On 22/04/2010, at 7:50 AM, Charles Veasey wrote:
> Thanks for the iXML link Paul. I looked at Sound Devices implementation;
> it is geared for video/film production. Like you said, much of the data
> that nature recordists would want to record would be crammed into the
> notes section. I believe you can edit the metadata using a external
> keyboard that hooks up to the recorder, but carrying an extra device
> around and editing this way doesn't interest me very much. Last night I
> tried SD's free software Wave Agent 1.1. Among other things, it allows
> one to easily edit the metadata from a PC. This is cool, but again most
> relevant information would be in the notes section. I guess this is
> really the only option. Even if you completely customized the iXML tags
> to include things like biophony, geophony, etc, which seems very
> possible, and made a program to write and read that data, I don't think
> that any other program, such as an audio editor, would be able to read
> it (unless it was in the notes section :).
Hi Charles,
The USER field is potentially the most useful but as you point out SD have
tailored support to the film and sound industry. The reference iXML file
contains pairs of terms under the USER field, and gives a very basic indication
of what could be included:
SoundMixer=Fred Smith
Microphones=COS11
The description seems to suggest that you could add almost anything within the
USER field. From a quick check Wave Agent doesn't appear to display the
contents of the USER field.
-
<USER>
The USER field is completely defined by the user, hardware or application, it
has no defined function, and may contain any kind of human readable data. It is
intended that this field be used (comptible with a defined schema) to store
miscellaneous information, which is not appropriate for any other field.
Applications are free to sub-divide this field with tagging systems like the
old bext description, although typically this field is designed to be human
readable rather than machine readable, so any tagging should be based on
interpretation of human readable, neat text. iXML viewing applications will
typically display the entire USER field in one text area. One of the primary
functions of this field would typically be to allow extended information about
the recording process used, and personnel involved with a field recording. This
is typically not file-specific but will be the same for a whole group of
recordings, and which appears in the iXML of all recordings. It is ideally
suited to storage of the metadata which would normally appear at the top of a
sound report, ie. the name of the mixer, contact details etc.
-
cheers
Paul
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