The Linux Foundation | 04 April 2025
New Initiative Paves the Way for the Future of Software-Driven Media Production
SAN FRANCISCO – April 4, 2025 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, in collaboration with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), today announced the intent to form the Media eXchange Layer Project (MXL). MXL will develop open source software to enable seamless real-time in memory exchange of video, audio, and timed metadata between media functions within modern, software-driven, distributed media production environments.
As the media industry transitions from traditional hardware-based setups to virtualized and containerized production environments, the need for scalable, interoperable software solutions has never been greater. The MXL Project aims to establish an open framework for real-time media exchange, reducing infrastructure complexity and ensuring seamless integration across compute nodes, production clusters, and broadcast platforms. MXL provides an implementation of the Media Exchange Layer defined in the Dynamic Media Facility Reference Architecture as published by the EBU.
The MXL Project will provide the foundation for:
- Interoperable software-based media production – Enabling broadcasters to optimize workflows by seamlessly integrating diverse production tools and compute environments.
- Accelerating industry-wide adoption of software-defined infrastructure – Helping media companies adopt software solutions for all tiers of production and for all levels of complexity, including workflows that are latency or quality sensitive.
The MXL Project will be hosted by the Linux Foundation and formed in collaboration with the EBU, NABA, and participating media companies, including the BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, Bell Media (Canada), Dome Productions (Canada), France TV, Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), RTÉ (Ireland), SRG SSR (Switzerland), SVT (Sweden), SWR/ARD (Germany), and VRT (Belgium). From the implementers side there is already support from a diverse set of leading companies, including Appear, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Grass Valley, Intel, Lawo, Matrox, NVIDIA, Riedel Communications, and Telos Alliance.
"The Linux Foundation is committed to fostering open collaboration across industries, and the Media eXchange Layer Project is a testament to that mission," said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. "By bringing together key players in the professional media and IT sectors, we are enabling the development of open, interoperable solutions that will drive the future of real-time media exchange."
The MXL Project invites media industry leaders to get involved and participate as an end-user or solution provider of MXL's next-generation media production software. For more information about MXL and how to get involved, please visit tech.ebu.ch/dmf/mxl.
Supporting Quotes
“At Appear, we’re excited to support and help develop the Media eXchange Layer initiative and explore the potential it unlocks for low-latency, asynchronous workflows. This marks an important step toward enabling faster-than-real-time data exchange between diverse technology partners, empowering best-of-breed, software-based media production environments.”
– Andy Rayner, CTO, Appear
"AWS customers in media and entertainment want seamless, vendor-neutral connectivity to deliver optimal value in their live cloud productions. Placing the MXL project under the Linux Foundation's open governance will help ensure long-term benefits for the entire live production community."
– Simone D’Antone, Global Strategy Leader, Broadcast, AWS
“As broadcasters move their live production and media operations onto software-based infrastructure inspired by cloud architectures, the concepts of EBU's Dynamic Media Facility initiative will provide the scalability, flexibility and efficiency needed to support future needs. BBC Research & Development is proud to be playing a leading role in this work and welcomes the open approach being taken by the MXL project.”
– Jatin Aythora, Director, BBC Research & Development
"The transition of production tools from hardware to software is in its early days. The Media eXchange Layer (MXL) turns those production tools into Apps that just run anywhere, on Premises or Cloud. Allowing for us the Broadcast users to scale up and down for more productions as required but also interoperability to share those tools from one production to the next with minimal effort. This will provide the agility to pivot productions quickly in the ever changing media landscape and enable more creativity in content production. MXL is an exciting evolution to the production world."
– Ryan McGauley, Senior Technical Architect, Strategy & Innovation, Bell Media
“Software-driven broadcast production is the future, and real-time media exchange is a critical piece of this evolution. The MXL Project is a pivotal step toward an open, interoperable ecosystem that allows broadcasters to maximize efficiency while reducing infrastructure complexity. We expect that starting with software rather than writing a document will significantly speed up the process of developing the solution.”
– François Legrand, Senior Director Engineering, CBC/Radio-Canada
“The prospects for advancing our abilities to deploy production solutions in a software environment that enables us to dynamically size resources to match production requirements and apply services according to best and/or most suitable in class, brings significant benefits and opportunity. The initiative of the Dynamic Media Facility Reference supported by the Media eXchange Layer development holds promise for an end user capability that is commonly shared across our industry.”
– Mike Johnson, Director of Engineering, Dome Productions
"We see software-based production along the lines of our Dynamic Media Facility concept as a key enabler for future media operations. By making the Dynamic Media eXchange layer open source, in collaboration with the Linux Foundation and NABA, we think we will see accelerated innovation in this space, with benefits for both media organizations and vendors."
– Antonio Arcidiacono, CTO, European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
"At Grass Valley, we see the MXL project as a transformative step for the future of broadcast technology. With decades of expertise in developing microservices-based solutions, we are proud to be a major contributor to this initiative. Our commitment to open, interoperable software-driven media production is unwavering, and we look forward to showcasing a working MXL implementation on booth N506 at NAB Show 2025."
– Ian Fletcher, CTO, Grass Valley
“At Lawo, we have long championed interoperability in broadcasting, ensuring seamless integration of devices and solutions in complex production environments. We've long been an advocate for delivering media production functionalities on COTS servers, enabling cost-effective, flexible, and hardware-independent processing. The MXL Project aligns perfectly with our vision by bridging IT-based infrastructures and media applications, marking a pivotal step toward an open, software-defined ecosystem that empowers broadcasters with enhanced adaptability and efficiency. We are proud to contribute to the success of the MXL Project and excited about the positive impact it will have on the industry.”
– Phil Myers, Chief Technology Officer, Lawo
“The MXL project is a foundation for software-defined production, and is aligned with our vision for secure, highly optimized, media exchange for applications on Kubernetes. NVIDIA Holoscan for Media, a reference platform aligned with the EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility, contributes to this initiative with high-speed GPU and networking interconnect between applications on single nodes and clusters for media and real-time AI inference.”
– Richard Kerris, Vice President of Media and Entertainment, NVIDIA
“We're proud to participate in this open source initiative that brings together industry leaders to advance real-time media exchange. The Media eXchange Layer Project is a crucial step towards creating interoperable, software-driven media production environments. By collaborating openly, we're shaping the future of broadcast technology and driving innovation across the industry.”
– Frédéric Brochard, CTO of France Télévisions
“The transformation to open-source software running on general purpose hardware brings many benefits foundational to the future of video production. Intel has been at the forefront of innovation in the transition to software defined broadcast and supports the Media eXchange Layer Project’s mission to create interoperability between multiple vendor applications running in shared memory environments. We look forward to continued collaboration with the software defined broadcaster open-source software community and helping to build a robust vendor ecosystem for our shared customer base.”
– Nagesh Puppala, GM, Media & Entertainment Solutions Division Intel Corp
“Matrox Video is pleased to support the EBU/Linux Foundation’s Media eXchange Layer initiative. We see MXL as an exciting step forward that reinforces the vision we have been promoting with Matrox ORIGIN for building next-generation, software-defined media infrastructure with best-of-breed choice. We look forward to contributing our expertise and collaborating with the community to advance these open standards.”
– Daniel Robinson Product Manager, Matrox
"At OBS, we are excited about the future of broadcasting, which we see as a convergence of existing IT technology and media applications built on top. Our roadmap is tightly coupled with the software-defined broadcast concept, and we believe that the MXL project is key to bridge the gap between the two."
– Sotiris Salamouris, Chief Technology Officer at Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS)
"Software-based production is reshaping how media is created and delivered. Real-time media exchange will be a key enabler of future innovation. The MXL Project is a major step toward fully open and flexible production platforms that will redefine future infrastructures and architectures, reducing complexity and avoiding vendor lock-in. We aim to continue and accelerate our journey toward fully software-based production and distribution on standard IT hardware — and MXL will help us move faster."
– Dennis Buhr, head of production technology & workflow, SVT
"Software-based production is the next big step in the evolution of broadcast technology. Interoperability is a key towards a quick and widely accepted deployment of this software-defined infrastructure. Therefore, moving the MXL project to an open framework is an important first step towards an efficient and less complex broadcast production infrastructure."
– Michael Eberhard, Director of Technology and Production at SWR (a member of ARD)
“At VRT, we are convinced that software will drive the future of media production , emphasizing agility and interoperability. The Media eXchange Layer represents a significant milestone in developing an open, scalable, and interoperable media workflow platform. This capability will be instrumental in our new facility in Brussels, Belgium.”
– Stijn Lehaen, CTO, VRT
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About NABA
NABA is a non-profit association of the most influential broadcasting organizations in North America committed to advancing the interests of broadcasters at home and internationally, and to identify and take action on technical, operational and regulatory issues affecting North American broadcasters. Both public and private network broadcasters in Canada, Mexico and the United States, work together to provide a common voice for the North American broadcast community. As a member of the World Broadcasting Unions (WBU), NABA creates the opportunity for its members to share information, identify common interests and reach consensus on issues of an international nature. www.nabanet.com
About the EBU
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is the world’s leading alliance of public service media (PSM). It has 113 Member organizations in 56 countries and an additional 31 Associates in Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas. EBU Members operate nearly 2,000 television, radio and online channels and services, and offer a wealth of content across other platforms. The EBU provides content, advocacy, training and technical innovation for a membership of public broadcasters reaching more than one billion people in nearly 160 languages. https://www.ebu.ch https://tech.ebu.ch
About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure, including Linux, Kubernetes, LF Decentralized Trust, Node.js, ONAP, OpenChain, OpenSSF, PyTorch, RISC-V, SPDX, Zephyr, and more. The Linux Foundation focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.
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