AES Standards News Blog

AES31-4-2024 AES standard for network and file transport of audio - Part 4: XML Implementation of Audio Decision Lists has been published.  

This document provides a syntax mapping for AES31-3 Edit Decision Markup Language (EDML) to XML Schema Language. This facilitates the expansion of the Audio Decision List format to include non-ASCII characters and updates the format facilitating it’s implementation using standard XML parsers and tools. It also supports multi-byte chacter sets for human-readable metadata in all territories worldwide. This document includes both an XML schema definition and an XSLT implementation capable of transforming a conforming XML instance document back to EDML.

AES31-3 was published in 1999 to provide a long-term alternative to proliferating proprietary formats. It provided a convention for expressing edit data in text form in a manner that enabled simple and accurate computer parsing while retaining human readability. It also described a method for expressing time-code information in character notation and simple automation for stereo & surround panning and audio gain. These edit documents were known as Audio Decision Lists (ADL) and used an Edit Decision Markup Language (EDML).

The subsequent growth of XML offers a similar markup facility but with better availability of software tools for faster implementations. XML also offers support for multi-byte characters in human-readable metadata instead of the plain ASCII of EDML, opening implementation to a world-wide user community.

This document is a revision of AES31-4-2015.

Download a copy here