Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff formats: VP3, VIP, HUS and VP4, and which one your machine wants

Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff share a software lineage, which is why they share formats and why there are four of them. Each is a generation: HUS for the 1990s, VIP for the early 2000s, VP3 from about 2008, VP4 for the current object-based software. Machines read the stitch ones; only software reads VP4.

HUS

The original Husqvarna format. A short header (magic number, stitch count, colour count, extents), a colour table of indices into Husqvarna's own thread list, then three compressed streams: attributes (stitch, jump, colour change), x deltas and y deltas. The compression is a Huffman-style scheme that made files small for the floppy disks of the day and makes readers hard to write; it is why some free tools open HUS wrong or not at all.

Readers here decode the three streams and check the stitch count against the header, so a HUS that opens in the viewer is decoded completely, not approximately. Colours are 29 fixed entries, which is the reason HUS designs all seem to use the same reds and blues.

VIP

The next generation, for the Designer I and its contemporaries. Same three-stream structure as HUS, with each block additionally scrambled with a simple keyed XOR, and a larger colour table stored as RGB rather than as indices. VIP files carry real colours, which made them the format shops preferred for that era.

VIP machines generally read HUS too, and VIP readers usually handle both because the stream decoding is shared.

VP3

The current stitch format, read by every Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff embroidery machine sold since about 2008 (Designer Diamond, Topaz, Ruby, Epic; Pfaff creative 2.0 onward) and written by their software as the machine file. It is uncompressed and readable: a header with the design's extents in 1/1000 mm, then one block per colour, each with a thread record (RGB, thread name, catalogue number, brand, weight) and the stitches as signed byte pairs in 0.1 mm units, with an escape for longer moves.

Two things make VP3 different from PES and JEF:

• Thread names are stored, not palette indices. A design digitised in Robison-Anton 2378 says so in the file. The machine screen shows the number and the software shows the brand. Converting to VP3 from a format with real colours (XXX, TBF, later PES) keeps them; from PES v1 the Brother palette name goes in; from DST, defaults.
• No jump command. VP3 has stitches and colour changes; a long move is written as a stitch of that length, which the machine sews as a jump if it exceeds the machine's jump threshold. Our writer keeps every position exact rather than rounding block starts, which is the one place the common reference library (pyembroidery) loses a tenth of a millimetre.

Colour changes in VP3 are block boundaries: each block is one colour, so a "stop" (an applique pause) is stored as a new block with the same thread. The viewer shows that as two blocks with the same colour, which is what the machine does too.

VP4

VP4 is not a stitch format. It is the native save of mySewnet Embroidery Software and Premier+ Ultra: objects, stitch settings, fonts, the background picture, the whole project. Machines do not read it, and no third-party converter opens it. Export VP3 from the software, which is what its own "send to machine" does. Object formats has the same story for EMB and ART.

PCS (older Pfaff)

Pfaff machines before the merger read PCS: a small header, a 16-entry colour table of RGB, and stitches as pairs of 16-bit values with a flag byte. Readers here open it; there is no writer because no current machine wants it. Pfaff creative machines from the 2.0 onward read VP3.

Which format for which machine

| Machine | Reads | Send | |---|---|---| | Husqvarna Viking Rose, Iris, #1+ (1990s) | HUS | HUS | | Designer I, Platinum, SE | VIP, HUS | VIP | | Designer Diamond, Topaz, Ruby, Sapphire, Epic, Brilliance | VP3, VIP, HUS | VP3 | | Pfaff 2140, 2170 | PCS, VIP | VIP | | Pfaff creative 2.0 to icon 2 | VP3 | VP3 | | mySewnet / Premier+ software | all of the above, VP4 | VP3 for the machine |

When in doubt, VP3: every current machine of both brands reads it, and it keeps colours.

Converting

Into VP3 from PES, JEF, DST, EXP, XXX and the rest: stitches exact, colours as thread records (from the source's palette or chart; default greys for DST and EXP), trims become long stitches that the machine treats as jumps. The PES to VP3 page has the details of that pair, the commonest.

HUS or VIP into VP3, for a newer machine or for software that no longer opens the old formats: HUS to VP3. Stitches exact; HUS's 29 colours become their RGB values in thread records.

Out of VP3 to PES: thread records become Brother palette entries (nearest colour); to DST: colours dropped; to JEF: Janome chart entries. The converter lists what each target keeps.

Reading a problem file

A VP3 that a machine refuses is usually too large for the hoop (the machine checks the extents) or has an extension that does not match its contents. The viewer identifies the format from the file's signature, shows the size, and the hoop fit checker has the Husqvarna and Pfaff hoop fields (120 × 120, 240 × 150, 260 × 200, 360 × 200 mm).