OMF Interchange (OMFI) is a platform-independent file format that stores both the digital media (video, audio, graphics, animation) and the information describing how the media is edited together to form a final sequence. This editing information, called a composition, is the OMFI representation of the sequence created in your Avid system. The OMF Interchange format is the result of cooperative efforts of many industry and standards partners and Avid Technology, Inc.

Any other program that supports OMFI can read OMFI files, even if the program resides on a different computer platform. As a result, with OMFI, you can transfer among different applications on different platforms without worrying about cross-platform translations. This can be very effective for importing animation or audio files created on proprietary platforms.