Material Exchange Format

Material Exchange Format is a container format for professional digital video and audio media defined by a set of SMPTE standards. A typical example of its use is for delivering advertisements to TV stations and tapeless archiving of broadcast TV programs. It is also used as part of the Digital Cinema Package for delivering films and other content to movie theaters and film festivals.

Summary

MXF, when used in the form of "Operational Pattern OP1A" or "OPAtom", can be used as a container, wrapper or reference file format which supports a number of different streams of coded "essence", encoded in any of a variety of video and audio compression formats, together with a metadata wrapper which describes the material contained within the MXF file. Other "Operational Patterns" can contain or reference multiple materials, just like a simple timeline of a video editing program.
MXF has full timecode and metadata support and is intended as a platform-agnostic stable standard for future professional video and audio applications.
MXF was developed to carry a subset of the Advanced Authoring Format data model, under a policy known as the Zero Divergence Directive. This theoretically enables MXF/AAF workflows between non-linear editing systems using AAF and cameras, servers, and other devices using MXF.

Usage

From 2004 onwards, MXF was in the process of evolving from standard to deployment. The breadth of the standard was subject to lead to interoperability problems, as vendors implement different parts of the standard or interpret misleading parts of the standard differently.
MXF is fairly effective at the interchange of D10 material, mainly because of the success of the Sony eVTR and Sony's eVTR RDD to SMPTE. Workflows combining the eVTR, Avid NLE systems, and broadcast servers using MXF in coordination with AAF are now possible.
Long-GOP MPEG-2 material interchange between video servers is possible, as broadcasters develop application specifications they expect their vendors to implement.
As of autumn 2005, there were major interoperability problems with MXF in broadcast post-production use. The two data-recording camera systems which produced MXF at that time, Sony's XDCAM and Panasonic's DVCPRO P2, produced mutually incompatible files due to opaque sub-format options obscured behind the MXF file extension. Without advanced tools, it was impossible to distinguish these incompatible formats.
Some of the incompatibilities were addressed and ratified in the 2009 version of the standard.
MXF is used as the audio and video packaging format for Digital Cinema Package. It is also used in the STANAG specification documents.
The file extension for MXF files is ".mxf". The Macintosh File Type Code registered with Apple for MXF files is "mxf ", including a trailing space.

Tools

MXF converters

This list represents some examples of free and open source products that support the MXF standard:

FFmpeg, an open source project added support for muxing and demuxing of MXF and MXF D-10 in FFmpeg 0.5, released in March 2009.
GStreamer is an open source Material Exchange Format library. Pitivi uses this tool.
VSDC is a free video editor for open and edit mxf file.
Ingex is an open-source suite of software for the digital capture of audio and video data, developed and heavily used by the BBC. SDI capture is supported, as well as real-time transcoding. Portions of the suite also act as a network file server for media files, as well as archiving to LTO-3 data tape.

The MXF standards

Base documents

SMPTE 377M: The MXF File Format Specification
SMPTE EG41: MXF Engineering Guide
SMPTE EG42: MXF Descriptive Metadata

Operational patterns

SMPTE 390M: OP-Atom
SMPTE 378M: OP-1a
SMPTE 391M: OP-1b
SMPTE 392M: OP-2a
SMPTE 393M: OP-2b
SMPTE 407M: OP-3a, OP-3b
SMPTE 408M: OP-1c, OP-2c, OP-3c

Generic containers

SMPTE 379M: Generic Container
SMPTE 381M: GC-MPEG
SMPTE 383M: GC-DV
SMPTE 385M: GC-CP
SMPTE 386M: GC-D10
SMPTE 387M: GC-D11
SMPTE 382M: GC-AESBWF
SMPTE 384M: GC-UP
SMPTE 388M: GC-AA
SMPTE 389M: Generic Container Reverse Play System Element
SMPTE 394M: System Item Scheme-1 for Generic Container
SMPTE 405M: Elements and Individual Data Items for the GC SI Scheme 1

Metadata, dictionaries and registries

SMPTE 380M: DMS1
SMPTE 436M: MXF Mappings for VBI Lines and Ancillary Data Packets
SMPTE RP210: SMPTE Metadata Dictionary
SMPTE RP224: Registry of SMPTE Universal Labels

Availability of standards

SMPTE's has information, for the ordering of CD-ROMs, which would hold formal copy of the SMPTE standards. Judging by SMPTE's index, all of the standards, referenced above, would be contained on those CD-ROMs, as available from .
contains up-to-date information on the status of the SMPTE documents.