P_META
The EBU P/Meta Semantic Metadata Schema, already known as P_META, is published for free use. The EBU project group P/MAG has been working since 1999 to create a standard vocabulary for information relating to programme information in the professional broadcasting industry. P_META has been developed in full awareness of other metadata sets developed by various bodies across the industry with varying degrees of overlap, e.g. in SMPTE , ISO MPEG , Dublin Core , PBCore , AES , TV Anytime , DVB and ProMPEG.
The EBU is confident that it has collated and defined a basic catalogue of data items which can be used as the building blocks for common information exchanges between content creators, distributors, archives and systems. These have been validated against real business transactions undertaken by EBU members.
How to use P_META ?
1. Broadcasters who have developed internal metadata solutions are invited to map their information to P/META.
2. Media Producers are invited to use P_META as a semantic and grammatical basis for interface specifications and to implement P_META in combination with specific engineering guidelines per application and use case.
3. P_META can also be simply implemented 'as is' or extended to cover unavoidable specific needs.
P_META has been designed to be as flexible as possible in implementation while retaining consistency of meaning. It is technology-independent, and can be used in applications to create XML documents, embed metadata in file formats such as MXF or BWF, or in simple Word templates.
P_META is not intended for use in databases (although it could be used as a starting point), but it is designed to be the "language on the wire" in implementations. Its use of controlled terms defined in classification lists favours interoperability and allows data exchanges to be translated into different human languages without corruption. The specification is composed of three parts:
The specification is composed of three parts: the schema , which defines the P_META attributes, elements and datatypes, a series of reference data sets, and the EBU Technical Specification Tech 3295. The schema and reference data sets are accessible via the links provided in the "download zone" of the specification.
Maintenance
P_META is managed and maintained by the EBU to allow updates to be created in response to user feedback. Modifications / changes / replacements and other comments on the syntax and semantics shall be made following the maintenance procedure for metadata specifications.