MXF - The Material Exchange Format Demystified


Speaker: Lowell Moulton, Senior Technical Consultant, Sony Systems Integration

Date & time: Tuesday, 25 Mar 2003

Meeting organizer: Kellie McKeown

Program:

Many new and pending SMPTE standards relate to an internationally accepted video and audio file-interchange format called MXF, the Material Exchange Format. Our speaker, Lowell Moulton, of Sony Systems Integration, will tell us about these new standards and why we should care about them. Those going to NAB and the Pro-MPEG Forum Interoperability Suite will also better prepared to ask knowledgeable questions of the many vendors who will be showing MXF-based products.

Lowell will review some of the basic technical strategies for building production and distribution systems using MXF, UMID (Unique Material ID), and metadata-enabled digital asset management. Building mixed MXF and SDI plants will require KLV-encoded metadata for SMPTE 291M vertical ancillary data packets.

Workflow will be drastically changed when metadata-rich MXF production technologies are implemented. MXF enables material to be easily searched and accessed at temporal resolutions down to individual frames. The variety and quantity of metadata associated with AV essence has no technical limitations.

System designers will have options about where they encode metadata in MXF based systems, allowing metadata to be: 1.) embedded in essence tracks; 2.) associated with essence tracks; 3.) attached as a header to essence tracks; or 4.) stored in a separate database. SMPTE UMID is a globally unique identifier for AV material that can provide a link between MXF files and separate databases.

Lowell will discuss the three new SMPTE engineering guidelines for MXF, the Descriptive Metadata Scheme, and the catalog of MXF enumerated values. He'll also cover SMPTE 377M, the MXF File Format, SMPTE 379M, the Generic Container, SMPTE 330M, UMID, and the many essence mappings and operational patterns, including SMPTE 378M, 381M, 382M, 383M, 384M, 385M, 386M, 387M 390M, 391M 392M and 393M.

Additional information on Lowell's program is available from the Sony webpage at www.sony-bplabs.com/research/frm_mxf.htm and at the Pro-MPEG forum www.pro-mpeg.org which also contains additional links to MXF material and discussions.

Welcome:

SMPTEsf  welcomes members and friends to attend without charge. Reservations are not required for this meeting.

Location:

Round Table Pizza
1225 El Camino Real [at Oak Grove Ave.]
Menlo Park, CA 94025-4208

*Food and drinks are availiable on a no-host basis (means that you pay for yours) from Round Table.

PARKING: The Round Table in Menlo Park has two dozen spaces of its own, plus there's a huge, free municipal parking lot only a few yards from the restaurant, behind the buildings on the south side of Oak Grove Ave.

1225 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA, 94025-4208, US

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