images saved as AVIF won't open in firefox, confirmed it's not a browser issue

[Trobius]

I don't know if this should go in the plugin section or here, so lock this thread if necessary.

I want to convert several bulky JPEGs into much more compact AVIF files* (saving space is a compulsion of mine), but while I am able to perform the save as function, I noticed today that the resulting avif files won't open in firefox. It can open in the windows photos app. I confirmed that browser can open Avifs created elsewhere, such as the one on this page, so it is something about how the file gets saved. It isn't a huge deal I guess, but it does make me wary of saving any more files as avifs.

I attached a sample AVIF file as a text file for troubleshooting. To open it, change the extension.

4da3150bedeba369e39598ae19c09b97.txt

Edited June 29, 2022 by Trobius
sample

[Trobius]

Okay, here is a "link." I had to change the file extension type to png so imgur would accept it. (Normally it doesn't accept avif files) Either way, it isn't really working.

However, if you download the file, change the extension to avif, and then open it, it should work in photos, but not if you "open with" a web browser.

[toe_head2001]

This is just a bug with the AVIF decoder that Firefox is using; your image works just fine in other programs.

 

<irrelevant link removed>

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by toe_head2001

[Trobius]

Okay, thank you. The reason I thought it wasn't the browser was that firefox could open *some* AVIF images. Just none of the ones I created through paint.net.

It sounds like this is a bigger issue. It's a shame, because no matter how good AVIF is, it still means little if the rest of the digital world makes it so fraught.

[null54]

20 minutes ago, Trobius said:

The reason I thought it wasn't the browser was that firefox could open *some* AVIF images. Just none of the ones I created through paint.net.

 

This is a bug in the Firefox AVIF support, the image opens fine in Google Chrome.

The image opens in Firefox after saving it with Very Slow compression, so the issue is that the Firefox AVIF parser does not support image grids.

 

An image grid is a collection of smaller images that a decoder will combine to form a larger image.

The Paint.NET AVIF plugin will use an image grid when saving files at most compression speeds to reduce the encoder memory usage and improve UI responsiveness.

 

Firefox uses mp4parse-rust for AVIF decoding, while Google Chrome uses libavif.

The mp4parse-rust repository has an open issue for image grid support, so it hopefully will be implemented in the future.

 

@toe_head2001 I do not see how that issue has anything to do with the lack of AVIF image grid support.

The Firefox AVIF image grid bug is: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1696090, one of the replies mentions the Paint.NET behavior.

[toe_head2001]

10 minutes ago, null54 said:

@toe_head2001 I do not see how that issue has anything to do with the lack of AVIF image grid support.

 

Yeah, I didn't realize the issue with grid support.  The bug report I found was the only open defect on the parent bug, so I figured it was applicable since the symptoms matched.

 

13 minutes ago, null54 said:

Firefox uses mp4parse-rust for AVIF decoding,

 

I thought Firefox was using Dav1d for both AV1 video and AVIF images.  I could have sworn I read that some time ago.

[null54]

Just now, toe_head2001 said:

I thought Firefox was using Dav1d for both AV1 video and AVIF images.

 

It may be using Dav1d for the AV1 decoding, but the AVIF file format parsing is done by mp4parse-rust.