EBU Acquisition Technical Metadata Set

This version 1.0 of the “Acquisition Metadata Set” specification has been developed by the EBU’s Expert Community on Metadata (ECM), under the umbrella of the EBU HIPS Strategic Programme (SP-HIPS). The goal of this Strategic Programme has been to define solutions to improve interoperability in HDTV production (audio and video encoding, wrappers, metadata and SDI interfacing). HIPS-META is the SP-HIPS subgroup on metadata.

The “Acquisition Technical Metadata Set” is a set of metadata collected at capture through interfaces from live cameras or camcorders. It is intended to improve interoperability for the purposes of exchange of material. This set has been commonly agreed by EBU Members (users) and manufacturers for use in a tapeless file-based or live production environment.

The “Acquisition Technical Metadata Set” is clustered in camera device (shooting parameters), lens device (settings and identification) and microphone device (identification) video and audio metadata sets. This document only provides definitions of the different relevant metadata attributes.

For cameras and camcorders, it is expected that the file format used for the export of the essence will be MXF. The metadata structure should support the exchange of native available MXF (export) and XML (Import and export) formats. Additional EBU specifications provide implementation guidelines for different configurations (e.g. using KLV and XML encodings for exchange inside MXF files, or using separate XML files). Descriptive Metadata sets are also specified in a separate EBU specification.

More information on the role of this specification with regard to other related EBU metadata specifications is provided in the ‘metadata’ section of the EBU TECHNICAL website.