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.

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We were discussing metadata in Final Cut Pro X after dinner last night, as one does, and Greg challenged me to think about the difference between Roles and Keywords (Ranges).

I’d spent time thinking about how best to translate metadata from Lumberjack into FCP X before we gained organizational folders for Keyword Collections in an Event, and was mildly surprised we didn’t have anything we thought would map well to Roles.

And that was the last time I thought about it until last night. It took a minute or two, but then it hit me, and it was totally obvious why there was no place for Roles in a “logging and pre-editing” tool.

Keyword Ranges (and Collections) are for organizing Clips.

Roles are for organizing a Project (timeline), and I guess for exporting information to Producer’s Best Friend where we make good use of Role information.

We’re all aware that technology changes the workplace. Jobs disappear; sometimes to be replaced by other jobs that didn’t exist before. During the industrial revolution we were replacing manual labor with machines. The coming revolution is for white collar “knowledge” jobs. How soon will yours be among them?

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Rick Young has worked in television and video production since the late 1980’s. He bought his first DV camera in 1997 and since then, has established himself as a single-operator Producer/Director with a passion for affordable filmmaking. Rick is the editor for Movie Machine, a website devoted to the art and technology of digital filmmaking. He is the author of numerous books including The Easy Guide to Final Cut Pro X (Focal Press) and more.

You can find more about Rick at his Movie Machine site.

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