AAF

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Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) the Advanced Authoring Format, or AAF. It is a technology designed specifically for digital nonlinear post production and authoring. It is a “Super-EDL,” but it is also much more. Its purpose is to solve the problems of cross-platform interoperability — operating post-production and authoring software from different manufacturers. AAF is to digital editing/compositing what the EDL was to linear editing. The AAF solution has several components: It supports the complex combination of a piece of essence and its associated metadata. This allows the content to be described as a media object. It facilitates the cross-platform interchange of metadata or program content. (It is designed to replace OMFI.) It allows operators to track the history of pieces of program content from source elements through final production. It allows access to networked content files on remote platforms or storage. It allows the combined essence in a selected format to be rendered later in the post process. It catalogs an extensive list of audio and video effects with a rich set of built-in standard effects. It provides a way to “wrap” elements of a project together for archiving. It encapsulates HTML and XML content, includes translators, and supports HTML/XML output. It provides for application program interfaces (APIs).