Supported Media File Formats
Below are CollectiveAccess-supported image, audio, video, document, and multimedia formats.
Supported Image Formats
| Format | Media Processing Backend | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| JPEG | GD, ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | |
| GIF | GD, ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | |
| TIFF | GD, ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | |
| PNG | GD, ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | |
| TilePic | GD, ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | |
| Camera RAW | ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | Supports whatever manufacturer formats your installed version of ImageMagick can handle |
| Photoshop PSD | ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | Derivatives for files with layer effects may not be rendered properly |
| JPEG-2000 | ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | |
| DICOM | ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | |
| DPX | ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | Pixel values in non-Tilepic derivatives are adjusted for optimal viewing on computer monitors. |
| OpenEXR | ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | More information on this format can be found here. |
| QTVR (QuickTime VR) | QuicktimeVR | JPEG-format thumbnails are extracted; straight-QTVR is kept as “original” version. The QuicktimeVR plugin requires ffmpeg to be installed. |
| Adobe DNG | ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | |
| BMP | ImageMagick, IMagick, GraphicsMagick, Gmagick | |
| HEIC | ImageMagick, IMagick, Gmagick | Available from version 1.8. Gmagick support requires working ImageMagick installation (GraphicsMagick does not support the HEIC format at all). All back-ends require ImageMagick to be built with support for libheic. This is not available by default in most Linux distributions. |
Supported Audio Formats
| Format | Media Processing Backend | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MP3 | ffmpeg | ffmpeg must be compiled with libLAME |
| AIFF | ffmpeg | |
| WAV | ffmpeg | Including Broadcast-WAVE |
| AAC | ffmpeg | Requires ffmpeg to be compiled with libfdk_aac |
| Ogg Vorbis | ffmpeg | |
| FLAC | ffmpeg |
Supported Video Formats
| Format | Media Processing Backend | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MPEG-2 | ffmpeg | |
| MPEG-4 | ffmpeg | |
| QuickTime | ffmpeg | |
| WindowsMedia | ffmpeg | |
| FLV | ffmpeg | |
| Ogg Theora | ffmpeg | |
| AVI | ffmpeg | |
| Matroska (mkv) | ffmpeg | |
| DV | ffmpeg | |
| MPEG-2 TS (MP2T) | ffmpeg |
Supported Document Formats
| Format | Media Processing Backend | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PDFWand | CA can only generate thumbnail page images for display if Ghostscript is installed on your system. Can extract text from file for searchability if xPDF is installed. | |
| PS (Postscript) | PDFWand | CA can only generate thumbnail page images for display if Ghostscript is installed on your system. |
| Microsoft Word | Office | Both .doc (< 2007 file format) and .docx (XML-based format) are supported. Can generate page previews and extract text from file for searchability if LibreOffice is installed. |
| Microsoft Powerpoint | Office | Can generate page previews if LibreOffice is installed. |
| Microsoft Excel | Office | Can generate page previews if LibreOffice is installed. |
Supported Multimedia Formats
| Format | Media Processing Backend | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| STL | Mesh | Standard Tesselation Language for 3d models (geometry only; no textures). |
| PLY | Mesh | Polygon File Format for 3d models (geometry only; no textures) |
| OBJ | Mesh | Wavefront OBJ for 3d models. For CollectiveAccess version 1.7.x only geometry is supported. From version 1.8 support for textures specified using .mtl “sidecar” files is provided. |
| GLTF | Mesh | Graphics Language Transport Format for 3d models. Available from version 1.8. Texture support is provided using “sidecar” files. |