Metadata Exchange with BMF 2.0

Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) announces the publication of the Broadcast Metadata Exchange Format (BMF) 2.0 Beta. BMF 2.0 is a rich metadata-vocabulary for the domains of television, radio and Internet. As a lingua franca in metadata exchange it facilitates the reuse of metadata and increases the interoperability between IT-systems.

The BMF model covers the information requirements of a wide variety of domains in television as production, planning, distribution and archiving. This is the result of an accurate evaluation of different use cases which was accomplished in close collaborations with working groups of the public broadcasting in Germany. Amongst others BMF 2.0 supports now the complete use cases of production-, program- and event planning, camera metadata and file transfer of program material.

Metadata in BMF 2.0 are exchanged as XML documents. The structure for the BMF-XML documents is defined in a XML Schema with clear and simple design rules. Furthermore the XML Schema provides faster orientation for developers through short documentation. The rich vocabulary of BMF 2.0 is a toolset for the generation of model-subsets for specific use cases. Only these subsets will be implemented.

The XML Schema of BMF 2.0 Beta can be downloaded by interesting companies for testing and evaluation purposes at free cost.