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AMWA provides worldwide leadership in developing and advancing the use of media standards and technology that enable more effective networked media workflows.

The Association has a number of projects in progress. Members of the AMWA work closely with committees at standards bodies like the SMPTE to ensure that work is not duplicated, and that the AMWA specifications are aligned with International standards.

To assist developers the AMWA provides comprehensive documentation on the programming interfaces and data models defined by the AMWA Specifications.

Much of the work on the specifications can be followed in the members-only AMWA Forum. Some of the projects can be found on SourceForge.

Finished specifications are published on this web site.

The AMWA projects use three primary standards:

- AAF, the Advanced Authoring Format (AMWA MS-01)
- MXF - Material Exchange Format (SMPTE 377M-2004)
- BXF - Broadcast Exchange Format (SMPTE S2021-2008)

APPLICATION SPECIFICATIONS

AMWA ID	Name	Description	Status
AS-01	AAF Edit Protocol	Edit metadata interchange using AAF. Includes base set of effects. Project Owner: Phil Tudor, [email protected]	Published.
AS-02	MXF Versioning (was MXF Mastering Format)	Storage of MXF program components to enable versions & inventories, for use in a multi-version, multi-lingual, multi-delivery media environment. Project Owner: Michael Koetter, [email protected]	Published.
AS-03	MXF Program Delivery	MXF optimized for program delivery intended for direct playout via a video server for example. This is based on a PBS profile for MXF program delivery. Project Owner: Chris Homer, [email protected]	Published.
AS-05	AAF Effects Protocol	Extends AS-01 with color, text & opacity effects Project Owner: James Cain, [email protected]	Published.
AS-07	MXF Archiving & Preservation	A vendor-neutral subset of the MXF file format to use for long-term archiving and preservation of moving image content and associated materials including audio, captions and metadata. Archive and Preservation files may contain a single item, or an entire series of items. Project Owner: Carl Fleischhauer, [email protected]	Approved project, specification in development
AS-10	MXF for Production	MXF for end-to-end production workflow Project Owner: Dan Shockley, [email protected]	Published.
AS-11	Media Contribution File Formats	The AMWA AS-11 family of Specifications define constrained media file formats for the delivery of finished media assets to a broadcaster or publisher. Includes Specifications used by broadcasters in the UK (DPP), Nordic countries, Australia and New Zealand. Project Owner: Phil Tudor, [email protected]	See details of each specification, and the name of the Business Requirements Owner, for each individual AS-11 Specification
AS-12	MXF Commercial Delivery	MXF format optimized for the delivery of finished commercials to broadcast stations. AS-12 adds advertising identification metadata to an advertisement contained in an AMWA MXF Application Specification compliant MXF file. Project Owner: Harold Geller, [email protected]	Published.
DOT-ISR	AAF for ISR	AAF format for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Project Owner: AMWA Board of Directors, [email protected]	Published.

DATA MODELS

AMWA ID	Name	Description	Status
MS-01	AAF Data Model	AAF Data Model (SMPTE 2033 - in progress).	Published.
MS-02	AAF Structured Storage Mapping	Mapping from AAF objects to Structured Storage	Published.
MS-03	Structured Storage Specification	Structured Storage Specification	Published.

INTERFACE SPECIFICATIONS

AMWA DEVELOPERS LIBRARY

- AAF SDK API Documentation
- AAF SDK Plugin Programmer's Interface Documentation
- AAF Plugin Specification (PDF, 55k)
- AAF Object Manager Design (PDF, 171k)
- MS-01 AAF Object Manager Documentation
- MS-01 AAF Developers Guide (PDF, 155k)
- AAF FAQ for Programmers is a technical FAQ which offers answers to programming question.
- Null codec implementation and (re)use - Given by Jim Trainor, AAF Developer, at the October 2002 AAF Engineering Meeting, Atlanta (Powerpoint, 245k)
- Patterns in AAF Software - Given by Jim Trainor, AAF Developer, at the 2001 AAF Developers Conference in Barcelona, Spain (PowerPoint, 287k)
- New AAF Examples - Given by Jim Trainor, AAF Developer, at the 2001 AAF Developers Conference in Barcelona, Spain (PowerPoint, 445k)
- The AAF File Format: A Bottom Up Look at AAF Files and the AAF Open Source SDK - Given by Jim Trainor, AAF Developer, at the 2001 AAF Developers Conference in Barcelona, Spain (PowerPoint, 439k)
- The AAF File Format - Given by Jim Trainor, AAF Developer, this is a presentation on AAF for developers from the SMPTE 143rd Technical Conference in New York City (PDF, 47k)
- AAF For Developers - Jim Trainor, AAF Developer (PDF, 217k)
- AAF - Dodo and the Evolution of an interface
- Dodo Reference Manual
- Rebuilding Derived headers on Windows
- How to download Cygwin tools
- AAF and its use of COM
- Performance evaluation for AAF Structured Storage files - Results collated by Phil Tudor, 5 April 2005, version 0.1 (PDF, 127k)
- TN09 - I/O Performance and the AAF Toolkit - April 5, 2024 Tim Bingham (PDF, 30k)

AAF SDK

AAF Run-Time Libraries
The AAF dynamically loadable com library, and plugins, required to run AAF applications.

- AAF-runtime-libs file releases

AAF Developer Libraries
he AAF dynamically loadable com library, static libraries, and header files required to develop applications. Debug versions of the libraries are also included.

- AAF-devel-libs file releases

AAF SDK Source Code

- AAF-src file releases

OMF Developer Libraries
The AAF/OMF converter distributed as part of the AAF SDK source code (Utilities/AafOmf) requires OMF libraries which are no longer distributed with the AAF SDK. Instead, the OMF developers libraries, and header files required to develop applications, may be downloaded from here. The following zip archive contains OMF libraries for the Win32 (using MSVC 6 compiler) or Irix 6.5.x (using MIPSPro 7.3.1. compiler) platforms. To build the AAF/OMF converter, download and unpack the following zip file, and place the resulting OMF directory into the top-level of the AAF SDK source tree (i.e., as a peer of AAFWinSDK or AAFMipsIrixSDK). Then build the AafOmf project as required.

- OMF developer libraries

AAF PROGRAMMING EXAMPLES

Download programming examples (745k, tgz)

AAF TUTORIAL

The following files are available in Technical Documents on the AMWA Forum to members only.

- AAF Programmer's Tutorial by Jim Trainor
- AAF Programmer's Tutorial Example Code
- AAF UML Example

PRODUCT REGISTRATION

A site at http://registration.amwa.tv/ is being developed for vendors to register products that comply with AMWA specifications. This site will also host sample files for interoperability tests.

WIKI AND FORUM

Members of the AMWA have access to the FIMS Wiki and a comprehensive Forum with threads devoted to each of the active projects.