PICON to MTV Converter

Turn your PICON bitmaps into MTV format — fast and online

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Any Device Works

Convert PICON to MTV from Windows, macOS, Linux, or mobile — the browser-based tool adapts to any screen size and operating system.

Lightning Fast

PICON files are small and convert to MTV in seconds. The cloud-based engine handles the transformation quickly so you can download right away.

Secure Processing

Uploaded PICON images are erased right after conversion, and the resulting MTV files are purged within 24 hours — your data stays private.

How to convert PICON to MTV

1

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

2

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

3

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

About formats

PICON (Personal Icon) is a small-format image type used in the X Window System ecosystem, developed by Steve Kinzler at Indiana University around 1990 as part of the picons (personal icons) database project. Picons are small, typically 48x48 pixel, color images used as visual identifiers for people, organizations, domains, and Usenet newsgroups in Unix mail readers, news readers, and other communication tools. The picon format is essentially an XPM (X PixMap) image stored with specific naming conventions and directory structures that allow software to look up the appropriate icon based on email address, domain name, or newsgroup name. The picons database organized thousands of these small images in a hierarchical directory structure keyed by domain name components (e.g., faces/com/example/user.xpm), enabling mail clients like exmstrstrstr and faces to automatically display a sender's photo or organizational logo alongside their messages. The system predated the modern concept of contact photos and avatars by more than a decade. One advantage is the system's pioneering role in visual identity for electronic communication: picons introduced the idea that email and Usenet messages should display a visual representation of the sender — a concept that eventually became standard in every modern email client, messaging app, and social media platform. The XPM-based format ensures that picons are displayable on any system with X Window libraries. Picon images are supported by ImageMagick, GIMP, and X Window display utilities, and the historical picons database remains archived online at Indiana University.
Developer: Steve Kinzler
Initial release: 1990
MTV is a simple raster image format created by Mark T. VandeWettering for the MTV Ray Tracer, a ray tracing program released in 1988 as one of the early publicly available ray tracers distributed through Usenet. The format stores 24-bit RGB images with a minimal text header followed by raw pixel data. The header consists of a single line containing the image width and height as ASCII integers, followed immediately by the pixel data where each pixel occupies three bytes (red, green, blue) arranged in row-major order from top-left to bottom-right. The MTV Ray Tracer itself was significant in the history of computer graphics — distributed freely via the comp.graphics Usenet newsgroup, it introduced many programmers and students to the principles of ray tracing: ray-object intersection, reflection, refraction, shadows, and recursive shading. The MTV format was the program's native output, and its simplicity made it easy for users to write custom viewers and converters on whatever platform they had access to — a practical necessity in the fragmented Unix workstation landscape of the late 1980s. One advantage is extreme implementation simplicity: the format can be read in a handful of lines of code in any programming language, with no libraries, no compression algorithms, and no metadata parsing required — just read two integers and then read width x height x 3 bytes of pixel data. The format's historical significance in the computer graphics community provides another dimension — MTV files from early ray tracing experiments represent primary artifacts from the era when ray tracing transitioned from academic research to accessible software. MTV files are supported by ImageMagick and various legacy graphics tools.
Initial release: 1988

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the reason to convert PICON to MTV?

PICON is tied to Unix file managers. Switching to MTV gives you ray-tracing image format and broad support across platforms, browsers, and devices.

How do I open a MTV file?

Software that handles MTV includes ImageMagick, specialized ray-tracing software — giving you options on every major operating system.

How long does PICON to MTV conversion take?

Usually just seconds. PICON files are typically small, so the upload, conversion, and download process finishes very quickly on Convertio.

Is PICON to MTV conversion free?

You can convert PICON to MTV for free on Convertio. Premium plans are available if you need higher throughput or larger file allowances.

Does converting PICON to MTV affect quality?

Quality is maintained to the extent MTV supports. Since PICON is a small thumbnail/icon format from Unix systems, the visual data transfers cleanly to MTV.

Are my uploaded files kept private?

Your privacy is protected. All uploaded files are erased after conversion and output files are purged within 24 hours — nothing is stored long-term.