General Exchange Format

General Exchange Format

Filename extension	.gxf
Internet media type	application/gxf
Type code	"gxf "
Initial release	2001
Type of format	Container format
Container for	audiovisual material

General eXchange Format (GXF), is a file exchange format for the transfer of simple and compound clips between television program storage systems. It is a container format that can contain Motion JPEG (M-JPEG), MPEG, or DV-based video compression standards, with associated audio, time code, and user data that may include user-defined metadata.

GXF was developed by Grass Valley Group, then standardized by SMPTE as SMPTE 360M,^[1] and was extended in SMPTE RDD 14-2007^[2] to include high-definition video resolutions.

GXF has a fairly simple data model compared with SMPTE MXF container format since it should be used for file transfers and not as a storage format with no editing capabilities.^[3] SMPTE RDD 14-2007 is only 57 pages long, compared with many hundreds of pages for the MXF standards.

Applications and tools

Applications

• The FFmpeg multimedia converter and VLC media player free video player support GXF;
• theScribe LITE is an GXF player that also supports MXF.

Parser and checker

• Grassvalley offers a win32 based tool "tstream", for parsing GXF files and checking to ensure the contents conform to spec.

Tools

• GXF::SDK is a C++ [SDK] that implements the GXF standard to ease the reading, creation, sub-clipping, merge and rewrap of GXF files. It supports: MPEG video, DV, PCM, AC3 and Dolby E audio, Timecode, AFD, VBI and ANC;
• GXFDShowFilter is a DirectShow filter that enables Windows MediaPlayer and other DirectShow based applications to play back GXF files.

References

1. SMPTE 360M
2. SMPTE RDD 14-2007
3. File interchange formats

External links

• GXF - The General eXchange Format EBU Technical Review, July 2002.
• GXF, MXF and AAF comparison by Brad Gilmer.
• GXF tools by MOG Solutions.