LibAAF is currently a work in progress and is not production-ready yet.
LibAAF is a C coded library for AAF file handling. The AAF beeing a quite complex file format, the main goal here is to get an easy-to-implement, audio oriented, FOSS solution.
The library is composed of three parts :
- LibCFB : Low-level AAF's Compound File Binary handling
- AAFCore : AAF Class/Object manipulations
- AAFIface : Abstraction layer for easy data access.
One should only use the AAFIface interface to manipulate files and retrieve data.
LibAAF only supports the reading of AAF files, it cannot write ones.
LibAAF was widely tested with :
- Avid Media Composer 8.4.5 - 8.8.3 - 18.12.5
- Adobe Premiere Pro (CC 2018) 12.0 - 12.1.1
- ProTools 10.3.10
- Logic Pro 9.1.7
- Fairlight Evo/Dream 2.5.1 - 4.1.75
| Composition Name | x | Full support |
| Track Names | x | Full support |
| Clip Names | x | built upon source file names |
| Original essence file names | x | Full support |
| PCM Embedded Essences | x | Full support |
| WAVE Embedded Essences | x | Full support |
| AIFF Embedded Essences | x | Full support |
| AES3 Embedded Essences | - | Missing from the specs |
| MXF support | - | TODO |
| Multi-channel Essences | - | TODO (AAFClassID_MultipleDescriptor) |
| Multi-channel Tracks (stereo, 5.1, 7.1) | x | ProTools AAF with Export Stereo, 5.1 and 7.1 tracks as multi-channel enabled. |
| Fades in/out - XFades | x | Full support |
| Legacy Fades in/out - XFades | - | useless ? obsolete since at least AAFv1.1 - 2005 |
| Clip based Gain (fixed/varying) | x | Full support |
| Track based Gain (fixed/varying) | x | Full support |
| Track based PAN (fixed/varying) | x | Full support |
Two programs are available with LibAAF :
- AAFInfo : Parses any AAF file and provides a way to dig into them.
- AAFExtract : Extracts audio essences contained in an AAF file.
To build those, just run make
Repo also includes a third program ardour_aafimport. It allows to create an Ardour session and import an AAF file into it.
See README
LibAAF uses libsndfile for embedded audio files parsing and extraction.