CID to HRZ Converter

Render CID font glyphs in HRZ slow-scan television format online

Drop files here. 1 GB maximum file size or Sign Up
to
Facebook Amazon Microsoft Tesla Nestle Walmart L'Oreal

SSTV Compatible

Get CID-keyed CJK character images formatted for slow-scan TV transmission — ready for amateur radio SSTV software and hardware.

Server-Side Processing

The rendering and format conversion run on Convertio servers. No need to install SSTV tools just to create HRZ images.

Secure Uploads

Your CID font file is removed immediately after conversion. HRZ output files are deleted within 24 hours for complete privacy.

How to convert CID to HRZ

1

Select files from Computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, URL or by dragging it on the page.

2

Choose hrz or any other format you need as a result (more than 200 formats supported)

3

Let the file convert and you can download your hrz file right afterwards

About formats

CID (Character Identifier) is a font architecture developed by Adobe Systems and specified in June 1993 to address the challenges of fonts containing very large glyph sets, particularly for CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) scripts. Traditional PostScript fonts identify glyphs by name, which becomes impractical when a font contains tens of thousands of characters — a typical Japanese font may include over 20,000 glyphs. CID-keyed fonts replace glyph names with numeric identifiers organized by a character collection and ordering (such as Adobe-Japan1 or Adobe-GB1), dramatically reducing overhead for glyph access and subsetting. The architecture defines three PostScript font types: Type 9 (CID-keyed Type 1 outlines), Type 10 (CID-keyed Type 3), and Type 11 (CID-keyed Type 42/TrueType). A primary advantage is efficient handling of massive character sets — the numeric CID approach eliminates the memory and processing cost of maintaining thousands of glyph name strings. CID fonts also support sophisticated CMap resources that map encoding values to CIDs, enabling a single font to serve multiple encoding schemes (Unicode, Shift-JIS, Big5) without duplicating glyph data. The architecture integrates well with PDF subsetting, allowing documents to embed only the glyphs actually used. CID-keyed technology laid the foundation for CJK support in both OpenType and modern PDF workflows, and remains active in print production and document processing systems worldwide.
Developer: Adobe Systems
Initial release: June 11, 1993
HRZ is a simple raster image format associated with slow-scan television (SSTV), a method of transmitting still images over radio frequencies used by amateur radio operators since the late 1950s when Copthorne Macdonald pioneered the technology. HRZ files store images at a fixed resolution of 256x240 pixels in raw RGB format, with each pixel represented as three bytes (red, green, blue) at 8 bits per channel, producing uncompressed files of exactly 184,320 bytes. The format has no header, no metadata, and no compression — the file is simply a sequential dump of raw pixel data in row-major order. This extreme simplicity reflects the format's origins in the amateur radio community, where SSTV images are transmitted as audio tones encoding luminance and chrominance values over narrow-bandwidth HF (shortwave) radio channels. The fixed 256x240 resolution corresponds to common SSTV transmission modes, and HRZ files serve as the digital capture or storage medium for received SSTV transmissions. One advantage is the format's zero-overhead structure: with no parsing, decompression, or metadata processing required, HRZ files can be read by any program capable of reading raw pixel data with known dimensions — a single function call in virtually any programming language. The format's connection to amateur radio SSTV culture is another notable aspect: HRZ files document a unique form of image communication where operators transmit photographs over thousands of miles using nothing but radio waves and audio encoding, a practice that continues today alongside digital modes. HRZ files can be opened by ImageMagick, GIMP, and specialized SSTV software.
Developer: SSTV Community
Initial release: 1985

Frequently Asked Questions

Why convert CID to HRZ?

HRZ is used in ham radio slow-scan television. Convert CID glyphs to HRZ to transmit CJK character images over amateur radio frequencies.

How do I view HRZ images?

SSTV decoding software like MMSSTV, QSSTV, and ImageMagick can display HRZ files. The format uses a fixed 256x240 resolution.

What resolution does HRZ use?

HRZ images are fixed at 256x240 pixels with 8-bit color depth — matching the standard slow-scan television transmission parameters.

Is HRZ a common format?

HRZ is niche, used primarily in amateur radio communities. It exists to bridge image data and radio frequency transmission.

Is this conversion free?

Yes — Convertio converts CID to HRZ at no cost. No special software or registration needed.