IFF

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File Format
Name IFF
Ontology
Extension(s) .iff
LoCFDD fdd000115
PRONOM x-fmt/157

Overview

IFF (Interchange File Format) is a file format introduced by Electronic Arts on the Commodore Amiga computer. Its structure is similar to RIFF or PNG, using various self-contained chunks to contain different data.

Although IFF is most commonly used as an image format (using the file extension .iff), it can actually hold a lot of different data types. Some examples of IFF files are

  • ILBM Interleaved bitmap image
  • PBM Planar bitmap image
  • XMI XMidi music files
  • 8SVX audio sample data
  • SX2 Propellerhead Reason NN-XT patches

Some other formats are largely or heavily influenced by the IFF standard, but are not compatible. These include, for example:

  • Erlang BEAM compiled modules ([1] and [2]): Uses 4 byte alignment instead of 2 byte, and the root chunk has a different ID (FOR1 instead of FORM)
  • Microsoft's RIFF and RIFX formats are based on IFF (RIFF uses little-endian byte order instead, and the root chunk is called RIFF instead of FORM)
  • Apple's AIFF and AIFC formats are similar to IFF/RIFF as well

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