Advanced Authoring Format

The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF ) is a file format for storing multimedia data. In an AAF file a complete project ( " Composition" ) is stored, both the media content and metadata.

AAF is not an official standard. However, it finds support among other things by: Avid, BBC, CNN, Discreet, Ascent Media, Matrox, Microsoft, Apple, Philips, Pinnacle, Quantel, Sony, Fairlight, Turner Entertainment Networks, and the U.S. National Geospatial -Intelligence Agency.

The data structure of standardized by the SMPTE MXF media exchange format represents a subset of the AAF

Purpose

AAF is to facilitate the exchange of multimedia projects within a production process. The media data (eg, video or audio data ) remain unchanged by the treatment by various specialized programs (eg, nonlinear video editing, animation programs, audio editing, authoring, etc.), while a processing of solely by the change metadata (position of cuts or audio panels, for example ).

This ensures that different applications can access the file, the file but despite changes remains readable by other applications. The programs can read or change, to act upon it, the program is only those metadata. How can insert new video data in the file is a pure 3D application indeed, but it has no access to the cutting sequence, which is edited by an editing program.

The concrete implementation of the modifications that can run a program on an AAF file, the producers of the programs is left. The AAF SDK is freely available.

Advantage of this method is that prior to exchange of data between different editing programs, the files do not need to be lengthy converted to a particular format and not be lost metadata.