media-formats

2008-12-19T21:37:30Z

DronlEtoch: alourolvar

zelcoleto
= Current Media Formats =

This page serves to document a list of media file metadata schemas, formats, and efforts as background for the design of a ''simple'' media info [[microformat]]. Rather than attempting a comprehensive analysis of existing formats (like [[media-metadata-examples]]), the main aim of this document is to just list common formats along with associated metadata in the hopes that it helps pave the way for later analysis and brainstorming. Although some playlist/distribution formats are listed, ideally playlists would be treated as a seperate problem and handled elsewhere.

__TOC__

== Contributors ==

* [[DeanEro|Dean Hudson, Sub Pop Records]]

== See Also ==
* [[media-info-examples]]
* [[media-info-brainstorming]]
* [[music-examples]]
* [[media-metadata-examples]]

== Media File Formats ==

What follows is a pretty general list of media file formats in use on the internet. I haven't really listed much in the way of specific metadata formats or made a distinction between container formats and codecs. The idea is to start with common formats that people use and examine the user facing data that they provide. Hopefully this can be done without getting too bogged down in the nuts and bolts of each format. -[[DeanEro|Dean]]

===Audio Formats===
* AAC (Advanced Audio Coding, most commonly iTunes and ITMS)
** ID3v2
* [http://www.borg.com/~jglatt/tech/aiff.htm AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format)]
** AIFF defines '''Name''', '''Author''', '''Copyright''' and '''Annotation''' as optional text chunks in the flie format.
** iTunes attaches ID3 information to AIFF files that it encodes
* ALAC (Apple Lossless)
* ATRAC (Sony proprietary)
* ATRAC3 (Used by SonyConnect)
* ATRAC3plus
* AU
* FLAC
** FLAC native
** Ogg FLAC
* Liquid Audio (Does this still exist in practice?)
* MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface)
* MP3 (MPEG1, Audio Layer 3)
** ID3
** ID3v2
* SDII (Sound Designer II)
* Vorbis (Ogg Vorbis)
* WAV
* WMA (Windows Media Audio)

===Video Formats===
* MOV (QuickTime)
* DV (Digital Video)
* SWF
* WMV (Windows Media Video)

===Image Formats===
* BMP (Windows Bitmap Image)
* GIF (Graphic Interchange Format)
* JPEG
* PSD
* [http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/spec/1.2/PNG-Chunks.html#C.Summary-of-standard-chunks PNG text chunks] '''Title''', '''Author''', '''Description''', '''Copyright''', '''Creation Time''', '''Software''', '''Disclaimer''', '''Warning''', '''Source''' and '''Comment'''
* [http://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/tifftags/baseline.html TIFF (Tag Image File Format) baseline tags]

===Container and Metadeta Formats===
* [http://www.id3.org/id3v1.html ID3v1]
* [http://www.id3.org/develop.html ID3v2]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVI AVI] (Audio/Video Interleaved) (From RIFF base tags) '''Name''', '''Artist''', '''Copyright''', '''Product''', '''Creation Date''', '''Genre''', '''Subject''', '''Keywords''' and '''Comments'''. [http://abcavi.kibi.ru/infotags.htm This table] lists tags defined in AVI variations.
* MPEG
* [http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QTFF/QTFFChap2/chapter_3_section_2.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40000939-CH204-DontLinkElementID_293 QuickTime User Data]
** QuickTime understands '''Copyright''', '''Creation Date''', '''Director''', '''Edit Dates''', '''Format''', '''Movie Info''' (?), '''Producer Name''', '''Performers' Names''', '''Hardware/Software Requirements''', '''Source Credits''' and '''Writer's Name''' user data atoms.
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg Ogg]
** [http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html Ogg Vorbis Comments]. Recommended fields include: '''Title''', '''Version''', '''Album''', '''Track Number''', '''Artist''', '''Performer''', '''Copyright''', '''License''', '''Organization''', '''Description''', '''Genre''', '''Date''', '''Location''', '''Contact''' and '''ISRC'''
** [http://wiki.xiph.org/Metadata Ogg Vorbis XML/RDF+Dublin Core (Draft Proposal)]

===Distribution/Sydication Formats===
* [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html RSS2] (podcasting)
* [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/ Atom] (podcasting)
* M3U [http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=65772 Basic Definition]
* PLS
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTCP RTP Control Protocol] RTCP/RTP [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2250 RTP Payload Format rfc2250]
* [http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/fdd000131.shtml FLV]
* [http://www.xspf.org/xspf-v1.html XSPF] (Sharable playlists)
* [http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html iTunes Podcast]

==Notes==
The above list is just a brainstorm of existing media formats and, as such, is bound to contain some not-quite-so-useful examples. But hopefully it'll help reveal some common elements shared in currently published media and help reinvigorate [[media-info-brainstorming]].

== Next Steps ==
# A section for descriptive, data-only formats (MusicBrainz, etc.) or does that belong in media-info-examples?
# Add links to specifications for formats.
# List MIME types? --[[User:TomMorris|TomMorris]] 07:36, 11 Aug 2007 (PDT)
# Provide brief summaries of descriptive information provided by the formats with a focus on user visible information.
# Find the common ground.

Microformats Wiki - User contributions [en]

media-formats