In the sixth article of this series, industry expert and WhatTheyThink contributor David Zwang continues his discussion about cross-media communications and production, this time with a discussion of file formats and standards, two crucial components in cross-media production workflows. It will focus on what the important ones are, and how to keep up with them. He promises the remainder of the series will be less technical and more directed at skills, tools, workflow and products required for cross-media success, but the short term pain will make it all easier to understand!

In the last installment, we looked at metadata and the important role it plays in eMedia publishing, and variable print as well. So now that we know that metadata is used in both print and eMedia production, we need to understand how we can ensure that the formats and standards we use in a cross media process can coexist.

As the demand for cross media becomes the norm, the preparation and processing of content for multi-channel distribution would be faster and much less expensive if you could optimize the processes to eliminate the need for multiple silos of production. Many of the infrastructure tools are already available to do so, and the design and production tools are making their way to the market, as we will discuss in future articles.