Reuters and DPP launch LPX standard for automated live video workflows

The LPX standard addresses a critical bottleneck in IP-based live production: the reliance on manual, high-touch scheduling and metadata entry. By codifying how production systems talk to one another, Reuters and the DPP are reducing the time-to-air for breaking news and improving the cost-efficiency of sports archiving. This move shifts the technical focus from individual AI tools toward foundational machine-readable interoperability. For the broader ecosystem, it signals a consolidation of production standards as newsrooms transition away from legacy SDI hardware toward cloud-native API-driven ecosystems. Watch for uptake among rival news agencies like the Associated Press to see if LPX achieves universal adoption.

The launch of the Live Production Exchange (LPX) standard represents a significant outcome of the collaboration between the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) and the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC). According to the DPP in December 2024, the LPX schema is built on the IPTC ninjs (News in JSON) version 3.0 standard. This foundation allows for the machine-to-machine exchange of descriptive, technical, and transport metadata, specifically aimed at solving the industry-wide struggle with bespoke, legacy systems that are difficult to automate.

This technical development follows Thomson Reuters’ June 2023 acquisition of Imagen Ltd., a cloud-native media asset management company. Per Reuters, the acquisition was a strategic move to integrate asset management directly into the news agency's tech stack, allowing clients to store, distribute, and monetize visual content more effectively. By rebranding the technology as Reuters Imagen and applying the LPX standard, the company is now focusing on the intersection of live sports and automated metadata capture, moving beyond standard news syndication into high-value sports rights management.

The standardization effort also involved major industry stakeholders. Per TVBEurope, a March 2024 LPX hackathon gathered 61 practitioners from 21 organizations, including the BBC and Warner Bros. Discovery. The winning teams during this development phase focused on the practical usability of the standard for journalists and its implementation in live news studio production. This initiative reflects a broader movement within the DPP to streamline the global content supply chain, complementing other standards like AS-11 for file-based delivery and existing IMF versioning recommendations.