The field of metadata is of growing interest to EBU Members as they begin to implement systems that use both locally developed data specifications and also industry defined standards. Some EBU Members began this activity in the 1990’s: others are discovering it for the first time now.

Four questions

The sorts of questions arising fall into four categories:

1. What are the EBU Members’ requirements for Metadata?

2. Standards: are there implementations?

3. What are the other options?

4. What is coming?

 
In order to provide access to EBU members and also represent EBU in the R&D community, the EBU Production Management Committee has setup an expert Metadata Advisory Group (P/MAG). Members of this group are also in charge of developing and maintaining EBU specifications on metadata and related matters.

Keep it simple!

The following main lessons have been learnt over the past years:

 1. The point of focus is the business object.

This is being created and processed during production, end-to-end. A TV programme is such a business object.

2. There is not one unique production process.

Instead there is an association of processes and functions from commissioning to delivery.

 3. The end-to-end orchestration of processes on a business object is known as a workflow.

There are many different workflows within an organisation (e.g. per production project or per production type/area). Generally speaking, not one organisation has a unique workflow and not two organisations share the same workflows.

 4. A common definition of business objects is desired.

As a consequence of the above, within production, it is important to agree on a common definitions of the business objects. This is an essential preliminary step towards modelling customisable production processes/functions.

 5. Exchange requires application specific formats

Finally exchange still requires application specific common metadata formats and exchange procedures/protocols.

More information on actual EBU activities can be found on the respective Project Groups pages such as P/MAG.