My first QT imageformats plug-in for AV1 Image File Format (AVIF)

[novomeskyd]

May I ask, is there a chance that QT will officially support AVIF format in the future?
Support in QT automatically enables many applications to work with AVIF images:

This is a web browser from KDE which opened AVIF picture in website because it is a QT application:

I don't insist that any of future versions of my plug-in to be included, it can be any alternative implementation. The goal is to support AVIF. It seems that browsers will support this format and big players are interested too: Google, Netflix, Facebook (they are mentioning AVIF in the job offer).
You can open AVIF pictures in Windows10 if you installed AV1 Video Extension from Microsoft Store.

I used libavif in my plug-in. Libavif needs at least one AV1 encoder and decoder. You can choose libaom, dav1d, rav1e, libgav1.

[SGaist]

You should check with the KDE guys to avoid duplicating efforts. The Qt project has the qimageformats module for extra formats.

[novomeskyd]

As I understood for KDE guys it doesn't matter whether AVIF is in kimageformats or in qtimageformats (I know it cannot be in both packages - they install in the same folder). KDE guys answered that it depends on license.

I don't create any additional restrictions beside mentioning license of dependencies I use.

I believe that including AVIF in qtimageformats would be the best for majority.

[SGaist]

As they say, you have to check the licence(s) of the dependencies you use to ensure they are compatible with the Qt licences.

[novomeskyd]

@SGaist
Yes, I checked the licenses:
libavif - https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/libavif/blob/master/LICENSE
libaom - https://aomedia.googlesource.com/aom/+/refs/heads/master/LICENSE

These licenses says no warranty, no liability, as-is. There is no restrictions for closed source, no open-source requirements. Only requirement is to retain&reproduce copyright notice of their permissive license.

It is like WEBP license and WEBP is included in qtimageformats already.

So I think it should be OK with https://www.qt.io/licensing/

[SGaist]

Looks like it should be ok.

[fcarney]

Copyright is only part of it though. There may be patent issues.

[novomeskyd]

@fcarney
There are some patents but they are free to use. This URL is in AVIF specification:
http://aomedia.org/license/
A there you can find:
http://aomedia.org/license/patent-license/

[novomeskyd]

Just letting you know that I continue to improve this AVIF format plug-in.
I will post it again when I finish with things on my TODO list.

I want to say that I appreciate the fact that QColorSpace Class was introduced in Qt 5.14 - that's very important for correctly displaying images.

Maybe in the future it will be good to have direct support for modern WCG/HDR colorspaces with PQ & HLG TransferFunctions too. AVIF can use such colorspaces.

[novomeskyd]

I create a new version of the plug-in.
I prepared an illustrated manual how to install the plug-in to KDE and how the applications are able to use the AVIF image format afterwards:
http://188.121.162.14/avif/kde.html
Download link with source (including build script and dependencies - libavif and libaom) are on the webpage too.

The new version of the plug-in supports image sequences (animation) too.

I am willing to contribute this code to Qt. AVIF format is practically better than JPEG, GIF, PNG and WEBP together. I believe AVIF deserve to be supported. Many applications would benefit from AVIF if it gets included in Qt.

What can I do so the plug-in would be closer to get accepted by Qt?

[jsulm]

@novomeskyd said in My first QT imageformats plug-in for AV1 Image File Format (AVIF):

What can I do so the plug-in would be closer to get accepted by Qt?

Take a look at https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_Contribution_Guidelines

[novomeskyd]

Thanks for info.
I still wish the AVIF support to be included in Qt in the future.
In order to get experiences and prepare myself for more complicated steps (from my point of view) I decided to host my project on GitHub ( https://github.com/novomesk/qt-avif-image-plugin ).