Bill Gates, chairman of software giant Microsoft, predicts that multimedia will cause a greater social change in the next few years than personal computers have over the past decade.

He is not alone in his forecast. Apple Computer is predicting that multimedia will soon represent a $3.5 trillion industry that is already well out of the starting blocks.

But Gates would be better off if his skill in forecasting was matched by the speed with which Microsoft was embracing the multimedia revolution.

The Microsoft chief would have us wait until next year when his company unveils its solution for an industry without a common standard for the interchange of digital media: an interface to connect diverse technologies.

After all, we have the technology in place for multimedia – real-time video on demand, broadcast quality compression, packetized information delivery systems, fiber optic and microwave transmission, massive storage, the relational database and a plethora of other services and technologies.

So we are close to exponential growth in information and communication technology. The core skills needed to navigate the electronic highway have come from the industry providing the fuel to maintain multimedia – the entertainment post-production sector.

Gates will clearly be a year late. An interface spearheaded by Avid Technology, the pioneers of nonlinear editing and digital media, is already at hand. Called Open Media Framework Interchange (omf), this cross-platform, cross-application standard for exchanging digital media has the support of more than 170 lead corporations.

To name just a few: Apple Computer, Alias, Abekas Video Systems, Aldus Corporation, at&t, bbc, Chryon, Fostex, Grass Valley Group, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Kodak, Oracle, Polaroid, Rank Cintel, Silicon Graphics Computer Systems and Sun Microsystems.

If omf is all that Avid claims it is, we could be looking at the fundamental key for the next revolution in digital communications.

In essence, omf is a standard file format for the seamless exchange of digital media data between applications and across platforms. The format is designed to encapsulate all information required to transport a variety of digital media, such as audio, video, graphics, animation, text and still images as well as the rules for combining and presenting the media. Avid claims omf interchange is unique in that it addresses more than just the media data. It contains three elements to ensure the interchange of complete programs.

– Digital media: audio, video, animation and graphics to be used in the creation and playback of a program;

– Compositions: descriptive data that represents all editing decisions of how the media is organized and how a program is to be played;

– Source references: detailed records about the origination of the digital media including timecode, edgecode and application.

Simply put, omf interchange defines a standard way of exchanging digital media at professional levels of quality, much like PostScript, which empowered the desktop publisher and revolutionized the graphic arts industry.

Avid is not, however, the only entry in this global, interactive multimedia sweepstakes. In the u.s. alone, more than 500 alliances have been struck between firms, many of them from different industries. All are jockeying for position, the dollars spent enormous.

Example: Bell Atlantic and cable giant tci have $33 billion behind their recent merger. This figure underlines just how high the stakes are in the multimedia revolution.

Building high-speed networks which will serve both the business and the much larger consumer markets is a complicated and costly business. No one industry can go it alone. So omf is an elegant and simple solution coming at the right price. Vendors can license omf free of charge and include it in their product.

Avid believes that availability and widespread adoption of omf will benefit the entire industry, not to mention help establish it as the de facto standard in digital media exchange. The sign that the Avid strategy has truly worked will come when Microsoft joins that long list of omf partners in part featured above.

Robert Curtin has turned his background in film, video and print into producing leading-edge technology for multimedia.