DAM Knowledge Base

WIC Support and Codec Availability

What is IMatch?

IMatch is one of the leading Digital Asset Management Systems (DAM) for Windows.
Manage, catalog and organize all your RAW files, digital images, videos, audio recordings, PDF and Office documents etc. in one software.
See what IMatch can do for you.

What is WIC?

IMatch supports the Windows Imaging Component (WIC) framework supported in Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 and later versions of Windows.

Windows WIC enables applications like IMatch to work with image formats (including RAW files) via so-called codecs provided by camera vendors, Microsoft or 3rd parties. Without the need to know the internal details of a file format, IMatch can handle the files as long as a working codec is installed.

Please ensure that you have always installed the latest RAW codec (WIC codec) available from your camera vendor’s web site (if your camera vendor supplies WIC codecs for your cameras). This ensures that IMatch can read and reproduce the images with the best possible quality. Camera vendors make changes to their RAW files almost with every camera model. If you work with scanners, microscopes and similar, your hardware vendor most likely also supplies a codec if the scanner emits a proprietary file format.

Note: Do not install multiple codecs from different vendors for the same RAW format. Experience tells that this may lead to more or less subtle problems when processing RAW files.

Windows Built-in WIC Codecs

Current Windows versions include a set of WIC codecs which support a wide range of common RAW formats. Note that not all camera format variants are supported, though.
Over the years, camera vendors introduced dozens of incompatible format variants which all use the same file extension. This complicates the process of providing a WIC codec for all camera models. Contact your camera vendor for assistance if you need more information.

HEIC/HEIF Support on Windows 10 and Windows 11

HEIC is a modern still image / video format mostly used on the Mac platform. In order to process HEIC files in IMatch you need to install a WIC codec. The standard WIC codecs included in Windows 10 don’t support HEIC/HEIF by default.

Microsoft provides a free WIC codec for Windows which adds support for HEIC to the operating system. To find this WIC codec, search for HEIF Image Extensions on the Microsoft web site or use your favorite search engine. Make sure you install the original codec created by Microsoft.

WIC Codec Download Sites

Note: Windows 11 includes a set of WIC codecs which support a wide variety of RAW formats. If your RAW format is not yet supported, contact your camera vendor and Microsoft for support.

Sadly, as far as we can determine, the only camera vendor who cares enough about their customers to provide an optimized WIC codec is Nikon.

See also this Wikipedia article for more information about WIC and the Microsoft Windows Imaging Component Overview.

photools.com RAW Processing and LibRAW Support

If no WIC codec is available for one or more RAW variants you use, IMatch uses its built-in RAW processing pipeline based on LibRaw to create thumbnails and cache images. LibRaw is an awesome OpenSource project which is actively maintained and supports hundreds of RAW format variants.

You can also switch to IMatch’s internal RAW processing when the default Windows WIC codec does not support the RAW variant your camera produces or if you experience problems like wrong orientation or similar.

They also offer an excellent and affordable software called FastRawViewer for viewing Raw files on the Mac and Windows.

Can I keep my IMatch database and image files on the NAS?

Yes. IMatch can work with databases and images stored on NAS systems in your network. No problem with that. The database and images can be shared (if multiple users work with IMatch, every user needs an IMatch license of course).

Use UNC Shares

You can either use a drive mapping or (better) UNC paths like (\\server\share\folder) to address the files on your NAS system from within your IMatch database. UNC paths have the advantage to be unique within your network and accessible from all computers in your network without the need to create a drive mapping first.

Performance

The performance of such a configuration depends on your network speed and the performance of the NAS system. Usually the database performance suffers when the database file is stored on a NAS.

What you have to keep in mind is that most (cheap) NAS systems are designed for streaming usage. This means they are intended to keep your backups, and to deliver video, image and audio data. And they usually do a great job with this.

Keeping your images on the NAS box is usually no problem and performance will be OK or even excellent.

But the IMatch database file is a different matter. When you work with IMatch, IMatch reads and writes very often from and to the database file. These are usually small changes of a few bytes to a few kilobytes. And, especially for cheaper NAS systems, this creates a worst-case scenario. Many small read/write operations over the network are bad for the performance and thus the overall IMatch performance will suffer. Even a moderately fast built-in hard disk is 10 times faster than NAS storage.

How to Test

If you experience performance problems with IMatch in a NAS environment, just copy your database from the NAS system to your local hard disk. Then open the database from there via the Database menu > Open command in IMatch. If your NAS is the performance bottleneck you will notice a much snappier response time and overall better speed with the local hard disk.

Then its up to you if you want to work with the local database or prefer to NAS-based database with slower performance.

Conclusion

I often get reports from users about sluggish performance in NAS environments. Especially when you don’t want to spend the money to buy a real high-performance NAS system with multiple processors and fast disks and controllers. The price for these high-end systems is often three or more times as high as the price tag for entry-level or ‘Home-use’ NAS systems.

If this is the case, it is usually better to keep the files you manage in IMatch on the NAS but the IMatch database on your local hard disk or, even better, a SSD. If you don’t have a SSD, using an high-speed USB 3.0 stick to store the database stick can be a real speed booster.