File Formats for Television: The Migration Dilemma
A new generation of interchange formats is emerging. The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) has been designed for post-production and is also being used in news production and other applications. The AAF Association offers a reference implementation that represents a defacto standard. The Material Exchange Format (MXF) was designed for source material and finished material transfers. Work on MXF has been under way for a few years, and the MXF standards are now ready to support commercial products. Neither AAF nor MXF is the first format in their respective class; both have benefited from their predecessors. Integrating these new formats into existing facilities offers some challenges for both the end-users and vendors. It is easy to see the potential benefits of the new formats when viewed in isolation, but in practical applications these benefits can be realized only when there is a clear plan for integrating new equipment and formats with existing infrastructures. This paper will discuss the capabilities and uses of the new formats and describe some strategies for working with the established interchange formats.
- Print ISSN
- 1545-0279
- Electronic ISSN
- 2160-2492
- Published
- 2004-07
- Content type
- Original Research
- DOI
- 10.5594/J15170