There is this new ultra-compressable high-quality open video codec AV1 with the corresponding AVIF image format (.avif file extension).
Windows supports it natively via a codec installed via WinStore
DOpus can use this codec for its Preview pane (I can see an .avif file there), but for some reason the Image Viewer fails to load/view these images
How can I make the Image Viewer also handle .avif image files just like the Preview pane does?
Nope, I'm talking only about the image format, the .avif files, not the video — the preview pane shows the image, image viewer ignores it (doesn't switch to the file, I also can't manually "Open" this file in the viewer)
The preview pane will be displaying a thumbnail of the image (which may or may not be the full size of the image, depending on the thumbnailer involved). The standalone viewer doesn't display thumbnails, on the other hand.
If you link to the codec you're using, we might be able to add support for it to the viewer.
It displays the image (well, maybe it's technically a thumbnail, but for practical purposes I don't see a difference): I can arbitrarily zoom in/out, set "Original size" and then switch between images with that original size "zoom" maintained (which is a very cool feature in your image viewers, thank you for that, it's not often implemented even in standalone image viewers), so the only difference seems to be that it starts in a pane not a window, and I can't view it in fullscreen as Viewer Pane outsources this taskt to Image Viewer (and also the Image Viewer has useful shortcuts)
I'm using Microsoft's official Windows codec from MS Store (type AV1 Video Extension) or maybe this this MS link will help
The viewer pane will display it via a thumbnailer if no viewer plugin handles it and one is installed in the system. The codec installs one.
The standalone viewer doesn't use thumbnailers, but also would not normally handle av1 files at all unless explicitly run on them via the Show command. They'd normally go to another viewer like the Photos app.
We'll add an AV1 plugin in the near-ish future, since this format seems to be used by a few websites now. (Apparently WebP wasn't good enough for them! I'm sure they'll switch to yet another format in a couple of years, just to make life harder.)
They are interesting in my use case for the same reason as a GIF is. GIFs are seen as an image file format even though they contain animation. I'm hoping that an AVIF is the same (but I can't check ) I have to use a CMS called Wagtail to create documentation for LightWave. Nominally, it supports GIFs and AVIF, but the GIFs can only be coffee-spraying girl meme sizes and I need them for demonstrating user interface concepts.
Under Preferences / Viewer / Viewer Plugins, you could try disabling the AVIF plugin (if you don’t need the other formats it does) and adding AVIF to Microsoft Edge via the MetaPlugin.
Assuming Edge supports them, it should play them like it would if you opened one in a new browser tab.
That's kind of what I did, except I just dragged and dropped the file to a new browser tab just to check I wasn't going mad that a file that was five times smaller than the equivalent gif actually had the animation in it.
Did you see the attached file, Leo? You can double-click it in DOpus and the viewer will display the first frame. If you drag and drop it into Firefox or Chrome, the animation will play.
B
PS. Your forum doesn't allows AVIFs, which is why it's in the 7z archive AddShortcuts.7z (337.0 KB)
I see the file, but there's no way I know of to make the viewer pane play all the frames, without writing a custom plugin for it. (Or something like a codec/splitter that makes it play via the Video plugin.)
Edge actually seems to view it OK if I drag it to the browser itself. But asking Edge to open the file in the viewer pane has Edge treat it like a right-click, Save As download rather than something to display.
The animated gif plugin I wrote & released the source to could be the basis for other non-video animated formats, but the current code is very tied to some specifics of gif (especially palettes) so it wouldn't be a trivial amount of work. And the problem is none of these animated formats have taken off, while people keep bringing out more and more of them and diluting interest in the others. (And while most websites have moved to using actual video formats now, often converting gif to MP4 behind the scenes while still saying "gif" everywhere.)