Over the years new software applications spawned new file formats for images and video. However, users demand interoperability and standardisation. So a handful of formats have emerged for the interchange and archiving of digital assets. Some are a proprietary, but have become de facto standards, other are approved by International standards bodies like the ISO/IEC. Since the turn of the century, there has been a real impetus to improve interoperability across the board. The penalties for the use of closed, proprietary formats are financial. Knowledge workers should be free to concentrate on authoring original material and the production of finished content. Manipulating content into myriad formats for interchange is a waste of valuable time.

The digital asset management system can automate the underlying processes of file interchange. New standards that wrap essence and metadata ease the processes and workflow. Metadata is essential to digital asset management. The AAF provides a framework for the preservation of metadata in a form that can be used on any platform by any compatible application.

For textual material, XML along with the DTD and XML schema offers solutions to the problems of re-purposing content for different distribution channels. By separating style from format, the production of printed information and web pages can share common content.

Video formats have evolved from the SD colour format developed by the NTSC in the early 1950s. This standard established the interlaced scan and the composite colour encoding. Later VTRs were developed. The pace of new formats has quickened, but...