Wave Issue 9805 4/3/98 Article 1-01

***Hot Topics

Advanced Authoring Format Specification Released by Microsoft
and Others
(April 3)

Microsoft Corp., Adobe Systems Inc., Avid Technology Inc.,
Digidesign, Matrox Video Products Group, Pinnacle Systems Inc.,
Softimage Inc., Sonic Foundry Inc. and Truevision Inc., also
known as The Multimedia Task Force (MMTF), have released the
Advanced Authoring Format (AAF), a jointly authored
specification. AAF is designed to support the creation of
television, motion picture and multimedia productions by
enabling the easy exchange of rich media data among digital
production tools and content-creation applications.

Members of the MMTF have been active participants in an
initiative by the Society of Motion Picture and Television
Engineers and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU/SMPTE) to
formalize standards for digital media production and
transmission.

AAF implements much of the preliminary work done by the
EBU/SMPTE Wrappers and Metadata Subgroup and, as a design point,
supports emerging SMPTE standards. AAF is an open format in that
its specification is publicly available, it is not owned by any
single company, and it has been submitted unencumbered to
industry standards organizations. In addition, the specification
builds on a number of recognized industry formats, including the
Open Media Framework Interchange (OMFI) format, licensed from
Avid, and Structured Storage, an open container format by
Microsoft, both of which have been submitted to standards
organizations including SMPTE.

AAF is designed to address the interchange drawbacks of existing
multimedia file formats, such as AVI and WAV, that are not
cross-platform, cannot be edited without rewriting the entire
file and cannot describe compositions with multiple layers or
elements. This is an important issue for high-end entertainment
applications that must utilize multimedia of diverse types
(e.g., video, audio, graphic elements, MIDI) and capture tools
(e.g., cameras, keyboards, audio input, scanners) and then remix
or edit those files while maintaining synchronization.

AAF is focused in its support of the authoring environment and
not distribution. It is intended to enable collaboration among
digital artists who use computer-based creative tools. The AAF
unified data model enables applications such as audio editing
and 3-D graphics animation to interact with the same data.

The new specification complements the Advanced Streaming Format
(ASF) that Microsoft and industry leaders introduced last fall.
ASF addresses the problems of media delivery and streaming over
a network.

Microsoft plans to implement AAF in future versions of the
Microsoft Windows operating system. The specification will be
available for public review by free download from the Microsoft
Web site at

www.microsoft.com/aaf/

In addition, an Advanced Authoring Format Software Development
Kit (AAF SDK) is scheduled to be available later in 1998.

Matrox Graphics Inc. announced details of its new chips, the
MGA-G100 and the MGA-G200
(March 25)

The MGA-G100 chip integrates faster acceleration than previous
generation MGA chips using in part a 230MHz DAC. The 64-bit MGA-
G100 supports up to 8MB of, features a 32-bit Z-buffer which can
be used in resolutions as high as 1024 x 768, and doubled when
working in 3D. The MGA-G100 is targeted to the sub-$1500
computer market. Features include bi-linear filtering,
perspective-correct texture mapping, Gourand shading, vertex
fogging, and specular lighting.

MGA-G200 is an AGP graphics chip which utilizes a 128-bit
DualBus architecture. The MGA-G200 support 16MB of high-
bandwidth synchronous memory and an integrated 230/250MHz
RAMDAC. The MGA-G200 supports bilinear and trilinear filtering,
alpha blending, highlighting, fogging and anti-aliasing, and
features a fully programmable floating point setup and culling
engine. The MGA-G200 also supports 32-bit Z-buffering and
support of displays with resolutions of up to 1280x1024.

The MGA-G200 utilizes a Symmetric Rendering Architecture (SRA)
which supports the AGP 2x bus. MGA-G200 can draw to, render to
and read from AGP memory.

The MGA-G100 and the MGA-200 chip are pin-compatible and both
are equipped to fully exploit new features of DirectX 6.0 and
the new Windows 98 and NT 5.0 operating systems.