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Reader SurveyHave You Hugged Your Metadata Today? Part 1
Mar 10, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Figure 1. Contents of a P2 cartridge stored in MXF.
Click here for a larger image
The Material eXchange Format
The Material eXchange Format (MXF) is an open standard developed by SMPTE that wraps video, audio, bitmapped images, metadata and other content types to facilitate the interchange and archiving of that content. MXF is codec independent, and can handle DV, DVCPRO, MPEG-2, DVCPRO HD and any number of additional formats, each stored separately, and tied together via a simple XML file.
For example, Figure 1 shows the contents of a P2 cartridge stored in MXF format. The compressed video from the DVCPRO HD stream is stored in the video folder, and the audio is in the audio folder, with bitmapped icons in the icon folder. An XML file in the clip folder ties them all together and contains the metadata.
Figure 2. Adding metadata with Panasonic’s P2 viewer. That’s Roni Stoneman, of Hee Haw fame, playing at Stringbean in Galax, Va.
Click here for a larger image
The vision of MXF is camera-to-archive storage in a single format recognized by every system in the chain. Obviously, metadata plays a significant role in the overall value of the format. For example, I used Panasonic’s P2 viewer to add the metadata to the clip shown in Figure 2. During editing, I could view this metadata to identify the right clip, and years later, in a digital archive, I could search for clips shot of this artist (the fabulous Roni Stoneman), by this shooter or at this location, or by another other item in the stored metadata. Sometime in the not-so-distant future, Internet viewers will be able to search streaming stockpiles for the same videos.
Obviously, after you take the trouble to enter this data, a video editor’s ability to ingest, preserve, extend, and export the data back into MXF format is key. And that’s just what we’ll be exploring in our next segment.
