CDXL File

What are CDXL files and how to open them

Are you having problems opening a CDXL file or are you simply curious about its contents? We're here to explain the properties of these files and provide you with software that can open or handle your CDXL files.

What is a CDXL file?

A .CDXL file is an Amiga CDXL Video file.

The Amiga CDXL Video format is a motion-video and audio file format made by Commodore in the late 1980s and early 1990s for Amiga computers. It was developed specifically to play simple videos directly from CD-ROM systems such as the Amiga CDTV. Files contain a series of frames - an image and related audio data - streamed in sequence for playback; low CPU overhead was a design goal, not high resolution or complex compression.

CDXL files are produced by authoring tools or converters that assemble raw video frames (often in formats like HAM, RGB, YUV, or others depending on Amiga capabilities) together with uncompressed audio data (commonly 8-bit PCM). During playback, compatible Amiga hardware or emulator software reads each frame in turn, displays the image, plays the associated audio, and then moves to the next frame. Users often set frame rate or display mode manually because the file itself may omit some timing information.

Technically, each CDXL file is composed of a succession of frame packets; each packet begins with a frame header containing fields such as video width, height, number of bit planes, palette size, audio data size, and a frame number. Audio is stored as signed 8-bit PCM; palette data if present is encoded as 12-bit RGB values (4 bits each for red, green, blue) stored in 16-bit words. All multi-byte values use big-endian byte order.

How to open CDXL files

We have identified one CDXL opener that is compatible with this specific type of CDXL file.

Programs that open Amiga CDXL Video files

Last updated: August 5, 2026

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