 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2019) |
The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) is a file format for professional cross-platform data interchange, designed for the video post-production and authoring environment. It was created by the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), and is now being standardized through the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).
AAF was originally created by the AMWA, formerly the AAF Association Inc., a trade association created to develop and promote adoption of specifications and technologies, such as AAF, Material Exchange Format (MXF), and Service-oriented architecture (SOA), to facilitate the deployment and operation of efficient media workflows. Technical work of the AMWA is through projects that aim to improve compatibility between AAF, Broadcast Exchange Format (BXF), MXF and XML. The current projects fall into three categories: data models, interface specifications, and application specifications.
AAF was created to help address the problem of multi-vendor, cross-platform interoperability for computer-based digital video production.
The AAF Object Model is now being standardized through SMPTE, including a better definition of the mapping between MXF and AAF essence.
Capabilities of AAF include the following:
There are two kinds of data that can be interchanged using AAF:
By preserving source referencing, and abstracting the creative decisions that are made, AAF tries to improve workflow and simplify project management.
AAF's rich data model combining metadata and various types of essence has led to its use in non-broadcast applications as well. For example, AAF has been adopted by the DoD/IC Motion Imagery Standards Board (MISB) [2] for their Aerial Surveillance and Photogrammetry Applications standard (ASPA).
The core elements of the AAF specification include:
AAF is designed to be a data representation of works in progress, as compared to Material Exchange Format (MXF), which is for exchanging finished media products. While MXF uses a Key Length Value (KLV) format for storage, [3] [4] AAF uses the Microsoft Structured Storage system. [5]
MXF was developed as a subtype of the AAF data model, under a zero-divergence policy, which allows for workflows that mix AAF and MXF. [3] Specifically, all MXF metadata can be understood by AAF, but not all AAF metadata can be understood by MXF (and would be filtered out during encoding as a result). [3]
Material Exchange Format (MXF) is a container format for professional digital video and audio media defined by a set of SMPTE standards. A typical example of its use is for delivering advertisements to TV stations and tapeless archiving of broadcast TV programs. It is also used as part of the Digital Cinema Package for delivering movies to commercial theaters.
MPEG-7 is a multimedia content description standard. It was standardized in ISO/IEC 15938. This description will be associated with the content itself, to allow fast and efficient searching for material that is of interest to the user. MPEG-7 is formally called Multimedia Content Description Interface. Thus, it is not a standard which deals with the actual encoding of moving pictures and audio, like MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. It uses XML to store metadata, and can be attached to timecode in order to tag particular events, or synchronise lyrics to a song, for example.
Digital Picture Exchange (DPX) is a common file format for digital intermediate and visual effects work and is a SMPTE standard. The file format is most commonly used to represent the density of each colour channel of a scanned negative film in an uncompressed "logarithmic" image where the gamma of the original camera negative is preserved as taken by a film scanner. For this reason, DPX is the worldwide-chosen format for still frames storage in most digital intermediate post-production facilities and film labs. Other common video formats are supported as well, from video to purely digital ones, making DPX a file format suitable for almost any raster digital imaging applications. DPX provides, in fact, a great deal of flexibility in storing colour information, colour spaces and colour planes for exchange between production facilities. Multiple forms of packing and alignment are possible. The DPX specification allows for a wide variety of metadata to further clarify information stored within each file.
These tables compare features of multimedia container formats, most often used for storing or streaming digital video or digital audio content. To see which multimedia players support which container format, look at comparison of media players.
Digital Cinema Initiatives, LLC (DCI) is a consortium of major motion picture studios, formed to establish specifications for a common systems architecture for digital cinema systems.
Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) is an extension of the popular Microsoft WAV audio format and is the recording format of most file-based non-linear digital recorders used for motion picture, radio and television production. It was first specified by the European Broadcasting Union in 1997, and updated in 2001 and 2003. It has been accepted as the ITU recommendation ITU-R BS.1352-3, Annex 1.
AXMEDIS is a set of European Union digital content standards, initially created as a research project running from 2004 to 2008 partially supported by the European Commission under the Information Society Technologies programme of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). It stands for "Automating Production of Cross Media Content for Multi-channel Distribution". Now it is distributed as a framework, and is still being maintained and improved. A large part of the framework is under open source licensing. The AXMEDIS framework includes a set of tools, models, test cases, documents, etc. supporting the production and distribution of cross media content.
StorNext File System (SNFS), colloquially referred to as StorNext is a shared disk file system made by Quantum Corporation. StorNext enables multiple Windows, Linux and Apple workstations to access shared block storage over a Fibre Channel network. With the StorNext file system installed, these computers can read and write to the same storage volume at the same time enabling what is known as a "file-locking SAN." StorNext is used in environments where large files must be shared, and accessed simultaneously by users without network delays, or where a file must be available for access by multiple readers starting at different times. Common use cases include multiple video editor environments in feature film, television and general video post production.
Broadcast Exchange Format (BXF) is an SMPTE standard for data exchange in the broadcasting industry.
General eXchange Format (GXF), is a file exchange format for the transfer of simple and compound clips between television program storage systems. It is a container format that can contain Motion JPEG (M-JPEG), MPEG, or DV-based video compression standards, with associated audio, time code, and user data that may include user-defined metadata.
Ingex is an open-source (GPL) suite of software for the digital capture of audio and video data, without the need for traditional audio or video tape or cassettes. Serial digital interface (SDI) capture is supported, as well as real-time transcoding. Portions of the software suite also act as a network file server for media files, as well as archiving to LTO-3 data tape. Audio and video media files can also be stored on USB hard drives or Network Attached Storage. The software is heavily used by the BBC, and was developed by the BBC Research Laboratory.
CinemaDNG is the result of an Adobe-led initiative to define an industry-wide open file format for digital cinema files. CinemaDNG caters for sets of movie clips, each of which is a sequence of raw video images, accompanied by audio and metadata. CinemaDNG supports stereoscopic cameras and multiple audio channels. CinemaDNG specifies directory structures containing one or more video clips, and specifies requirements and constraints for the open format files,, within those directories, that contain the content of those clips.
Content storage management (CSM) is a technique for the evolution of traditional media archive technology used by media companies and content owners to store and protect valuable file-based media assets. CSM solutions focus on active management of content and media assets regardless of format, type and source, interfaces between proprietary content source/destination devices and any format and type of commodity IT centric storage technology. These digital media files most often contain video but in rarer cases may be still pictures or sound. A CSM system may be directed manually but is more often directed by upper-level systems, which may include media asset management (MAM), automation, or traffic.
The Entertainment Identifier Registry, or EIDR, is a global unique identifier system for a broad array of audio visual objects, including motion pictures, television, and radio programs. The identification system resolves an identifier to a metadata record that is associated with top-level titles, edits, DVDs, encodings, clips, and mash-ups. EIDR also provides identifiers for video service providers, such as broadcast and cable networks.
The Digital Production Partnership (DPP) is an initiative formed jointly by the UK's public service broadcasters to help producers and broadcasters maximise the potential benefits of digital television production.
The Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) is a color image encoding system created under the auspices of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. ACES allows for a fully encompassing color accurate workflow, with "seamless interchange of high quality motion picture images regardless of source".
Timed Text Markup Language (TTML), previously referred to as Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP), is an XML-based W3C standard for timed text in online media and was designed to be used for the purpose of authoring, transcoding or exchanging timed text information presently in use primarily for subtitling and captioning functions. TTML2, the second major revision of the language, was finalized on November 8, 2018. It has been adopted widely in the television industry, including by Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), European Broadcasting Union (EBU), ATSC, DVB, HbbTV and MPEG CMAF and several profiles and extensions for the language exist nowadays.
The Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) is an industry association focused on the content creation industry's move to IP-based architectures. AMWA promotes industry standards that allow diverse devices to discover and interoperate with each other reliably and securely.
Interoperable Master Format (IMF) is a container format for the standardized digital delivery and storage of finished audio-visual masters, including movies, episodic content and advertisements.