Copyright © 2025, 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.
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.
Review of an engineering document by the public, beyond the members of the SMPTE Standards Community, can help determine if it meets industry needs and satisfies interoperability requirements. Such a review ideally takes place before the engineering document reaches Final Committee Draft, after which making substantial changes becomes increasingly complex.
This Administrative Guideline specifies the process for Public Committee Drafts (Public CD), which are Committee Drafts made available to the public for review.
NOTE — A Public CD was referred to as a Technical Specification between 2018 and 2019.
The following keywords have a specific meaning in the context of this document:
The following documents are referred to in the text in such a way that some or all of their content constitutes requirements of this document. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For undated references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
For the purposes of this document, the terms and definitions given in the following documents and the additional terms and definitions apply:
The development of a Public CD is conducted according to the SMPTE SMPTE Standards Operations Manual, including, but not limited to:
Annex A illustrates an example of the Public CD process, as specified by this document.
A Project Proposal should indicate whether a deliverable is intended to become a Public CD.
Any Committee Draft may be made available as a Public CD if it meets the following criteria:
The TC recommendation should include a brief text appropriate for a public announcement of the Public CD.
When seeking the TC recommendation, the TC chair should use the notice specified in Annex B.
The Public CD shall be made available to the public in HTML format as defined by SMPTE AG-26 in a public GitHub repo as defined by SMPTE AG-31, approved by the Director of Standards Development, and shall be accompanied by the notices specified in Annex C.
A Project Group should, but is under no obligation to, address comments received from the public on a Public CD.
The review period of a Public CD starts upon availability, as defined in 5.4, and ends when either:
A Public CD may be revised at any time.
To revise a Public CD, the Committee Draft shall be revised.
Revising a Committee Draft returns the document to Working Draft status and the process at SMPTE Standards Operations Manual, Section 6.5 is followed to elevate the revised Working Draft to Committee Draft.
The revised Committee Draft may follow the process of 5.3 to be made available as a Public CD.
A Public CD shall be terminated if any one of the following criteria is satisfied:
Upon termination of a Public CD, its public access to shall be immediately terminated.
Figure A.1 illustrates an example of the Public CD process.
NOTE — A second Public CD (PCD2) is made available after addressing comments received on the first Public CD (PCD1).
As specified in SMPTE Administrative Guideline AG-22, the TC recommends that the Committee Draft of <-document number-> be made available as a Public CD with the following announcement: <-brief text appropriate for a public announcement of the Public CD-> The members of the TC are reminded of their obligations to notify the TC Chair if they are aware, based on their actual personal knowledge, of patents or patent applications that might contain Essential Claims to a technology being proposed for inclusion in the Public CD.
Please be aware that all contributions to this material are being conducted in accordance with the SMPTE Standards Operations Manual, which is accessible on the SMPTE website with the Society Bylaws: https://www.smpte.org/about/policies-and-governance Your comments and contributions, whether as a member or guest, are governed by these provisions and any comment or contribution made by you indicates your acknowledgement that you understand and are complying with the full form of the Operations Manual. Please take careful note of the sections requiring contributors to inform the Committee of personal knowledge of any claims under any issued patent or any patent application that likely would be infringed by an implementation of this material. This general reminder is not a substitute for a contributor’s responsibility to fully read, understand, and comply with the full Standards Operations Manual
Copyright © by the 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
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this material may be the subject of patent rights. SMPTE shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
This Committee Draft was made available by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers for a public review period, which ended on <-start date of the FCD ballot->. The document is now being processed for publication. Note that the published document may ultimately differ from this Committee Draft.