KWZ

File Format
Name	KWZ
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Video KWZ
Extension(s)	.kwz, .kwc
Released	2013

The KWZ format is the main format for videos created with the Nintendo 3DS program Flipnote Studio 3D. KWZ may hold video, potentially in stereoscopic 3D; audio; and a thumbnail, all in idiosyncratic codecs. It consists of a small number of sections, identified by FourCCs, although these are used in a unusual (or perhaps just difficult-to-reverse-engineer) way: "[t]he first 3 chars... identify the section type, and the last char seems to be used for flags of some kind but the meaning of these isn't known." It may sometimes be found around the KWPCF and LST formats. It succeeded the PPM format used in the original Flipnote Studio.

Extensions

Usual files of the KWZ format use the extension ".kwz". There is a restricted subset that forbids sound, a thumbnail, or more than one frame, seeming to effectively become a still image format, although apparently these are somehow used to hold "comments" online; they use the extension ".kwc". Another subset, for "[i]Icons used for SD card folders", use the normal extension.

Identification

KWZ files begin with the ASCII KFH.

Flipnote Gallery World

"Flipnote Gallery World" was the online repository for user-created KWZ videos. It shut down ca. 2017. When it was online, only users in Japan could actively add content to it, but it contained a static copy of all the videos in "Flipnote Hatena", the better-known repository for PPM files, converted into KWZ, and up for download; this was apparently the last remaining public copy of all the videos stored in Flipnote Hatena. At least some of these were saved in the Internet Archives' Wayback Machine; a script for downloading them can be found at [1].

Software

• KWZ-Parser
• Flipnote.js (Javascript library; also supports PPM)
  • James Daniels's Flipnote-Player (GUI; instance at [2])

Links

• Page at 3DBrew
• Unofficial description by the "Flipnote Collective"
• Wikipedia:Flipnote Studio 3D