Overview Documents (OV)

Approved: 2023-03-21

Copyright © 2023, Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced, by any means whatsoever, without the prior written permission of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

Foreword🔗

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) is an internationally-recognized standards developing organization. Headquartered and incorporated in the United States of America, SMPTE has members in over 80 countries on six continents. SMPTE’s Engineering Documents, including Standards, Recommended Practices, and Engineering Guidelines, are prepared by SMPTE’s Technology Committees. Participation in these Committees is open to all with a bona fide interest in their work. SMPTE cooperates closely with other standards-developing organizations, including ISO, IEC and ITU. SMPTE Engineering Documents are drafted in accordance with the rules given in its Standards Operations Manual.

For more information, please visit www.smpte.org.

This Standards Administrative Guideline forms an adjunct to the use and interpretation of the SMPTE Standards Operations Manual. In the event of a conflict, the Operations Manual shall prevail.

2 Conformance🔗

The following keywords have a specific meaning in the context of this document:

shall and shall not express a requirement from which no deviation is permitted;
should and should not express a strong recommendation without necessarily mentioning or excluding other choices;
may expresses explicit liberty (or opportunity) to do something;
Note and informative indicates that the associated prose is not indispensable, and can be removed, changed, or added editorially without affecting the scope, or the document's usage.

4 Terms and definitions🔗

For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply:

4.1 Overview Document: non-due-process document intended for inclusion in a suite of related Engineering Documents that share a common root number; Note 1 to entry: An Overview Document illustrates the purpose of the document suite and how its parts relate to each other and to other Engineering Documents; in other words, it is a roadmap to the document suite. Overview Documents are intended to be made freely available to the general public. They are informative and should be written in a style that is accessible to the average technical professional, including those whose native language is not US English and those who are not fully conversant with the terminology, heritage and practices of the motion imaging industries.; Note 2 to entry: An Overview Document should be included with each suite of documents that share a common root number. It may reference other documents that are related to the suite. Overview Documents shall not be created for the purpose of defining the relationships among a series of documents that do not share a common root number. The appropriate way to address this need is to draft an Engineering Guideline.

5 Identification🔗

An Overview Document shall bear the type designator OV. It shall share the root number of the multipart document suite with which it is associated and shall have the part number 0; for example, OV 2112-0. The Part 0 designation shall not be used for any Engineering Document.

6 Normative content🔗

Overview Documents are non-normative and shall be clearly labeled as such. Overview Documents are permitted to include quotations from Engineering Documents that contain normative provisions. Clarity is the paramount goal of an Overview Document; this overrides the concerns about use of compliance terminology that apply to Engineering Documents.

7 Preparation and maintenance🔗

Overview Documents should be prepared by the editors of multipart engineering documents in cooperation with the responsible Technology Committee and subgroups. They shall be maintained by the Technology Committee Chair(s) and the editor(s) of the Overview Document.

An Overview Document should not contain forward-looking statements in regard to documents that are not ready for publication. When new Parts are added to a multipart set, or if any of the Parts of the set are revised, the Overview Document shall be revised at the same time.

8 Approval🔗

Overview Documents shall be approved by the chair of the Technology Committee and the chairs of the subgroup(s) involved in their preparation and maintenance. They shall not require formal action by the TC or the Standards Committee.

10 Structure🔗

As a general guideline, Overview Documents should use the following structure:

an overview of the general application of the related engineering documents, in a language that can be understood by non-experts
an overview of the scope of various related documents, with graphical representations, if appropriate
an overview of the contextual relationships of various engineering documents in a single multipart document family (using a single document root number).

Overview Documents should follow the style of Engineering Documents, but may vary from the formal style if this will enhance clarity.

Overview Documents (OV)

Table of contents🔗