TABLE OF CONTENTS One of the problems with managing multimedia assets is that a finished programme will have an assortment of associated unstructured information. Consider a video production. There are the source tapes, audio CDs with incidental music, graphics files, production notes, the edit decision list, a possibly numerous documents relating to research, and scripts.
It would be of great advantage to an efficient workflow if all these separate objects and files could be grouped into single package. This is the aim of the AAF model. Closely linked is the Media eXchange Format (MXF), a subset of the AAF, for optimised exchange of finished programmes with associated metadata.
The AAF is the fruition of broad-based trade association with members from the film, television, and video post-production industries.
Digital media is defined by the SMPTE to comprise two types of data: essence and metadata. Essence is the manifestation of the content that we perceive: the video, audio, and images. The metadata is data about the essence data.
Some examples of metadata include a tape label, an edit decision list and time code. The AAF is a container that wraps essence and its metadata as an object. We have two basic definitions:
Asset = Content + Rights to use
Content = Essence + Metadata.
The SMPTE/EBU 'Task Force for Harmonised Standards for Exchange of Programme Material as Bitstreams' identified the need to develop a common wrapper for interchanging content...
