Hi Bill,
Directly – If I understand correctly by directly you mean that, you want to read/write/update a XMP sidecar file (e.g Filename.ext.XMP kind of files).XMP sidecar file contains an XMP metadata packet, which by definition describes a resource (such as a file).
>I want to use the XMF files directly.
It is not the recommended approach as in the process you might break the association of the XMP packet with the resource or create inconsistent metadata for the resource in the XMP packet.
XMPFiles helps you to manage XMP metadata for a file resource. This XMP metadata can be embedded inside the file format or present as a XMP sidecar. For the list and details of formats that are supported by XMPFiles refer to XMP Specification part 3. Till now the Specification Part 3, doesn’t include any reference to MXF format and is not supported in the latest XMP Toolkit SDK release.
>In my case, we are primarily using MXF files and the metadata is stored in separate XMP files.
In such(file format not supported by XMPFiles) case you could write a custom XMPFiles plug in to handle the MXF format. Refer to XMPFilesPluginSDK.pdf for details on how to extend XMPFiles and write custom Plugins for file formats not handled by XMPFiles.
Hope this helps.
Inder