XMF

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title: "XMF" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["midi-standards", "music-notation-file-formats", "video-game-music-file-formats"] description: "Tree-based digital container format used to bundle music-oriented content" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMF" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Tree-based digital container format used to bundle music-oriented content ::

XMF (Extensible Music Format) is a tree-based digital container format used to bundle music-oriented content, such as a MIDI file and optionally the sounds it uses, liner notes or other content grouped by language-codes.

The first XMF definitions were to allow the bundling of a musical performance with the musical sounds used. For instance, a MIDI file could be stored together with a Downloadable Sounds file, and both files would travel together inside one XMF file. This specific use of an XMF file is referred to as XMF File Type 0 (streaming) or XMF File Type 1 (non-streaming), depending on whether the type of the MIDI file is 0 or 1, respectively.

There are currently five XMF File Types defined. The latest of which is XMF File Type 4 (counted from zero) and is called Interactive XMF (iXMF).

The specifications for the XMF were first published in 2001 by the MMA.

Features

• Resources can be referenced internally (in the XMF file) or referenced externally using a URI.
• Resources can be country- and language-coded so that text could be shown in the right language depending on context.
• Resources can be compressed using ZLIB.
• Size information is stored using variable-length quantities, ensuring that the format can support an infinite number, while at the same time saving storage space.

References

References

1. "XMF Specification (All)".
2. "MMA Announcement".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::