renamed to OpenUSD. Part of the motivation was to make it easier to search for. Not all the official docs have been updated yet though.

mandibeet 2y ago
A strategic move
david_for_you 2y ago
Given USD is in the list, I am a little bit surprised that alembic (.abc) isn't.

Emdubu 2y ago

No mention of DICOM which is the de facto medical image format. It also supports ECG.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

eastof 2y ago

This is awesome! I haven't found this detailed of a description of the vox format in one place anywhere. This will help me a ton on my hobby project for which I wrote my own vox library to write files.

pabs3 2y ago

Its down right now but the ArchiveTeam file formats wiki is pretty good too. http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/ http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/

gssa 2y ago

[flagged]