HEVC, HEIF & third party apps?

[one more]

With Apple introducing these new photo/video formats, how is it working or will work with third party services using iOS photos, such as Google Photos, Dropbox, etc?

 

[LongZheng]

With Apple introducing these new photo/video formats, how is it working or will work with third party services using iOS photos, such as Google Photos, Dropbox, etc?

It wouldn't be hard for third-party apps to support HEVC and HEIF since iOS 11 APIs would provide the decoder but third-party apps can only release updates that support HEVC/HEIF when iOS 11 is generally available since they can't submit app updates that use the new APIs until iOS 11 is publically released.

 

[one more]

It wouldn't be hard for third-party apps to support HEVC and HEIF since iOS 11 APIs would provide the decoder but third-party apps can only release updates that support HEVC/HEIF when iOS 11 is generally available since they can't submit app updates that use the new APIs until iOS 11 is publically released.

Ok, so how is this going to affect the image/video quality then, going through first being compressed into HEVC/HEIF and then decoded and recompressed into a JPEG again? Or are these formats meant to be universally compatible? What will happen, for example, if I take a photo in iOS 11 and then WhatsApp it to somebody with an Android device or email it to a PC user?

 

[LongZheng]

Ok, so how is this going to affect the image/video quality then, going through first being compressed into HEVC/HEIF and then decoded and recompressed into a JPEG again? Or are these formats meant to be universally compatible? What will happen, for example, if I take a photo in iOS 11 and then WhatsApp it to somebody with an Android device or email it to a PC user?

Apps that "capture" images today do not manipulate a compressed file but rather a raw bitmap stream. Only when it is saved to either the camera roll or some sort of app storage, then it is compressed into a lossy (or lossless) format. Since most apps store images in the camera roll, then it'll naturally use what the system setting for storing images is.

Most apps that display/manipulate images will load the images in whatever format they're stored in and then decoded into a bitmap stream. They can either use the camera roll API which handles this all automatically, or use the APIs directly to decode specific files which will need to be updated to use the new HEIF APIs to decode HEIF files.

Taking your WhatsApp example, my guess is that WhatsApp won't have to do anything special because they use the camera roll API so it'll automatically load either photos stored as JPEG or HEIF in your camera roll. By the time it's in the app, it's just a generic bitmap. And it's my understanding WhatsApp sends heavily compressed JPEGs in messages for maximum compatibility between all devices that might read the message.

tl;dr It will depend entirely on how the app and/or the services are designed.

 

[one more]

So today, with iOS 11 still in beta, if a beta tester takes a picture & sends it to an iOS 10 or Android user, will they be able to see/open it?

 

[LongZheng]

So today, with iOS 11 still in beta, if a beta tester takes a picture & sends it to an iOS 10 or Android user, will they be able to see/open it?

Yes because

• most apps use the native camera roll API so they can open any image in the camera roll
• most apps send images as JPEGs across the internet to other devices/users/services

 

[one more]

Yes because

• most apps use the native camera roll API so they can open any image in the camera roll
• most apps send images as JPEGs across the internet to other devices/users/services

Thank you, great!

 

[theshoehorn]

So today, with iOS 11 still in beta, if a beta tester takes a picture & sends it to an iOS 10 or Android user, will they be able to see/open it?

Also, When I airdrop photos to my wife's iPhone on iOS10, it tells me in the windows that it's converting (to JPEG I assume). All thought out!