10. Recommendations for file formats

Use file formats that are as widely used as possible and associated with an ISO standard. They should not be proprietary, meaning they should not be tied to a specific software or manufacturer. Instead, they should be usable with various programmes, come with an open license, and have freely accessible documentation, including technical specifications. These formats should allow for lossless storage without compression and be easily decodable or directly readable.

Consult your data platform to find out which file formats are accepted or recommended there

For the cultural research domains and cultural heritage collections, we recommend the use of the following standard file formats

Text

• Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1, with XML Schema Definition (XSD)
• Resource Description Framework in Attributes (RFDa) for embedding RDF statements in XML
• JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
• JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data (JSON LD)
• Comma-Separated Values (CSV)
• Text file (TXT) (UTF-8 encoding)
• Presentation format: Portable Document Format A (PDF-A)

Music

• Music Encoding Initiative (MEI)
• MusicXML
• Parsons Code
• Presentation format: Portable Document Format A (PDF-A)

Image (raster graphics)

• Raw data: Digital Negative (DNG)
• Master: baseline Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), uncompressed; TIFF mit Lempel-Ziv-Welch-Komprimierung (TIFF-LZW)
• Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG 1 and JPEG 2000), lossless compression, license-free areas
• Presentation formats (derivatives): JPEG, JPEG 2000, Portable Network Graphics (PNG)

Image (vector graphics) and CAD

• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)

Audio

• Archive format: Waveform Audio File-Format (WAV) in combination with Pulse Code Modulation (PCM); Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
• Presentation format: MPEG-2 Audiolayer III (MP3)

Video/Film

• Archive formats:
  • Moving Picture Experts Group Motion JPEG 2000 (MJPEG2000)
  • Moving Picture Experts Group, Standard MPEG-4
  • Digital Picture Exchange (DPX), SMPTE 268M-2003, v 2.0
  • Material Exchange Format (MXF), SMPTE 377M
  • Codec FFV1 / Container MKV
  • TIFF with FFV1, coded in Matroshka
• Presentation format: MP4 (MPEG-4, part 14)
• further recommendations from nestor AG Media

3D

• Graphics Language Transmission Format (glTF)
• Wavefront Object (OBJ)
• COLLAborative Design Activity (COLLADA)
• Extensible 3D (X3D)
• Presentation format: glTF, X3D, OBJ

Tables

• Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1, with XML Schema Definition (XSD)
• Comma-Separated Values (CSV)

Databases

• Software Independent Archival of Relational Databases (SIARD)
• Structured Query Language (SQL)
• Export and external storage of database content recommended, e.g. as XML, CSV, JSON with entity-relationship-diagram (ERD)

Geographic information systems (GIS)

• Vector files: Environmental Systems Research Institute ESRI Shapefile
• Raster files: Open Geospatial Consortium GeoTIFF

Websites

• Hypertext Markup Language (HTML5)
• Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML)
• Resource Description Framework in Attributes (RFDa) for embedding of RDF statements in HTML und XHTML