MXF “Mit Out Essence”

The Material exchange Format (MXF) is now deployed extensively in acquisition, post-production, delivery, and archive, and recent systems make much greater use of the metadata capabilities of the MXF file format than in the early days. One innate capability of MXF allows the file that contains the metadata to make reference to essence that is stored externally. This feature can be used to optimize both small- and large-scale systems, so that one copy of the MXF metadata can be kept with the essence for library storage and disaster recovery, and a second copy can be kept within asset management databases, enabling rapid access and manipulation. The second copy is identical to the first, except that it is very lightweight, because it contains only the MXF headers, without the essence. This paper describes a systems architecture that benefits from this approach, together with practical examples drawn from current and new installations. The paper also shows how to provide for metadata growth and addresses questions of metadata consistency and reliability using the MXF data model.