media-metadata-examples

This is an exploratory page to be used for storage of various multimedia metadata profiles currently in use around the web. As this is a very, very early exploration, we should include as many types of multimedia as possible in the opening discussion - but please be sure to place your profiles in the correct portion of this page.

Purpose of this exploration (or : The Problem)

The purpose of the studies on this page is to determine the feasibility and demand for a flexible, semantic markup format for providing metadata alongside linked multimedia files. Typically, this metadata is stored within the header of the media file itself - which has massive implications for any application where metadata is to be indexed, searched, or made externally accessible. Of course, even if you could easily access the correct portions of a media file remotely, you'd still have to cope with a multitude of open and proprietary metadata formats, each with it's own distinct fieldset, nomenclature and storage method.

This study aims to make a start at solving this problem.

Still image

• EXIF
• RDF for self-describing images

Audio

• ID3v2

• iTunes
  • Album : String
  • Artist : String
  • Beats Per Minute : Number
  • Bit Rate : Number
  • Comment : Blob
  • Composer : String
  • Genre : String or Foreign ID
  • Disc Number : Number
  • Kind : Proprietary - could be implimented as MIME type
  • My Rating : Number < 5
  • Sample Rate : Number
  • Size : Number
  • Time : Number
  • Track Number : Number
  • Year : Number
  • Additional metadata used internally by the application : Date Added (Timestamp), Date Modified (Timestamp), Equalizer (foreign ID), Play Count (Number), Grouping (Internal)
  • Noteable absences : Tags, License, Copyright year. Also note common complaints about ID3 and classical music.

• iTunes podcast: http://phobos.apple.com/static/podcast_specifications.pdf

Video

• EXIF - (Yes, the spec deals with video taken by still cameras. -- RyanKing)
• MPEG-7 - MPEG-7, formally named "Multimedia Content Description Interface", is a standard for describing the multimedia content data that supports some degree of interpretation of the information meaning, which can be passed onto, or accessed by, a device or a computer code. (Very powerful, but you have to pay for documentation -- ChristopherA 01:53, 29 Jun 2005 (PDT))
• SMIL - Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced "smile") enables simple authoring of interactive audiovisual presentations. (Not exactly video, but has a lot of useful video-related features in it. -- ChristopherA 01:55, 29 Jun 2005 (PDT))