Migration lecture planned for IBC 2003

At IBC 2003, B. Edge from Thomson Grass Valley, USA, will be presenting a paper on File Formats for Television: The Migration Dilema.
According to the abstract, a new generation of interchange formats is emerging. The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) has been designed for post-production and also is being used in news production and other applications. The AAF Association offers a reference implementation that represents a de facto standard. The Material Exchange Format (MXF) was designed for source material and finished material transfers. Work on MXF has been underway for a few years. The MXF standards are now ready to support commercial products.
Neither AAF nor MXF is the first format in their respective class; both have benefited from their predecessors. Integrating these new formats into existing facilities offers some challenges for both the end users and vendors. It is easy to see the potential benefits of the new formats when viewed in isolation, but in practical applications these benefits can be realized only when there is a clear plan for integrating new equipment and formats with existing infrastructures.
The paper to be presented at IBC 2003 will discuss the capabilities and uses of the new formats and describe some strategies for working with the established interchange formats.
(GB)