Advanced Authoring Format
The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) is a file format for professional cross-platform data interchange, designed for the video post-production and authoring environment. It was created by the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), and is now being standardized through the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE). History. AAF was originally created by the AMWA, formerly the AAF Association Inc., a trade association created to develop and promote adoption of specifications and technologies, such as AAF, Material Exchange Format (MXF), and Service-oriented architecture (SOA), to facilitate the deployment and operation of efficient media workflows . Technical work of the AMWA is through projects that aim to improve compatibility between AAF, Broadcast Exchange Format (BXF), MXF and XML. The current projects fall into three categories: data models, interface specifications, and application specifications. AAF was created to help address the problem of multi-vendor, cross-platform interoperability for computer-based digital video production. The AAF Object Model is now being standardized through SMPTE, including a better definition of the mapping between MXF and AAF essence. Usage. Capabilities of AAF include the following: There are two kinds of data that can be interchanged using AAF: By preserving source  referencing, and abstracting the creative decisions that are made, AAF tries to improve workflow and simplify project management. AAF's rich data model combining metadata and various types of essence has led to its use in non-broadcast applications as well. For example, AAF has been adopted by the DoD/IC Motion Imagery Standards Board (MISB) for their Aerial Surveillance and Photogrammetry Applications standard (ASPA). Elements of AAF. The core elements of the AAF specification include: Differences from MXF. AAF is designed to be a data representation of works in progress, as compared to Material Exchange Format (MXF), which is  for exchanging finished media products. While MXF uses a Key Length Value (KLV) format for storage, AAF uses the Microsoft Structured Storage system. MXF was developed as a subtype of the AAF data model, under a zero-divergence policy, which allows for workflows that mix AAF and MXF. Specifically, all MXF metadata can be understood by AAF, but not all AAF metadata can be understood by MXF (and would be filtered out during encoding as a result).