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FST-Image

FAST Search & Transfer Image

image/vnd.fst Released 2000 · by FAST Search & Transfer ASA (Arild Fuldseth)

The image/vnd.fst MIME type represents a proprietary image format developed by FAST Search & Transfer ASA, a Norwegian technology company founded in 1997 (and later acquired by Microsoft). Registered with IANA in June 2000 by video/image compression researcher Arild Fuldseth, the format was utilized within FAST's early proprietary multimedia streaming and enterprise indexing technologies. Today, the format is entirely obsolete and largely undocumented in the public domain.

Legacy & Proprietary Production Ready

Technical Specifications

MIME Type
image/vnd.fst
Extensions
.fst
Container
Proprietary FAST Container
Compression
Proprietary
Algorithms
Unknown (Proprietary FAST encoding)
Color Depth
Unknown
Metadata
None
Capabilities
Transparency
Animation
Progressive Loading
Alpha Channel
HDR Support

Magic Bytes & HTTP Headers

File Signature (Magic Bytes)
Unknown (Proprietary)
ASCII: Unknown
HTTP Headers
Content-Type: image/vnd.fst
HTML Accept Attribute
accept="None"

Browser Support Matrix

Browser Status Min Version
Chrome Chrome
Not Supported
Firefox Firefox
Not Supported
Safari Safari
Not Supported
Edge Edge
Not Supported
Internet Explorer Internet Explorer
Not Supported Legacy

Advantages & Limitations

Advantages
  • Historically served as an optimized, compressed format for FAST's early multimedia and live streaming engines over constrained late-1990s bandwidth
Limitations
  • Completely obsolete and non-functional in modern software ecosystems
  • Undocumented, closed-source binary structure with zero support in modern image processing libraries
  • Shares its file extension with several other distinct file types (such as FL Studio state files or FAST Search dictionaries), leading to easy misidentification

Developer Code Snippets

import magic
# Libmagic does not contain definitions for this proprietary streaming format and will likely fall back to 'application/octet-stream'
print(magic.from_file('legacy_media.fst', mime=True))
const mime = require('mime');
// Standard JS MIME libraries map .fst to image/vnd.fst purely based on the historical IANA registry string match
console.log(mime.getType('legacy_media.fst')); // Likely outputs 'image/vnd.fst'
import "net/http"
// The standard net/http library cannot detect FST files internally via byte sniffing. You must rely on extension string matching.
$mime = mime_content_type('legacy_media.fst');
echo $mime; // Standard server environments will map this to application/octet-stream

File Detection Steps

How to programmatically detect a image/vnd.fst file by reading its raw bytes:

  1. 1 Due to its obscurity and proprietary closed-source nature, standard file sniffers lack magic byte definitions for this format.
  2. 2 Identification relies entirely on string matching the .fst extension against MIME registries, though .fst is occasionally used by other unrelated software applications.

Software Support

L
Legacy FAST Search Servers

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Interactive iframe Widget
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JSON API

All data on this page is available as a free, open JSON API. Use it in your project, documentation, or tooling.

GET https://freewebptojpg.com/mime/image/fst-image.json Open JSON
Free to use
No auth required
CORS enabled
Use from any domain
Cached 24h
Cache-Control headers set

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an image/vnd.fst file?

It is a proprietary image file created by FAST Search & Transfer ASA, a Norwegian tech company from the late 1990s. The format was designed for their early multimedia compression, indexing, and streaming pipelines before the company pivoted entirely to enterprise search.

Can I open an image/vnd.fst file today?

No. The format is completely obsolete and was never widely adopted outside of FAST's internal enterprise ecosystems. Modern web browsers, operating systems, and image viewers do not support decoding it.

Who created the FST image format?

It was developed by researchers at FAST Search & Transfer ASA (notably Arild Fuldseth) and officially registered with IANA in June 2000. FAST's search technology was later acquired by Microsoft in 2008 to power Microsoft SharePoint's search features.

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