Resource Interchange File Format: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 00:41, 22 February 2007

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The '''Resource Interchange File Format''' ('''RIFF''') is a generic meta-format for storing data in tagged chunks. It was introduced in [[1991]] by [[Microsoft]] and [[International Business Machines|IBM]], and was presented by Microsoft as the default format for Windows 3.1 multimedia files. It is based on [[Electronic Arts]]'s [[Interchange File Format]], introduced in [[1985]], the only difference being that multi-byte integers are in [[endianness|little-endian]] format, native to the [[80x86]] processor series used in IBM PCs, rather than the [[Endianness|big-endian]] format native to the [[68k]] processor series used in [[Amiga]] and [[Apple Macintosh]] computers, where IFF files were heavily used. (The specification for [[AIFF]], the [[endianness|big-endian]] analogue of RIFF, was published by [[Apple Computer]] in 1988.)

The Microsoft implementation is mostly known through file formats like [[AVI]], [[ANI (animation file format)|ANI]] and [[WAV]], which use the RIFF meta-format as their basis.