AXF format: final spec draft goes for two-week review

Front Porch Digital has announced that the Archive eXchange Format (AXF) open-archiving technology has reached a major milestone on its path to standardisation. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) 2034 AXF Working Group has submitted its final draft of the AXF specification for two-week review, which is the final step before balloting to become an official SMPTE standard.

“This is an especially proud moment for Front Porch Digital as it represents the culmination of years of work and dedication to the invention, development, and deployment of AXF,” says Brian Campanotti, chief technology officer at Front Porch Digital. “As a founding member of the SMPTE AXF Working Group, Front Porch Digital has been a driving force behind AXF since its inception.”

AXF supports interoperability among disparate digital content storage systems and ensures the content’s long-term availability no matter how technology or applications evolve. AXF also acts as a content-carrier for network-based transfer of valuable file-based content between systems.

“The submission of the AXF specification for its two-week review comes at a time when other approaches continue to fragment the market, which makes is difficult for content owners to make decisions regarding long-term storage, archive, and preservation,” says Campanotti. “For example, the Linear Tape File System (LTFS), endorsed by a number of manufacturers, is often referred to as a standard although it is nothing more than a set of open-source tools that each has customized for various proprietary applications.

“Industry standards are of paramount importance as content owners struggle to ensure protection of their valuable assets now and into the future. With a decade of experience in content storage management, Front Porch Digital was able to bring a lot of depth to the development of this standard. The AXF standard will continue to revolutionize the way content owners store, preserve, transport, and protect their valuable assets, now and in the future, regardless of the storage technologies selected.”