Join a panel of industry experts at the SMPTE MTS on October 14, 2025 to explore current and future IMF practices, including cloud-first implementations and open-source software for at-scale media processing.
Moderator: JoAnne Kim, Panelists: Carlos M. Carmona, Brandon Heaslip, Brian Holter, Wolfgang Ruppel
Category: Events
Fall Mini-Plugfest [August 25, 2025]
We are hosting a fall mini-plugfest on August 25, 2025.
A plugfest is a unique opportunity to gain implementation experience with IMF and network with the members of the community. Read our explainer at https://www.imfug.com/plugfest/.
Location and registration
Thanks to Warner Bros. Discovery, the plugfest will be held in person in Burbank, CA, USA.
The plugfest will be open to members and guests, with guests being subject to the IMF UG participation rules, including a duty to keep the contents of the meeting confidential. Any result made available publicly will be anonymized.
You must register at the link below before August 18, 2025:
https://forms.gle/parW6HXgRzUr12pR9
Space is limited.
Program
10:00 Plugfest starts
12:00 Lunch
14:00 Plugfest ends
All times are in Los Angeles local time.
Topics
The mini-plugfest will focus on:
- 4K in SMPTE ST 2067-21 5ED (test vector: Harvey Landy, NBCU)
- 8K in SMPTE ST 2067-21 5ED (test vector: Mike Smith, Warner Bros.)
- Dolby Vision in ISXD (SMPTE ST 2067-202) (test vector: Florian Schleich, Netflix)
- Markers in the IMF UG scope (test vector: John Hurst, Cinecert)
Submitting and accessing content
Our plugfests are cloud first. Content will be submitted to and accessed from a shared Amazon S3 bucket.
Contacts
Michael Smith [Host]
Pierre-Anthony Lemieux [IMF UG chair]
Fall Mini-Plugfest [November 5, 2024]
We are hosting a fall mini-plugfest on November 5, 2024.
A plugfest is a unique opportunity to gain implementation experience with IMF and network with the members of the community. Read our explainer at https://www.imfug.com/plugfest/.
Location and registration
Thanks to NBCUniversal, the plugfest will be held in person in Burbank, CA, USA. Two virtual breakout sessions with remote participation are planned.
The plugfest will be open to members and guests, with guests being subject to the IMF UG participation rules, including a duty to keep the contents of the meeting confidential. Any result made available publicly will be anonymized.
You must register at the link below before November 1, 2024:
https://forms.gle/RwRnL3Zkmv6yz2xz5
Space is limited.
Catering is kindly sponsored by Colorfront and storage by Amazon AWS.
Program
10:00 Plugfest starts
12:00 Virtual breakout session
12:30 Lunch
14:30 Virtual breakout session
15:00 Plugfest ends
All times are in Los Angeles local time.
Topics
The mini-plugfest will focus on:
- addressing issues encountered with IMF App 2E use cases during our earlier plugfest
- test a new schema for Composition Playlist Markers with additional metadata
Submitting and accessing content
Our plugfests are cloud first. Content will be submitted to and accessed from a shared Amazon S3 bucket.
Contacts
Harvey Landy [Host, Program committee]
Michael Smith [Program committee]
Pierre-Anthony Lemieux [IMF UG chair]
Webinar: Efficient Quality Control across the Media Supply Chain
Join a panel of experts on June 17, 2024 for a discussion on improving QC efficiency across the supply chain using EBU QC cards and the Interoperable Master Format (IMF)!
This webinar will consist of presentations by panelists followed by a Q&A session driven by the audience. It is a follow-up to our IMF UG workshop held at IBC 2023, which highlighted the urgent need to avoid repeated QC rejections based on false positives. IMF is the worldwide standard for the interchange of component-based studio masters and EBU QC is a standardized language for expressing QC reports.
This free webinar is made possible by a collaboration of the EBU and the IMF UG.
When
June 17, 2024 from 17:00 to 18:00 pm CEST
Panelists
Fereidoon Khosravi, Chief Business Development Officer, Venera Technologies
Laurence Stoll, Co-Founder, Marquise Technologies
Andrew Dunne, Television Production and Delivery Expert, BBC
Andy Quested, co-chair EBU QC
Raymond Yeung, Head of Content Standards, Amazon MGM Studios
Moderated by Pierre-Anthony Lemieux, Chair, IMF User Group
IMF Mini-Plugfest [June 26, 2024]
You are invited to participate in our upcoming mini-plugfest, which picks-up where our December plugfest ended.
A plugfest is a unique opportunity to gain implementation experience with IMF and network with the members of the community. Read our explainer at https://www.imfug.com/plugfest/.
Location and registration
Thanks to NBCUniversal, the plugfest will be held in person in Burbank, CA, USA. Two virtual breakout sessions with remote participation are planned.
Registration is free but you must register, whether attending in person or remotely:
https://forms.gle/7jACEh4DW6TVc2aq5
Registration closes on June 15, 2024.
Program
9:00 Setup and breakfast
10:00 Plugfest
12:00 Virtual breakout session
12:30 Lunch
13:00 Plugfest
16:30 Virtual breakout session
17:00 Plugfest ends
All times are in Los Angeles local time.
Topics
The mini-plugfest will focus on IMF App 2E with video coded using the APP2.HT.REV and APP2.HT.IRV constraints, including:
- Lossless roundtrip from TIFF and DPX sequences; and
- RPCL progression order.
Submitting and accessing content
Our plugfests are cloud first. Content will be submitted to and accessed from s a shared Amazon S3 bucket.
The deadline for content submission is June 15, 2024.
Open to all
The plugfest will be open to members and guests, with guests being subject to the IMF UG participation rules, including a duty to keep the contents of the meeting confidential. Any result made available publicly will be anonymized.
Contacts
Harvey Landy [Host, Program committee]
Dave Deelo [Program committee]
Brian Holter [Program committee]
Mike Krause [Program committee]
Pierre-Anthony Lemieux [IMF UG chair]
NAB 2024 panel: Leveraging IMF to avoid QC rejections
We are hosting a panel at NAB 2024 on leveraging IMF to Prevent Repeated QC Failures.
- When: Sunday April 14 from 12:15 to 12:45 PM PT
- Where W3943 Connect Tech Chat Theater at the Las Vegas Convention Center
Join our panel of experts for a discussion on using IMF to avoid costly QC rejections! This is a follow-up to our IBC workshop where the urgent need to transmit expected QC failures across the supply chain was highlighted.
Recording: Broadcast playout in the cloud using IMF @ NAB 2023
There is no longer any barrier for IMF in the broadcast environment! Listen to Fereidoon Khosravi, Carlos M. Carmona, Jonathan Solomon, Julian Fernandez-Campon and Pierre-Anthony Lemieux walk us through an IMF-based playout workflow deployed on AWS.
Workshop @ IBC 2022: using IMF in broadcast workflows
The HPA IMF UG hosted a workshop at IBC 2022 where 34 stakeholders from the broadcasting community, representing both users and suppliers, explored using the Interoperable Master Format (IMF) as the source content format in broadcast workflows.
Read our report now!
IMF 101 tutorial session [UPDATE 2]
Getting started with component-based workflows? Interested in learning more about IMF? Join us on April 22 for a primer and a series of tutorials using the latest products on the market.
Update: This event, previously planned for NAB, has been turned into an online-only event. Register today!
Calling audio-visual archive and preservation experts
Making movies is costly and time-consuming. Preserving them is critical.
The Interoperable Master Format (IMF) is a recognized and standardized intermediate format for making and distributing complex audio-visual content, and has emerged as a promising candidate for archiving and preserving it.
The HPA IMF User Group (https://www.imfug.com) is organizing two workshops this fall to explore this complex problem:
- Preserving movies with IMF
When: September 13 in Amsterdam, NL
Program chair: Siegfried Foessel <siegfried.foessel@iis.fraunhofer.de>
Event page: Workshop on preserving movies with IMF
- Preserving and re-purposing studio productions using IMF
When: October 25 in Los Angeles, CA, USA
Program chair: Florian Schleich <fschleich@netflix.com>
Event page: Workshop on preserving and re-purposing studio productions using IMF
Submit your presentation proposals by July 1 at archive@imfug.com
Submissions from archives, content producers/owners, product manufacturers and movie professionals are welcome. All submissions should include a short abstract (3-4 sentences) and specify the target event (Amsterdam and/or Los Angeles). Presentations should have a maximum duration of 15 minutes and should focus on archival and preservation use cases and workflows.
These workshops are a unique opportunity to meet experts and implementers, and share ideas, use cases, and requirements. Admission will be open to all, with tickets available starting August 1, 2019.