Interoperable Preservation Metadata for Multimedia Content

Interoperable metadata is a key prerequisite for long-term preservation and quality assurance of multimedia content. For preser-vation purposes, the following two types of metadata are most crucial: structural metadata, i.e., metadata that is needed to correctly interpret the stored essence, and preservation metadata, which includes information about the fixity, integrity and authenticity of the object, its condition and quality, as well as documentation of the provenance and preservation actions applied. While an abundance of metadata standards and formats for describing multimedia content exists, this is not the case for the description of material properties, tools and processes for preservation of audiovisual content. Within the ISO/IEC MPEG group, an initiative called Multimedia Preservation Application Format (MP-AF) is defining a data model for representing preservation metadata for multimedia content, addressing a broad range of institutions, from dedicated audiovisual archives to national libraries or museums, which may have some multimedia content in their collection. The model includes the following metadata categories: provenance, context, reference, quality, integrity, authentication, fixity and rights. The specification of MP-AF contains a high-level data model, the specific metadata structures for the different types of preservation metadata, and a core set of these metadata that is required to ensure minimum interoperability.