Guidelines: MXF Application Specification
Audio-Visual Working Group

Draft under development.
The Working Group began drafting an MXF Application Specification for archiving and preservation in 2009.  In 2012-15, the effort continued under the auspices of the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), where the specification has been assigned the identifier AS-07.  AMWA has approved the June 2016 version as an official Proposed Specification.

AS-07 offers a detailed specification for a file "wrapper," one key part of a digital file format for audio-visual preservation. The specification includes a list of permitted encoded essences (the underlying content bitstreams), defines a means for the carriage of multiple timecodes; the handling of captions, subtitles, and Timed Text; a minimal core metadata set; program segmentation metadata; and embedded content integrity data.

The overall application specification has been written broadly, to cover a wide range of audio-visual content.  AMWA specifications, however, allow for the creation of what are called shims, special profiles with added constraints to fit a narrower application.  The AS-07 development team has prepared one shim for release at the time of initial publication: the AS-07 Baseband Shim: Single Items from Baseband Video. This shim is intended to serve the most critical current needs of many archives: the reformatting of older analog and digital videotapes and, for some organizations, the encoding and packaging of "live" video streams sent to an archive via a serial interface.  The details for AS-07 Baseband Shim are presented in appendix J of the most recent drafts of the specification.

We are eager to receive comments on the specification.

SPECIFICATION UNDER DEVELOPMENT

Current draft posted at the AMWA Web site:

• June 2016: AS-07 (includes Baseband Shim as table in Appendix J) (114 pages)
• Note: The AS-07 Application Specification continues to evolve thanks to peer review and feedback. Until a new version is published, a live list of updates to the current version is available here.

A set of graded sample files based on the June 2016 AS-07 Application Specification is available.

Earlier draft posted at the AMWA Web site:

• September 2015: AS-07 (includes Baseband Shim as table in Appendix J) (111 pages)
• September 2014: AS-07 (includes Baseband Shim as table in Appendix J) (89 pages)

Earlier drafts (at the FADGI site):

• October 2012: MXF Application Specification for Archiving and Preservation, version 1k
• August 2011: MXF Application Specification for Archiving and Preservation, version 1h
• October 2010: MXF Application Specification for Archiving and Preservation, version 1d

BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS

• Items in bold are most useful.
• September 2015: User Needs and MXF Options: Preservation Planning and the AS-07 Specification, (current version) 25 pages.
• September 2014: User Needs and MXF Options: Preservation Planning and the AS-07 Specification, (earlier version) 20 pages.
• January 2013: Working list of generalized user requirements, 3 pages.
• August 2011: Preservation Video File Format Issues and Considerations, 11 pages.
• October 2010: Audio-Visual Format Documentation: Background Paper, August 2011, 14 pages.
• November 2010: Notes from user-community technical meeting at AMIA/IASA joint conference, 5 pages.
• October 2010: JPEG 2000 profile illustrative sketch, 3 pages.

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Working Groups

Still Image Working Group
This group is involved in a cooperative effort to develop common digitization guidelines for still image materials.

Audio-Visual Working Group
The goal for this working group is to identify, establish, and disseminate information about standards and practices for the digital reformatting of audio-visual materials by federal agencies.