Mail for December 28, 2001

From: Eli Chapman
Subject: metadata

Hello Cam. I see you're getting interested in metadata. I've been stopping by camworld (and reading the cms-list) for sometime now and have always enjoyed your thoughts and insights. I've been working with companies that do media asset management, and have seen the potential power of metadata. BBC and CNN (and the software vendors they work with) are some of the pioneers in this. There's an interesting project on sourceforge (aaf.sourceforge.net) that is moving towards an open format for media and metadata which would allow someone to see how an asset has been used and referenced throughout its entire life.

On a sidenote, I believe there is an opportunity for a new media asset management product which I'd love to see if you were interested in. The goal is to utilize metadata and user-history/interactions thereby creating an intelligent search, retrieval, editing and publishing system for video. At the onset, the system would be made for newsrooms (like BBC and CNN), where I know there is a demand. Much of the system has been developed already. We are going to license SDKs, integrate them together, and then develop the core funcitonality we need. I'm working on the requirements doc right now.

Anyhow - here's a metadata link: Media Asset Management - Getting meaning out of metadata (from BBC Technology) http://www.bbctechnology.com/pdfs/metadata.PDF

Have a nice new year and holiday.

-Eli

From: Mark Slater
Subject: Radio Metadata
http://www.slater.ch

Hi there,

Just read your article on radio metadata. I'm not sure what the technology is called (RDS? something like that), but here in Switzerland (and much of Europe), we've had car radios that display artist and song name in the display. Other stuff gets displayed, too, like the name of the radio station, or sports scores while they're being read out during the news.

Can this be? European radio being more advanced than american? ;-)

regards
mark

From: Robert Casalis de Pury
Subject: Metadata on the Radio - Radio Data System

A site with information about the Radio Data System - http://www.rds.org.uk/

From: Stu Lancaster
Subject: Re: Metadata on the Radio

There's all ready a radio metadata service in Europe, the Radio Data System, but I don't think it's used for song titles, instead it gives station names and programme types. It also has a great feature that allows your radio to switch to traffic reports whenever they're broadcast by another station. See http://www.rds.org.uk/

Similarly there's already a CD metadata format, CDText, which gives artist name, album name and track titles. My car's CD player has it and so far Pearl Jam's Yield is the only album I've seen make use of it. See http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aa571/cdtext.htm

From: Dave Aiello
Subject: Radio Data System
http://www.ctdata.com/

Regarding your Metadata on Radio article, you probably ought to have a link to the existing standard called Radio Data System, primarily implemented in the EU countries. I found an Acrobat document on the subject from the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/factsheets/docs/radio_rds.pdf

I am planning to post an article to CTDATA.com pointing to yours and adding some comments. I am a big fan of radio, but I have a tendency to listen to information-oriented programming.

Dave Aiello
CTDATA

From: CHris MAcGregor
Subject: Radio Metadata
http://www.flazoom.com

Back in the mid 80's there was a format for CDs called CD+G that included metadata about the songs. Two of my favorite CDs from that time were in CD+G format, so I did invest in a CD player that handled the format (unfortunately that CD player died last year).

"Naked" by the Talking Heads is still one of my favorite CDs, and the CD+G features of the CD were really inventive. The CD would tell you what instruments were used in the songs and it had a lyrics and guitar chord feature that would let anyone who knows their chords play along with the song.

The format died a quick death. Mainly because the cost of the CD players that could handle the data was a little high. I remember it being a big deal when the CD+G format first came out. Now the format is almost exclusivly used for Karaoke.

Anyway, here are some links:

The CD+G list: http://www.whom.co.uk/html/cdplusg.txt

Mac CD+G player: http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/CDG_Player/

How to make CD+Gs: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aa571/cdgproj.htm

So, the format is there just no one other than the (I can't believe I'm saying this) "karaoke industry" uses it.

CHris

From: Dan Lyke
Subject: Music metadata
http://www.flutterby.com

Finally someone who gives a damn about the stuff I've been working on for the past 6 months. I still don't get it, but the checks clear and the work's been moderately fun, so who am I to complain?

Anyway, there is a standard to put this data on music CDs. Nobody does it (I think Sony is starting to, how many years after the beginnings of CDs?). This is why Gracenote/CDDB exists.

Pioneer has an in-dash CD player in Japan that uses the cell phone network to query CDDB about disks, there are various other projects working on similar mechanisms, or on embedding subsets of the CDDB database with various mechanisms for updates, but it seems to me like anything but the full database isn't going to be interesting to anyone truly into music, because the real music-heads aren't going to be covered adequately with one or two hundred thousand titles.

As I said, I don't get it, but then I tend to listen to music an album at a time, and my favorite album of this year will probably sell less than a thousand copies.

Dan