VIFF

File Format
Name	VIFF
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Graphics VIFF
Extension(s)	.xv, .viff
Released	1990

VIFF, or Khoros Visualization image, is a raster image file format associated with the Khoros data analysis and visualization software. It is a fairly complex format, supporting a variety of image types, color spaces, compression schemes, etc.

Apparently, there are at least two Khoros formats named VIFF. Khoros 1.x's VIFF format (which we'll call VIFF 1.0) was called "xvimage" by Khoros 2.x, and a new "VIFF" (2.0) format was introduced.

History

Khoros was originally developed at the University of New Mexico. The first public beta release was in 1990, and the first official release was in 1991. Somehow (in 1992?) it came to be owned by a company named Khoral. In 1996, it was split into two products: Khoros Pro and Advanced Khoros. In 2004, Khoros Pro was sold to Accusoft and renamed VisiQuest.

Format

VIFF 1.0 files begin with a 1024-byte fixed header.

VIFF 2.0 format is based on GNU dbm format, with an additional byte at the beginning of the file to indicate the platform.

Identification

VIFF 1.0 files start with bytes ab 01.

VIFF 2.0 files begin with ?? 13 57 9a ce, or ?? 13 57 9a cf, or possibly some other signature. Presumably, some other Khoros formats also begin this way. For VIFF, the ASCII strings "ViffMagicCookie" and "ThisIsAViff" appear somewhere in the file.

Software

• ImageMagick (format named "VIFF" or "XV")
• Khoros
  • http://ftp.funet.fi/index/graphics/packages/khoros/
  • Khoros 2.1

Sample files

• http://www.fileformat.info/format/viff/sample/index.htm
• input.viff (PerlMagick test file)
• khoros2.0.2+p2DR.tar.gz → datamanip/data/testdata/

Links

• VIFF File Format Summary, from the Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats