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Comment by arendtio | Hacker News Reader

Can someone please explain the downvotes?

My guess: because the OP forgot that to decode AV2/AV3 it matters not that it is in an AVIF container, it matters that the display system (browser, etc.) actually have the codec available to it that can decode the new format (AV2/AV3/etc.).

With no codec for a new compression algorithm, it does not matter if the browser can read the container, you still see the "broken image" icon on your display.

You didn't get the point of the post. I explained why and how container matters here. Not a specific container, but just the idea of container itself. Hint, it's not the browser.

I don't get it. And to me it wasn't clear in the post. As others have explained the container and codec are two separate issues.

Concrete example. Let's say GitHub will add AVIF support at some point (it's not yet handled well by the site as you can notice[1].

You as user can then upload AVIF images to wherever images on the site are processed. And after that, let's say when newer codec inside AVIF will get a good browser coverage, you'll be able to start using it without waiting another decade for GitHub to pipe it through their site code.

For formats without a container, it's always a two step process. Browser coverage first, then another huge period of sites support catching up.

[1]: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/138164

I’m not an expert, but I wanna add my 5 cents.

> You as user can then upload AVIF images to wherever images on the site are processed

Those image upload pipelines almost always process the image in some way (downscaling, compressing). So a new codec in the same file format can only break them.

But even if it didn’t, I can’t help but view this as a dependency hell. Somebody uploads a version of AVIF not yet supported everywhere. Things break. User doesn’t understand why, because user doesn’t understand that .avif != .avif. Developers have a hard time figuring out why, because they have to check all software touching those files and check what specific codecs or version those support for AVIF. And all they can do anyway is to wait for all affected libraries or software to roll out the new codec.

So I guess in other words, the codec is the file format.

It might break or it might not. If it breaks - things can be figured out as you said. But the alternative is to wait on the site for who knows how long and in the end - it's not usable during that time anyway. I'd say not waiting just gives you more options.

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