Windows 11 or Windows 10 also require extensions to process certain file formats such as HEVC, HEIC, HEIF, RAW… Some of these extensions are not pre-installed in Windows by default,
Forced to install manually and even have to pay for some extensions.
Most of the necessary extensions will be on the Microsoft Store and can be downloaded there, and while these codecs have been around for a long time, it will only become newly popular when Apple applies the HEIF standard to its devices.
Following Apple, Google started supporting HEIF in 2018 with Android 9 Pie.
HEIF image format: 50% smaller than JPEG, can save more continuous photos, videos in one file…
Apple has been using HEIC on iPhone and iPad since 2017, and recently coupled with Qualcomm’s strong support for HEIC/HEIF, there will be many Android phones supporting this standard in the near future. Who knows it will become a completely replaceable thing in the future…
More about the HEIF image format on Android and iPhone
HEIF is the most suitable image format for mobile phone memory. Compared with JPG, HEIF/HEIC image quality is not inferior.
Save more data but be smaller
For Windows 10 and above, since the October 2018 Update, HEIF comes pre-installed on Windows devices, and if you want to watch videos in H.264 or H.265 format, you need HEIF – High Efficiency Image File Format.
To install HEIF, HEVC, RAW Image Extension… you go to Microsoft Store to download all these codecs, you will need to pay for HEVC separately, the price is 0.99 USD (about 23,000 in Vietnam).
Some manufacturers will pre-install it for users, but some manufacturers do not. So the H.265 video you record on your iPhone and iPad needs a special format on Windows to watch, but on macOS, it’s much simpler.
HEVC download link.
HEIF download link.
Note that Microsoft has explicitly mentioned that if HEVC is not installed, you cannot read or write files with the .heic extension, which are images captured in this format with an iPhone or iPad.
If you want to view photos in RAW format, if you want to use the default image viewer on Windows, you also need to have RAW Image Extension, the download link is here, and it can be used normally after installation.
All of the above are the latest image and video compression standards, which ensure the quality of the files but are not too large for easy storage and transmission.
Especially friends who use Mac will be quite surprised by this after switching to Windows, or use Windows virtual machines on Mac, and these codecs need to be installed for normal use.
