graphics file format
An image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be c ...
published in 2001 for
animated
Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby image, still images are manipulated to create Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on cel, transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and e ...
images. Its specification is publicly documented and there are
free software
Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...
reference implementations available.
MNG is closely related to the PNG image format. When PNG development started in early 1995, developers decided not to incorporate support for
animation
Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...
, because the majority of the PNG developers felt that overloading a single file type with both still and animation features is a bad design, both for users (who have no simple way of determining to which class a given image file belongs) and for web servers (which should use a MIME type starting with image/ for stills and video/ for animations—GIF notwithstanding), but work soon started on MNG as an animation-supporting version of PNG. Version 1.0 of the MNG specification was released on 31 January 2001.
GIMP
Gimp or GIMP may refer to:
Clothing
* Bondage suit, also called a gimp suit, a type of suit used in BDSM
* Bondage mask, also called a gimp mask, often worn in conjunction with a gimp suit
Embroidery and crafts
* Gimp (thread), an ornamental tr ...
can export images as MNG files. Imagemagick can create a MNG file from a series of PNG files. With the MNG plugin, Irfanview can read a MNG file. If
MPlayer
MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable Desktop, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A ...
is linked against libmng, it and all its graphical front-ends like Gnome MPlayer can display MNG files.
Mozilla
Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...
browsers and
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was o ...
6.0, 6.01 and 7.0 included native support for MNG until the code was removed in 2003 due to code size and little actual usage, causing complaints on the Mozilla development site. Mozilla later added support for APNG as a simpler alternative. Similarly, early versions of the
Konqueror
Konqueror is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source web browser and file manager that provides World Wide Web, web access and file viewer, file-viewer functionality for file systems (such as local files, files on a remote FTP ser ...
browser included MNG support but it was later dropped. MNG support was never included in
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...
,
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...
,
Opera
Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...
, or
Safari
A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...
.
Server support
Web servers generally don't come pre-configured to support MNG files.
The MNG developers had hoped that MNG would replace GIF for animated images on the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...
, just as PNG had done for still images. However, with the expiration of LZW patents and existence of alternative file formats such as APNG, Flash and SVG, combined with lack of MNG-supporting viewers and services, web usage was far less than expected.
Technical details
The structure of MNG files is essentially the same as that of PNG files, differing only in the slightly different signature (8A 4D 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A in
hexadecimal
Hexadecimal (also known as base-16 or simply hex) is a Numeral system#Positional systems in detail, positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of sixteen. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using ten symbo ...
, where 4D 4E 47 is ASCII for "MNG" – see Portable Network Graphics: File header) and the use of a much greater variety of chunks to support all the animation features that it provides. Images to be used in the animation are stored in the MNG file as encapsulated PNG or JNG images.
Two versions of MNG of reduced complexity are also defined: MNG-LC (low complexity) and MNG-VLC (very low complexity). These allow applications to include some level of MNG support without having to implement the entire MNG specification, just as the SVG standard offers the "SVG Basic" and "SVG Tiny" subsets.
MNG does not have a registered
MIME
A mime artist, or simply mime (from Greek language, Greek , , "imitator, actor"), is a person who uses ''mime'' (also called ''pantomime'' outside of Britain), the acting out of a story through body motions without the use of speech, as a the ...
media type, but video/x-mng or image/x-mng can be used.
MNG animations may be included in
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...
pages using the or tag.
MNG can either be lossy or lossless, depending whether the frames are encoded in PNG (lossless) or JNG (lossy).
Alternatives
Most modern web browsers support animations in APNG, SVG,
WebP
WebP is a raster graphics file format developed by Google intended as a replacement for JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as animation and alpha transparency.
Google announced the WebP ...
, and
WebM
WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML video and the HTML audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored by ...
JPEG XL
The JPEG XL Image Coding System is a royalty-free open standard for a image compression, compressed Raster graphics, raster image format. It defines a graphics file format and the abstract device for coding JPEG XL bitstreams. It is developed by t ...
. The most common alternatives have been
Animated GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...
and – up until its deprecation in 2017 –
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a mostly discontinuedAlthough it is discontinued by Adobe Inc., for the Chinese market it is developed by Zhongcheng and for the international enterprise market it is developed by Ha ...
. GIF images are restricted to 256 colors with limited compression, but the format is supported in all graphical web browsers and is still widely used.
Animations can be generated ad hoc in a browser with the CSS 3 features animations, transitions, and sprites, or also the
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior.
Web browsers have ...
web animations API, by specifying frames or motions of still images or rendered shapes. This can be resource-intensive, and the animation generally cannot be saved in a portable image file or posted on imageboards.
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...