Dynamic Media Facility: EBU and AMWA launch industry push toward software-defined production
The EBU and the Advanced Media Workflow Association held the first meeting of the Joint Task Force on the Dynamic Media Facility (JT-DMF) initiative last week, with 110 participants gathering on site in Geneva and online to discuss the technology framework.
The Joint Task Force on Dynamic Media Facilities (JT-DMF) is a collaboration that was established in September with the aim of facilitating an industry-wide transition to the Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) concept and software-based media production.
Participants of the JT-DMF kick-off meeting in Geneva, 27-28 November (pic credit: EBU)
Those gathered in Geneva on 27 and 28 November included commercial broadcasters and technology vendors.
According to the EBU, there was a general consensus among the participants that media organisations are beginning to think about a shift to software-defined, flexible and interoperable infrastructure not as an option, but a strategic priority due to changing audience habits, a more complex distribution landscape, and cost pressures. In response, DMF is a blueprint for building flexible, scalable and vendor-agnostic media infrastructure.
As well as focusing on “the nuts and bolts of software, architecture, and flow protocols”, the JT-DMF kick-off meeting included a business-level discussion track which addressed how moving to DMF will reshape not just production technology, but business models, vendor relationships, and even organisational culture.
Other tracks included discussions on End-to-End synchronisation model: Establishing uniform time-alignment of media essence in asynchronous, distributed DMF workflows; Compute resource management: Enabling multi-vendor hosting of media functions on shared compute nodes; and MXL flow discovery & connection: Defining an architecture for how control protocols (e.g. via NMOS) discover and connect MXL flows.
The next phase of the JT-DMF will see each work track define a global synchronisation model, establish resource-management priorities, integrate MXL flows, and shape business and governance frameworks.
In parallel, JT-DMF will coordinate alignment with other industry initiatives. The open-source MXL SDK, already a foundation of DMF architecture, will continue to evolve as new capabilities are added. DMF/MXL will also interoperate with established technologies and standards such as SMPTE ST 2110.
Finally, the JT-DMF added that it wants a diversity of perspectives and buy-in for a truly interoperable ecosystem and that broader industry participation is always welcome from end-users, system integrators, and vendors.