German industry association Deutsche TV-Platform has launched an initiative to harmonise programme-accompanying metadata, aiming to ensure that users can easily find the desired content across different distribution platforms.
The smart media working group, headed by Jürgen Sewczyk, has defined a basic set of metadata for this purpose. It contains recommendations on how to prepare metadata – such as image formats, text lengths, cast, youth protection information – for the distribution of audio-visual content.
Ideally, the metadata then only has to be assembled once and can be deployed across all devices and user interfaces by all platform providers.
“After several unsuccessful attempts in the industry, Deutsche TV-Platform has now succeeded in laying the foundation for the harmonisation of metadata. The response from the entire media industry has been very positive, and we look forward to further discussions with media companies and platform operators in order to advance the project,” said Andre Prahl, chairman of Deutsche TV-Platform.
Metadata for controlling special functions such as backwards EPG (catch-up TV), instant restart and copyright protection will be addressed in a further development stage.
