By: Matthew Driscoll
The broadcast industry has spent years moving from dedicated hardware toward IP and software-defined infrastructure. This transition begs the question: as more production capabilities become software-based, how do all of those applications efficiently access and exchange live media?
That’s the problem the Media eXchange Layer, or MXL, is designed to help solve.
MXL is an emerging open-source technology underpinning the industry’s vision for a Dynamic Media Facility, or DMF. For broadcasters, the larger promise of DMF is an infrastructure that is no longer permanently tied to individual production functions. The same pool of compute resources could support one application today and another tomorrow, with software deployed dynamically based on what a production requires.
That is a significant departure from the traditional model: buy a piece of hardware for a specific job and expect it to perform that same function for the rest of its life. But making that vision work requires a common way for all of those software applications to access media. That’s where MXL comes in.
Why Live Production Is the Natural Starting Point
While the DMF concept can extend beyond live media, most of the industry activity around MXL today is centered on live production. Live environments stand to benefit considerably from more flexible use of compute and from reducing the amount of media that must be repeatedly moved between applications. These are also environments where organizations increasingly want to combine production capabilities from multiple vendors without creating an entirely new integration project each time.
MXL offers a common interface through which those applications can begin to participate.
Shared Compute Means More Efficient Workflows
In today’s live production environments, technologies such as SDI and SMPTE ST 2110 remain essential for moving uncompressed media from one point to another. MXL is not intended to replace that transport layer; instead, it addresses a different challenge: what happens when multiple software applications need to access and work with the same media.
As more software applications need access to the same content, that can translate into significant network traffic. If one high-bandwidth signal needs to be consumed by multiple monitoring, processing or production applications, each application may require access to that media across the network.
MXL introduces a different model inside a software-defined environment. Rather than repeatedly routing the same media between applications, MXL facilitates access using shared memory, allowing applications to work from the same media buffer. A media source can be written into that shared environment once, and multiple applications can access it to perform whatever work they need. The objective is to reduce unnecessary movement of media, make more efficient use of infrastructure, and give independently developed applications a common way to interact. As production moves toward shared compute, this approach creates greater efficiency across software-based workflows.
MXL also creates the foundation for true multi-vendor software-defined production. If different applications understand the same method of exchanging media, broadcasters have greater freedom to combine the capabilities they need without requiring a new custom interface every time another product enters the workflow.
DMF and MXL: Related, But Not the Same
DMF is the broader architectural idea: an environment in which software-based media functions can be dynamically deployed onto shared infrastructure, configured for a particular production, and then released when they are no longer required.
MXL is one of the enabling technologies that helps make the DMF environment possible. It gives those media functions a common and efficient means of exchanging live media.
While MXL addresses one important part of the DMF architecture, the industry is still working through significant operational and business questions. A dynamic facility requires orchestration capable of deploying and coordinating functions from multiple vendors, along with new approaches to lifecycle management, licensing, and usage.
MXL provides a more immediate building block: a common way for products from different vendors to participate in this emerging software-defined ecosystem. That is one reason we believe supporting MXL matters now, even while the broader DMF model continues to mature.
Bringing Pulse Into the MXL Environment
Telestream’s first step will be MXL support for Pulse, our software-defined platform for SMPTE ST 2110 signal monitoring and analysis. Pulse already gives broadcasters the ability to inspect and monitor ST 2110 media in software. Within an MXL shared memory environment, those same monitoring capabilities remain fundamental. The difference is where Pulse accesses the media. Pulse brings Telestream’s software-defined monitoring into the MXL environment, allowing operators to analyze and validate media once it is available within a shared DMF workflow.
Instead of analyzing only an ST 2110 stream delivered across the network, Pulse with MXL support will interact with media that has already entered the DMF shared-memory environment. That allows the platform to apply its monitoring capabilities to media within the MXL workflow, where Pulse can analyze the media and verify that things like color, luminance, audio and other signal characteristics remain correct as applications work with the shared media. This expanded support enables operators to verify that video and audio continue to meet their technical and quality requirements as they move through software-defined production.
Pulse is Telestream’s first step into the MXL ecosystem, but as adoption of MXL and DMF grows in live production, we plan to give customers more ways to connect monitoring, capture and other production functions within these emerging software-defined environments.
What Comes Next: Orchestrating the Dynamic Facility
MXL addresses an important piece of the software-defined production puzzle, but it does not solve the whole thing.
A truly dynamic, multi-vendor facility also needs an orchestration layer capable of determining which media functions are required, where they should run, when they should be deployed, and when those resources can be released. As applications become more dynamic, the business model has to evolve alongside the technology. Licensing and usage can no longer be thought of only in terms of software permanently installed on a dedicated server; organizations also need ways to understand and manage what resources they are consuming and when.
The value of DMF is the ability to assemble the right capabilities for a particular production, regardless of who provides them. But realizing that vision requires orchestration that can operate across the ecosystem rather than simply within one vendor’s product portfolio.
This is where systems integrators and other vendor-neutral technology partners may play an increasingly important role. Their job has always been to bring disparate technologies together around the needs of the customer. In a Dynamic Media Facility, that same responsibility expands into coordinating software functions, infrastructure, lifecycle management, and potentially the commercial models that sit behind them.
For Telestream, MXL support in Pulse is an important first step. As software-defined live production continues to evolve, we believe supporting open, interoperable approaches such as MXL will be increasingly important to giving broadcasters the flexibility to build the production environments that work for them.
To learn more about Telestream Pulse, visit: https://www.telestream.com/pulse/
Heading to IBC 2026? Stop by and see us at stand #21 in Hall 7 or schedule your personal demo of Pulse today. https://pages.telestream.net/ibc-2026