Interoperability Between Post Production Systems Becomes A Reality As More Vendors Implement AAF
Las Vegas, Nev. (April 7, 2024) - AAF, the Advanced Authoring Format, is becoming the format of choice for content and metadata interchange in post production. At NAB 2002, several manufacturers will exhibit products currently implementing AAF support. Demonstrations in the Interoperability Center at NAB (Suite S230, South Hall) will illustrate AAF's increasing adoption by equipment vendors and broadcasters and the support the format is receiving from the post production community.
"People are implementing AAF in product, which has been our goal from the beginning. It's really exciting to see AAF take off, and I'm looking forward to users applying it for its intended purpose -- to allow people to move content and metadata seamlessly throughout the post production environment," says Brad Gilmer, AAF Association Executive Director.
Among the companies exhibiting AAF support at NAB are Avid Technology, which includes AAF import and export throughout its product range; Quantel's IQ series of post production systems, which all make full use of AAF's capabilities: Pandora International and Snell & Wilcox, which will have present several products at NAB 2002 that implement AAF.
"AAF is clearly the best standard for interoperability, and it's good to see the widespread support it's getting in the broadcast industry," says Aine Marsland, Pandora International Managing Director. The company is implementing AAF at the core of two new collaborations at NAB 2002. One allows the seamless import and export of AAF files into Pandora's Pogle Platinum telecine grading system from Quantel's iQ editing system (the first post production system to include AAF).
"It works like a 'super EDL,' adding more to the standard EDL information. We've agreed with Quantel what to put in, and how it will be read, so when the colorist wants to mark a particular point in the material for the Quantel operator to work on, he pulls up a small GUI window and makes the appropriate notations. The Quantel uses the same window on its display to read the comments from the colorist," says Franz Holler, Pandora Research and Development Software Engineer.
Pandora has also collaborated with the manufacturers of the Diamond film restoration suite to build special software using AAF for the remote control of Diamond from within the Pogle Platinum system.
"We're using AAF because it's a standardized format that allows us to exchange not only metadata but the essence itself. And we can extend AAF in defined ways to allow us to put more information in an AAF file without breaking the code or applications that don't understand our particular application now. It will be usable for them when they can," says Holler
Snell & Wilcox will also show how it is using AAF at NAB 2002. The format is at the core of a new series of software components designed specifically for networked production, based around the Spirint high-performance disk recorder (developed by Post Impressions, the technology company acquired by Snell & Wilcox last year). One of these products is Synapse, a backbone infrastructure that allows multiple users to collaborate on multiple applications. "Synapse is highly modeled after AAF. Most of the concepts in the metadata server are very close to AAF, which we think will give us a good advantage through this very high AAF compliance. Importing and exporting AAF files will be very transparent," says Stephane Blondin, Director of Software Applications at Snell & Wilcox. "The market has needed something like AAF for quite a while, and it's rallied a lot of people around it, with some very good people working on it," adds Blondin.
NAB 2002 will also see the debut of AAF version 1.0.1, which is a maintenance release that includes the work accomplished at developers conferences during the past year. In addition, several manufacturers have developed extensions to the AAF code, which are made available for all to use in this release. "We've taken all the contributed changes and tested them to ensure they work with previous versions of AAF, and also work on all AAF-supported platforms -- Windows, MAC, IRIX and Linux. This is very much an exercise in quality assurance," says AAF Engineering Director Phil Tudor.
The AAF Association will also present a multi-generation test system that automatically tests AAF file modifications to meet quality assurance guidelines. In addition, the AAF reference toolkit has been further enhanced with a set of edit implementation guidelines that explain how to model edit decisions in the post production environment. These new guidelines also act as a FAQ for those writing their first AAF programs.
ABOUT AAF:
The Advanced Authoring Format is a completely open-source format that is free to use and include in products with no restrictions. Its development has featured a nearly unique collaboration in which several major companies have contributed essential parts of the code, which were created by their top software design engineers. Avid is contributing the majority of code, while Microsoft is contributing Structured Storage, BBC is contributing an MPEG codec, Sony has developed numerous code enhancements, NOB has added to the data model and name space via SMPTE metadata dictionaries, Quantel is contributing an AAF-to-EDL converter, and Discreet is contributing an AAF port to UNIX. Other members are contributing significantly with testing and review.
The AAF is an interchange toolkit, which exists to exchange video, audio and metadata from one production system to another. It includes the capacity for very rich metadata features, optimized to meet the requirements of the modern post production environment.
AAF can wrap video, audio, data and even references to external essence along with instructions on how to render this material into a finished program. It can be used to describe complex relationships in content, map essence on to a timeline, synchronize essence streams, describe layering and effects compositions, and retain project history data. It remains robust through round trips between systems, and it can carry all essence and metadata for a project in a single, archivable file.
AAF is issued under the AAF Public Source License. It is free to use, and derivative works can be made from the SDK without restriction. Developers can include AAF in products that will be sold, while being afforded copyright infringement protection by any contributor to the AAF SDK..
ABOUT THE AAF ASSOCIATION:
The Advanced Authoring Format is administered by the AAF Association, a cross industry, not-for-profit organization introducing new solutions to the complicated world of multimedia authoring. At present, 45 organizations are members of the AAF Association, including manufacturers, broadcasters, post production houses and other support groups.
PRESS CONTACTS:
BRAD GILMER, AAF Association Executive Director [email protected],
+1 770 414 9952.
MARK HORTON, AAF Association Marketing Director [email protected],
+44 1635 48222.
|
