The latest version of Front Porch Digital’s DIVArchive (V7.0) features the new Archive eXchange Format (AXF), an open digital storage format set developed by the company. This version was recently presented to SMPTE for standardization.
The company was a founding member of the original SMPTE AXF committee in 2006 and said the new AXF makes media workflows more secure, seamless and efficient. Being content- and storage technology-agnostic, the new AXF format provides an open and protected mechanism for file-based archive, preservation and exchange.
The new AXF inside DIVArchive includes interfaces to all leading broadcast devices, editing platforms, file systems, media asset management solutions and broadcast control systems.
The company has based AXF on a file- and storage media-agnostic encapsulation approach that abstracts the underlying file systems, operating systems and storage technologies, making the format truly open. The AXF object contains any type, any number and any size of files along with structured and unstructured metadata, checksum and provenance information, full indexing structures, and more, in a single, fully self-describing, encapsulated package.
Since the AXF object itself contains the complete file system, all of the complexities and limitations of the underlying storage technology, operating system and file system are avoided, and the same AXF object can exist on data tape, spinning disk, flash, optical media, or other storage technology now and into the future.
AXF is scalable and offers the ability to contain any number of component files of any size. As an entirely self-contained and self-describing format, AXF supports large-scale archive systems as well as stand-alone applications, facilitating encapsulation, long-term protection and content transport between systems from different vendors. Built-in features like per-file checksums, per-structure checksums and easy replication across any type and format of storage technology helps to ensure compatibility with evolving technology and security for the future.
AXF supports any type of file encapsulation, including database files, Microsoft Word documents and image files. At NAB the new implementation of AXF was previewed as a key feature of DIVArchive V7.0 and is set for release later this year.