| Full name | Material Exchange Format (MXF) -- MXF Generic Container |
| Description | The native essence container for the MXF file format that carries video, audio, metadata and other "payloads," i.e., bitstreams called essences in the audio-visual community. The container is described as "streamable," meaning that its audio-visual content can be "continuously decoded through mechanisms such as interleaving essence components with stream-based metadata." (The term does not refer to streaming in sense that this word is used in connection with protocols like the Real-Time Transport Protocol [RTP] and the Real Time Streaming Protocol [RTSP].)
See Notes for additional information.
Each of the subtypes listed below is used by MXF, Material Exchange Format. |
| Production phase | Typically a middle-state format for material exchange or archiving; in some circumstances may be a final state format for use in a delivery context, e.g., broadcasting. |
| Relationship to other formats | |
| Has subtype | MXF_GC_UNC, MXF Generic Container Mapped to Uncompressed Images |
| Has subtype | MXF_GC_MPEG-2, MXF Generic Container Mapped to MPEG-2 Video Bitstream |
| Has subtype | MXF_GC_SDTI-CP, MXF Generic Container Mapped to SDTI Content Package |
| Has subtype | MXF_GC_DV-DIF, MXF Generic Container Mapped to DV-DIF Packets |
| Has subtype | MXF_GC_JP2, MXF Generic Container Mapped to JPEG 2000 |
| Has subtype | MXF_GC_AES3, MXF Generic Container Mapped to AES3 Audio (LPCM) |
| Has subtype | MXF generic container mapped to other encodings, not documented at this time. |
| Disclosure | Open standard. Developed by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), a member of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). |
| Documentation | SMPTE 379M-2004, Material Exchange Format (MXF) -- MXF Generic Container; related key documents include the engineering guidelines SMPTE EG 41-2004, Material Exchange Format (MXF) -- Engineering Guideline and SMPTE EG 42-2004, Material Exchange Format (MXF) -- MXF Descriptive Metadata, and a number of related specifications. For a full list of citations, see Format specifications in MXF. |
| Adoption | See MXF |
| Licensing and patent claims | See MXF |
| Transparency | Depends upon encoding; see subtypes listed in Identification and description above and the encoding they incorporate. All video codecs depend upon algorithms and tools to read and will require sophistication to build tools. |
| Self-documentation | Extensive system or structural metadata is required to support the use of the various bitstreams placed in the Generic Containers, and this metadata is encoded as KLV (Key-Length-Value) data, and is found with the bitstreams in the container. Descriptive metadata for users is associated with the MXF format itself. |
| External dependencies | None |
| Technical protection considerations | See MXF |
| Video elements | |
| Normal rendering | Not applicable |
| Clarity (support for high image resolution) | Potentially excellent; depends upon encoding; see subtypes listed in Identification and description above and the descriptions of the encodings they incorporate. |
| Functionality beyond normal video rendering | Not applicable |
| Sound elements | |
| Normal rendering for sound | Not applicable |
| Fidelity (support for high audio resolution) | Potentially excellent; depends upon encoding. For example, the specification set includes a mapping of WAVE_LCPM_BWF (a "storage" format; the same encoding is also referred to as the "interface format" AES3) into the MXF Generic Container; see the subtype MXF_AES3.
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| Support for multiple sound channels | See MXF |
| Functionality beyond normal sound rendering | Not applicable |
