Background

The Material eXchange Format (MXF) is an open and standardised media container which is revised every 5 years since 2004 (SMPTE 377M). The MXF container was designed to be the closest of broadcasting requirements as defined by domain experts and to take advantage of the lastest information technologies. These requirements was compiled and refactored, inter alia, by the European Broadcast Union and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineer.

Independently of theoretical advantages, broadcasters and audio-video experts does not make a heavy usage of the MXF container because they had experimented, and in facts, continue yet to experience a lot of difficulties to deploy and use the standard under a productive environment. The apparent simplicity of KLV (Key-Length-Value) data model - KLV is standardised as SMPTE 336M and the MXF container is KLV based format - hides complex possibilities in terms of extensibility, interoperability and flexibility. The MXF container has a dual nature ; it is considered as a rich format for archiving and streaming which supports several operational patterns and it's independant of the encoding format of the encapsulated essences. The recent addition of EBUCore metadata support and coming soon of the EBU-TT subtitling format, the lack of ability to transcode some flows horizontally amongst themselves or yet the AMWA family of application specifications for MXF designed to increase the comprehension and interoperability of the container are factors which complexifies the implementation when basics of SMPTE 377M standard are not yet fulfilled.

It is urgent - for comprehension and sustainability of MXF container - to lead and centralise all experimentations and works linked to SMPTE 377M standard.