IASA 2017 Annual Conference

In 2016, the FADGI Audio-Visual Working Group initiated a project to review the state of embedded metadata in DPX headers from a wide variety of film scanners in use at US federal agencies and beyond. The results of the analysis demonstrate that embedded metadata implementation in file format headers is inconsistent, even in Core fields required by SMPTE as the minimum amount of information that a DPX reader needs to read and interpret a file.

In order to increase standardization of this data across institutions and workflow tools, FADGI published draft guidelines for embedding selected metadata in the DPX file header. These guidelines outline FADGI implementations of the SMPTE Core fields as well as other elements Strongly Recommended, Recommended or Optional for FADGI use. The non-Core fields take advantage of existing header structures as well as define new metadata elements for the User Defined fields to document, among other things, digitization process history. For this field, FADGI draws inspiration from EBU R98-1999: Format for the <Coding History> field in Broadcast Wave Format document for defining a use for field 76, User defined data header, to summarize data on the digitizing process including signal chain specifics and other elements.

Next steps include revising the guidelines to respond to public comments and working to develop an open source tool for batch embedding metadata into DPX headers in conformance with the FADGI guidelines.