TAME YOUR ASSETS

From the first moment I arrived at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Beeld en Geluid), I knew I was in for something special. Half of the building’s ten-story structure is underground, housing a massive film & video collection! But I wasn’t here to ogle the building. I was here for the 2013 FIAT/IFTA Media Management Commission Seminar. This year’s theme is “metadata as the cornerstone digital archiving”.

I’m not going to summarise today’s presentations (You can read all about the lineup here.), but I did want to mention at least one issue that kept cropping up during the conference and in the conversations I had with some of the attendees. Unsurprisingly, the question of who enters metadata is on people’s mind. The AV archiving domain isn’t the only one struggling with this question (see Smith’s CMSWire article here). Many digital video archives are integrated with the production department and so ask that producers ‘tag’ their own work. What they get, though, is far from perfect. ‘Dirty’ metadata comes to mind. Yes, that was a term used today. Although some suggested enforcement, others claimed incentivising as the best method. How do you get them to do it?

Tune in for live seminar coverage via twitter #fiatmmc.

Short summaries of the presentations + panel discussions will be posted to the Beeld en Geluid website. Details to follow early next week.