Broadcast Wave Format

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The Broadcast Wave Format (abbreviation BWF ) is a subset of the WAV audio file format . It was specified by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in 1997 with regard to broadcasting concerns and expanded in 2001 with regard to the storage of metadata .

The broadcast-specific format should enable the easy exchange of sound data between different computer-aided platforms for sound production, post-processing, playback and archiving. In BWF, the metadata is saved in an "Extension Chunk" extension of a standard-compliant audio WAV file. This enables the user to understand the various processes involved in editing the audio file and its current status.

BWF is the most widely used data format for storing audio in the professional environment today. In addition to pure audio recorders, it is also used for the sound of digital picture recorders in television production. The format was specified for both linear PCM sound (RIFF-ID 0x0001) and for compressed MPEG 1 Layer II audio signals (RIFF-ID 0x0050). The file extension remains ".wav" and can therefore be read on every PC without the specific metadata. Problems can arise with newer media players if they can only play the more popular MPEG I Layer III (MP3) format or if they mistakenly expect only PCM for the ".wav" extension. The standard format is PCM with a sampling rate of 16 bits and a sampling rate of 48 kHz. Other values ​​can be used if agreed upon by the exchanging organizations.

In 2005 the EBU specified the RF64 format for file-based multi-channel production and post-production as a BWF-compatible multi-channel audio data format. Due to the extended address space, files of more than four GByte are possible.

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