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Image MIME Reference
DPX

Digital Picture Exchange

image/dpx
VS

FlashPix

image/vnd.fpx
FPX

A complete technical comparison of Digital Picture Exchange and FlashPix — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

Equal browser support

Feature Support

Feature DPX FPX
Transparency (Alpha) Yes Yes
Animation Support ✕ No ✕ No
Progressive Loading ✕ No ✕ No
HDR Support Yes ✕ No
EXIF Metadata ✕ No Yes
ICC Color Profile ✕ No Yes
Digital Picture Exchange
image/dpx
Extension
.dpx
Container DPX (SMPTE ST 268)
Compression Uncompressed / RLE (Rarely used)
Algorithm
Uncompressed
Color Depth 8-bit, 10-bit, 12-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit (Float)
Developed by SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers)
Released 1994
Magic Bytes
53 44 50 58 (Big-endian) / 58 50 44 53 (Little-endian)
Full DPX reference →
FlashPix
image/vnd.fpx
Extension
.fpx
Container Microsoft OLE Structured Storage (COM)
Compression JPEG (Lossy) / Uncompressed / Single-color (Solid)
Algorithm
JPEGNone
Color Depth 8-bit (Grayscale/Indexed), 24-bit (RGB), 32-bit (CMYK/RGBA)
Developed by Eastman Kodak, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Live Picture
Released 1996
Magic Bytes
D0 CF 11 E0 A1 B1 1A E1
Full FPX reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser DPX FPX
Chrome Chrome
✕ ✕
Firefox Firefox
✕ ✕
Safari Safari
✕ ✕
Edge Edge
✕ ✕
IE IE (Legacy)
✕ ✕
DPX

DPX Strengths

  • Industry standard for transferring uncompressed, high-fidelity film and VFX data
  • Rich industry-specific metadata including timecode, keykode, and film stock information
  • Supports logarithmic color spaces (LogC, Cineon) to preserve the massive dynamic range of film negatives
Limitations
  • Massive file sizes (e.g., a single 4K 10-bit frame is ~50MB, resulting in ~1.2GB per second at 24fps)
  • Zero native support in web browsers or consumer OS image viewers
  • Requires heavy-duty, fast storage infrastructure (RAID/NVMe) to playback in real-time
FPX

FPX Strengths

  • Allowed early, low-RAM computers to view and edit massive, high-resolution digital photos instantly by only loading the needed tiles and resolutions
  • Pioneered the multi-resolution pyramid and tiling concepts heavily used today in modern deep-zoom and web mapping applications (like Google Maps)
Limitations
  • Completely obsolete and unsupported by modern web browsers or operating systems
  • Uses the complex, proprietary Microsoft OLE container format, making it incredibly difficult to parse or extract data from without dedicated legacy libraries
  • Prone to being misidentified by MIME sniffers as an old Microsoft Office document

When to choose which format

DPX
Use DPX when…
  • Film Scanning
  • Visual Effects (VFX)
  • Digital Intermediate (DI)
  • Color Grading
  • Archival
FPX
Use FPX when…
  • Legacy Digital Photography
  • Kodak Picture CDs (Historical)
  • Early High-Resolution Image Viewers

More comparisons

DPX vs ACES → FPX vs ACES → DPX vs APNG → FPX vs APNG → DPX vs AVCI → FPX vs AVCI → DPX vs AVCS → FPX vs AVCS → DPX vs AVIF → FPX vs AVIF → All comparisons →
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