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Tag Archives: metadata

ID3 in MP3 metadata container

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Marco Barnig

Last update : August 25,2013
ID3 is a metadata container most often used in conjunction with the MP3 audio file format. It allows information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and other information about the file to be stored in the file itself.

There are two unrelated versions of ID3: ID3v1 and ID3v2. They are de facto standards, because no standardization body was involved in its creation nor has given it a formal approval status.

A tag editor is used to read or write ID3 metadata. Many media players, including the standard players iTunes and Windows Media Player, provide tagging features.

The most common fields displayed in a DLNA renderer are the following :

  • Artist Name
  • Album Name
  • Title
  • Genre
  • Year
  • Comments
  • Length
  • Picture of the artist or album (high resolution panoramic pictures, for example 640×480 pixels, are best suited)

Sometimes the track number is also shown. Less usual are the Album Artist, the Composer or the Disc Number.

Widely used tag editors are Mp3tag (current version 2.57 released on July 6, 2013, created by Florian Heidenreich) and Easytag (current version 2.1.8 released on February 10, 2013, created by Jerôme Couderc).

The ID3 standard is very flexible with regards to the type and number of images that can be embedded in a MP3 single file (21 types are specified : icons, leaflets, cover art, artist, composer, conductor, location, …). In practice only one picture is used and displayed by the player. More informations about embedding album art in MP3 files are available at the weblog of Richard Farrar.

Informations about metadata editors for image files are available in the following post.

 

Posted in Audio Technologies | Tagged ID3, metadata, mp3

Exif, IPTC, XMP

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Marco Barnig

Last update : August 25, 2013

Exif (Exchangeable image file format) is a specification for the image file format used by digital cameras and scanners. The specification uses the existing JPEG, TIFF Rev. 6.0, and RIFF WAV file formats, with the addition of specific metadata tags. It is not supported in JPEG 2000, PNG, or GIF.

Exif was created by the Japan Electronic Industries Development Association (JEIDA).

The metadata tags defined in the Exif standard cover a broad spectrum :

  • Date and time information
  • Camera settings (camera model and make, orientation, aperture, shutter speed, focal length, metering mode, ISO speed, …)
  • Thumbnails for previewing the picture
  • Geolocation
  • Descriptions
  • Copyright

The most used tool to edit Exif informations is the ExifTool by Phil Harvey. Another very useful tool is PhotoME (Photo Metadata Editor) developped by Jens Duttke which handles also embedded color (.icc) profiles.

There exist other standards to add metadata to files : IPTC (Information Interchange Model),  XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform), … Both standards allow to embed informations about authors, locations, countries, subjects etc in the image files.

IPTC was developed in the early 1990s by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) to expedite the international exchange of news among newspapers and news agencies (IPTC Photo Metadata Standards : IPTC Core and IPTC Extension). The older IPTC metadata specification (IPTC-IIM) was frozen in 1997, and the IPTC organisation has been recommending the use of the XMP-based IPTC Core specifcation since 2004.

The ExifTool (current version 9.35 released on August 17, 2013) handles also IPTC and XMP metadata. A GUI (ExiftoolGUI : current version 5.15 released on January 8, 2013) for the ExifTool has been developed by Bogdan Hrastnik.

Another great utility allowing to read and write Exif, IPTC and XMP metadata is XnView, developed by Pierre Gougelet. This program handles more than 400 graphic file formats for import and more than 50 formats for export. A new project called XnViewMP (MP stands for multi platform) supports full multicode. Version 0.61 was released on July 18, 2013.

A C++ library and a command line utility to manage image metadata, called Exiv2, is available as free software and with a commercial license, and is used in many projects.The development of Exiv2 is lead by Andreas Huggel. Version Exiv2 0.23 was released on April, 2012.

Tags and other properties of a file can de added or modified in the Windows Explorer Detail Pane or in the Properties Pane.

The following list provides some useful guides about the right use of metadata in images and in other multimedia files :

  • Guide to Photo Metadata Fields
  • The most evil feature ever conceived: the Exif Orientation Tag, by Martin Fiedler (KeyJ)
  • Comparison of metadata editors
Posted in Image Technologies | Tagged exif, IPTC, metadata, photo, raw, XMP

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