Acquire / file · All operations

Read images, audio or video

A variant of Read another file format

Load image, audio or video files as pixels, samples or frames.

Status

In arcform

Not built yet

arcform does not do this yet. Its place on the roadmap

What other tools call it

Meridian's classification; an independent blind rating agreed on 95.7% of 324 rows (variant, version 3).

Alteryx Designer (1)
  • Image Inputread 2026-09-27

    Read image and PDF files into the workflow as binary objects

KNIME Analytics Platform (1)
  • Read Imagesread 2026-09-27

    Read images from a column of URLs and append them as an image column

mlpack (13)
  • BMPread 2026-09-27

    Load or save image data as BMP

  • GIFread 2026-09-27

    Load image data from a GIF; loading only

  • JPGread 2026-09-27

    Load or save image data as JPEG

  • MP3read 2026-09-27

    Load audio samples from an mp3 file

  • PGMread 2026-09-27

    Load or save a matrix as a PGM image with values 0 to 255

  • PICread 2026-09-27

    Load image data from a PICtor file; loading only

  • PNGread 2026-09-27

    Load or save image data as PNG

  • PNMread 2026-09-27

    Load image data from a Portable Anymap file; loading only

  • PPMread 2026-09-27

    Load or save a matrix as a PPM image with values 0 to 255

  • PSDread 2026-09-27

    Load image data from a Photoshop file; loading only

  • TGAread 2026-09-27

    Load or save image data as TGA

  • WAVread 2026-09-27

    Load or save audio samples as a wave file

  • mlpack_image_converterread 2026-09-27

    Load a set of images into one dataset matrix, or unpack a matrix back into image files

RapidMiner Studio (4)
VisiData (1)
  • png (loader)read 2026-09-23

    Load PNG image as a sheet of pixels

Background

In mlpack, a loaded image is represented as a flattened single column vector, each row holding one pixel value between 0 and 255 in one channel.[1] A raster image is a digital image made up of a rectangular grid of pixels, and stores the exact colour of each pixel.[2] In mlpack, an audio file loaded into a floating-point matrix gives values in the range -1.0 to 1.0, whatever the file's underlying sample format.[1]

When to use it

Most image files store information about the image's format, size, resolution and colour space, and optionally who made it, when and where, and with what camera.[3] Read an image's metadata before its pixels when the question is when, where or with what it was taken; the pixels are needed only for what it shows. (Meridian's view)

In mlpack, loading several images into one matrix fails unless their metadata, such as image size, matches across all the files.[1] Bring a set of images to one size before loading them into a single table. (Meridian's view) In mlpack, an audio file loaded into a signed integer matrix takes values across that type's range, such as -32768 to 32767 for the short integer type.[1] Check the value range each reader returns before comparing loudness or brightness across files read by different tools. (Meridian's view)

The method

Raster images are characterised by their width and height in pixels and by their colour depth, the number of bits per pixel.[2] In mlpack, images are flattened along rows, with channel values interleaved, starting from the top left.[1] mlpack loads, saves and modifies image data using the STB library, a header-only library bundled with mlpack.[1]

Waveform Audio File Format (WAV) is an audio file format standard, developed and published for the first time in 1991 by IBM and Microsoft.[4] The most common WAV audio format is uncompressed audio in the linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) format.[4] In mlpack, a loaded audio file reports its sample rate in Hz, its number of channels and its bit depth per sample.[1]

Sources

  1. [1]mlpack documentationdocumentation
  2. [2]Raster graphics - Wikipediasecondary source
  3. [3]File format - Wikipediasecondary source
  4. [4]WAV - Wikipediasecondary source