Dynapik offers a free online tool to change image types - no need to download anything. It's quick and easy to use. You can change your DCX images to AVIF format. This tool works for both professionals and casual users. Convert your images to AVIF in seconds.
DCX (Multi-page PCX)
A legacy multi-page image format created for PC-based fax software.
DCX is a multi-page bitmap image format that essentially acts as a container for multiple PCX files. It was developed by ZSoft Corporation, the same company that created PC Paintrush and the PCX format. The primary purpose of DCX was to serve as the file format for early digital fax software, allowing a multi-page document to be stored in a single computer file. Technically, a DCX file begins with a header containing a list of offsets (pointers) to the individual PCX images stored within the file. Each 'page' is a fully valid PCX image with its own header and palette. The format relies on the simple RLE (Run-Length Encoding) compression inherited from PCX, which is efficient for simple black-and-white fax documents but poor for complex photographs.
A DCX file consists of a 4-byte signature (987654320) followed by an array of up to 1024 32-bit integer offsets. Each offset points to the start of a PCX image structure within the file. The list ends with a zero (null) terminator. Because it is wrappers around PCX, it shares all the characteristics of that format: support from 1-bit monochrome up to 24-bit RGB color. However, since it was primarily used for faxing, the vast majority of DCX files encountered today are 1-bit black and white.
DCX became popular in the early 1990s alongside the rise of fax modems and software like WinFax. It allowed users to scan or 'print' a document to a fax driver, which would save the pages as a linear .dcx file before transmission. As PDF became the dominant document format and email replaced faxing, DCX faded into obsolescence.
AVIF (AV1 Image File Format)
The royalty-free successor to WebP, offering the world's best compression for the web.
AVIF is the cutting-edge image format derived from the AV1 video codec. Developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia)—a consortium including Google, Netflix, Amazon, and Microsoft—it was designed to be the ultimate royalty-free format for the web. AVIF offers significantly better compression than WebP, which was already better than JPEG. It supports features that WebP lacks, such as 10-bit and 12-bit color depth for HDR (High Dynamic Range) images, and it produces fewer compression artifacts at low bitrates. While encoding AVIF files takes longer than other formats, the bandwidth savings are substantial, often reducing file sizes by 50% compared to JPEG.
AVIF uses the HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) container structure but encodes the image data using the AV1 video codec. This allows it to use advanced video compression techniques like intra-frame prediction to squeeze image data down to incredibly small sizes. Unlike WebP, which is limited to 8-bit color, AVIF supports 10-bit and 12-bit color depths, making it the first viable web format for HDR photography. It also supports 4:2:0, 4:2:2, and 4:4:4 chroma subsampling, allowing for sharp text and graphics even with lossy compression.
The AV1 video codec was released in 2018 as a royalty-free alternative to HEVC (H.265). The AVIF image format specification followed in 2019. Adoption was rapid compared to previous formats. Chrome added support in 2020, followed by Firefox in 2021. Apple added support in iOS 16 and macOS Ventura (2022), completing the 'universal support' puzzle much faster than WebP did.
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