Although my focus is very much on metadata for production, and in particular Content Metadata, there’s a whole other area of metadata for distribution, built around the EIDR ID and fleshed out largely by Rovi. But there’s another area where metadata will likely have to apply: distribution deliverables.
Distribution metadata revolves around EIDR, Entertainment IDentifier Registry, assigns a unique ID globally for:
…a broad array of audio visual objects, including motion pictures, television, and radio programs. The identification system resolves an identifier to a metadata record that is associated with top-level titles, edits, DVDs, encodings, clips, and mash-ups. EIDR also provides identifiers for Video Service providers, such as broadcast and cable networks.
As of late 2015, EIDR contains over 827K content assets (up 14% from 2014), including 143K movies, and 387K episodes of over 24K TV series. EIDR is an implementation of a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
The great thing about unique IDs is that they allow other metadata to be linked to that unique ID, and Rovi Corporation package up information about on camera and behind the scenes talent linked to that ID and make it available for program guides and other uses.
Source3 also use the EIDR ID, to :
…enhance identification and tracking of movie and television properties for its marketplace and technology clients. Source3 has extensively mapped IP assets, including trademark and copyright, and has produced a comprehensive, granular database of licensable properties linked to licensor data.
Controlling Deliverables
The amount and diversity of deliverables for a major feature or TV show is getting a little out of control: regional variations, language variations, aircraft versions, PG or G variants, et al. Ultimately this has to be controlled by clever application of metadata tags.
I foresee a technology very similar to that which powers SonicFire Pro for music where custom variations of style and duration are still musically whole, applied to movies and TV shows where they still flow correctly, but can be customized for each market via metadata.
Adobe’s Patrick Palmer addressed the subject with great clarity during an episode of Lunch with Philip and Greg from last year.
Comments
2 responses to “Metadata isn’t just for production!”
How does this concept relate to the existing MPEG-7 standard?
In theory MPEG-7 should be the standard for multimedia. It could possibly to modified to support multiple distribution edits, formatting or color space, but it currently does not. Since I’m aware of only one app that ever supported the standard, and that died about four years ago, I don’t consider MPEG-7 to be relevant at all. For anything.