broadcast-brainstorming
Brainstorming for a Broadcast Microformat
This is a brainstorm for Internet radio and TV streams i.e real-time streams corresponding to radio and TV stations rather than individual items or collections of content (as currently proposed for hAudio).
The scope could also encompass broadcast radio and TV if this is considered to be useful in an Internet context.
Examples can be found here broadcast-examples
Contributors
- Chris Newell, BBC Research
- Andy Mabbett
The Problem
The web provides an alternative transmission medium for radio and TV stations, enabling these to reach a global audience. New Internet-only services have also appeared. A large number of services are now available and there are many web-based directories listing Internet radio and TV stations under various categories. These directories have to be maintained by hand because the information cannot easily be collected automatically from web sites. The information these directories provide is not easily extracted by web browsers and devices such as Internet Radios.
Elements that come up often in practice
The metadata is either general information (e.g. station name) or technical information (e.g. bandwidth)
General information
- Station name (could use hCard's "organization-unit")
- Broadcaster (could use hCard's "organization-name")
- Description (could also be hCard's "note")
- Image URL (logo) (could use hCard's "logo")
- Category (genre) (could use rel-tag in hCard's "category")
- Language (used by the station rather than for the description)
- Location (could use hCard's "adr" & children)
- Station website (could use hCard's "url")
- Station email (could use hCard's "e-mail")
- AM/FM frequency (could use "measure" microformat)
- Rating (hReview?)
- "Now playing" information (could use hAudio and hVideo)
- Schedule information (could use hCalendar)
Technical information
- stream URL - the direct URL of the stream (.wma, .ra, etc) or the stream's metafile (.asx, .ram, etc)
- player URL - the URL of a webpage with an embedded media player which plays the stream
- bandwidth (could use the "measure" microformat)
- codec (MIME types may be of use here)
- unicast/multicast - optional with unicast as the default?
Possible approaches
New microformat
Define a broadcast microformat.
As with hAudio we should consider splitting content information from format information. This would suggest a media-info as well as a broadcast microformat might be necessary e.g.
The hmedia schema could consist of the following:
- hmedia (
hmedia)- bitrate optional. using measure
- delivery optional (streams only). unicast|multicast
- length optional (files only). Integer
Stream example:
<a class="hmedia" type="audio/vnd.rn-realaudio" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/realaudio/media/r1live.ram"> Real Audio (<span class="bitrate measure">192 Kbps</span>, <span class="delivery">multicast</span>)</a>
Extend scope of hAudio and hVideo
Depending on the degree of overlap between the required metadata fields it may be practical to extend the scope of the proposed hAudio and hVideo microformats. However, it would not be beneficial to the development process, or to end-users, if this adds additional complexity.
Combining with other microformats
Examples of how a broadcast microformat could be combined with other microformats.
hAudio & hVideo
"Now Playing" innformation could be provided using hAudio for radio and hVideo for TV.
hCalendar
An event or a schedule of events for a channel could be signalled using vEvent or hCalendar as child elements.
hCard
Broadcaster / station details could be marked up with hCard.
<div class="vcard"> <div class="adr"> <div class="org fn"> <div class="organization-name">BBC</div> <div class="organization-unit">One</div> </div> <div class="country-name">UK</div> </div> <div class="category"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed" rel="tag">Mixed</a></div> <img class="logo" src="http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/services/api/res/images/BBCOne_small.gif" alt="BBC One" /> <a class="url" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/">BBC One Homepage</a> </div>
Measure
A proposed measurement microformat could be used for the frequency.
hReview
Rating could be marked up using hReview.
Comments
The fields listed under technical information are common to the proposed but moribund file microformat proposal.