LOUISVILLE, COLO. — Front Porch Digital has announced that the Active eXchange Format is now integrated into DIVArchive V7.0, the newest version of Front Porch Digital’s CSM system, and the company has also released tools such as AXF Explorer to enable access to AXF packages and media without DIVArchive.
The company also says archivists and media organizations are deploying its Archive eXchange Format open-archiving technology. The cloud-based content storage management solutions provider cites installations at Laboratoire Éclair, The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Danish Film Institute, Swedish Film Institute, as well as support from Spectra Logic and integration with Sony’s Optical Disc Archive technology, as evidence that AXF will replace legacy formats such as TAR.
“Our aim in developing AXF was to support interoperability among disparate digital-content storage systems and ensure the content’s long-term availability, no matter how technology evolves,” said Brian Campanotti, Front Porch Digital chief technology officer. “The fact that these organizations and others have embraced AXF puts it well on the way to achieving critical mass and becoming the industry standard for long-term preservation and storage of media assets. In fact, the AXF standardization effort is nearing completion within SMPTE, and we expect ratification this year.”
French movie and television production house Laboratoire Éclair linked its DIVArchive V7.0 installation with its full production and postproduction environment to streamline workflow, while its customers have access to long-term storage services managed with the system. The Danish Film Institute and Swedish Film Institute have also built their digitization, archiving and preservation workflows around DIVArchive V7.0.
In September 2012, Spectra Logic became the first vendor certified to support AXF across its entire range of tape libraries and tape drives. Additionally, Front Porch Digital and Sony have collaborated to ensure AXF is compatible with Sony’s Optical Disc Archive expandable robotic library.
AXF is designed to be storage-agnostic, meaning that an AXF object is the same whether it is stored on spinning disk, flash memory, data tape media or in Front Porch Digital's LYNXSM cloud service.
