File formats

Native project format — .pvc

PiVo Craft's own format is a ZIP container (.pvc) written by the native codec (saveNative/loadNative), with verified member CRCs. Save/open are available from the UI; verification documents the ZIP structural checks.

Keep downloads of valuable work

Recovery checkpoints in the browser are bounded and can be restricted in embedded/standalone contexts. A downloaded .pvc copy is the reliable persistence path.

Import

Format	Support
PNG	Grayscale/indexed/RGB/alpha depths, Adam7 interlace; expands to RGBA. 16-bit precision and ignored profile metadata are diagnosed. APNG is rejected.
GIF	Composited animation, disposal, interlace and loops; bounded LZW import.
ASE (Aseprite)	A declared supported subset. Unknown chunks and unsupported data are diagnosed; strict ASE export blocks unmodeled source metadata, so passthrough groups must be made isolated explicitly before strict ASE export. External references are not auto-fetched. Embedded tilemap interchange is not fully certified.
.pxkeys / .pxbrush	Portable keyboard-binding and brush-preset files. Brush/dynamics presets are stored separately from .pvc artwork — export presets for portability.

Export

• PNG — single frames, frame sequences, and sprite sheets with companion JSON metadata.
• GIF — animated export with reported timing, alpha and color conversions.
• ASE — supported-subset export (EncodeASEResult).
• Atlas — createAtlas/exportMetadata produce packed atlases; the UI consumes the same compositor as atlas/GIF export.

Details of PNG/GIF byte-level rules and diagnosed cases are in the compatibility matrix.

Safety notes

• All codecs are synchronous. Limits reduce allocation risk, but this is not a formally audited hostile-file processor.
• Do not enable automatic imports of untrusted batches.
• PNG/GIF decoding in tests was additionally verified with Pillow (see Verification).