metadata fun

Nathan R. Yergler nathan at yergler.net
Thu Jul 21 09:24:16 EDT 2005


The work we did was mostly digital audio extraction and transcoding.  
When it worked, we were able to write some really slick Python code that 
did quite a bit in a small amount of code.  The problem was that getting 
the code to work reliably on a single platform, or similarly 
cross-platform was a nightmare.  Admittedly, the problem could be in the 
libraries that Pymedia itself wraps; we never dug deep enough to find 
out.  We ran into problems such as CD-ROM drives reporting empty (when 
they weren't) or erring out mid-read and reporting empty.  We also ran 
into stability problems with the transcoding functionality, to the point 
that we eventually bundled a command line encoder and called out to it 
from our Python code.  Finally, Pymedia doesn't build (or didn't a few 
months ago, to the best of my knowledge) on Mac OS X, which makes it a 
less desirable target.

I think Pymedia is an interesting project, and the developer was fairly 
responsive to mailing list inquiries.  Unfortunately it didn't meet our 
expectations.

Nathan


Mark Fallu wrote:

>Do you think you could publish more details of the specifics of the
>work you did - the problems you encountered etc.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Mark
>
>On 7/21/05, Nathan R. Yergler <nathan at yergler.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>I'm not familiar with MMPtyhon, but Pymedia isn't a suitable basis for
>>building upon.  I used it in developing a ccPublisher derivative for
>>Jameno (http://jamendo.org), and it's fickle and buggy on it's best
>>days.  The mailing list has been slightly more active lately, so maybe
>>some of these issues are being corrected.
>>
>>Nathan
>>
>>
>>Mark Fallu wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>There are two python products that are interesting in this area:
>>>
>>>Pymedia - http://pymedia.org/ (based on ffmpeg can read / transcode
>>>etc a variety of media files including mov.)
>>>and
>>>MMPython - http://sourceforge.net/projects/mmpython/ (a multimedia
>>>metadata parser that can read all sorts of meta data eg. id3 and
>>>quickitime atoms)
>>>
>>>Both of which would be a good basis for going forward and building an
>>>app that can not only read the existing meta data - but can write the
>>>metadata too.  Usefully they are not targeted specifically at
>>>Quicktime so would be a basis for a more generic system of multimedia
>>>file metadata manipulation.
>>>
>>>The quicktime api documentation of MOOV atoms can be found here -
>>>http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/APIREF/-moov-.htm
>>>(quicktime is just a container format - so the video stream has a
>>>separate MOOV atom as does the video stream and the metadata etc)
>>>
>>>Quicktime file format specification here:
>>>http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QTFF/index.html
>>>
>>>What we need is a standalone crossplatform app that can (in the manner
>>>of ccpublisher) alter the metadata atom and leave the rest of the
>>>quicktime file intact.
>>>
>>>Currently - we have to things like quicktime pro to make these
>>>modifications - but that is really only suitable for manual use on
>>>individual files on either windows or macs.
>>>
>>>I am more interested in a truly system that would allow users to
>>>upload files to a server and edit the metadata through the web or to
>>>batch process files on the desktop.
>>>
>>>Cheers,
>>>
>>>Mark
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>On 7/21/05, Kevin Marks <cc at mediagora.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>QT has a copyright field in it's general metadata. I put the CC license
>>>>including link in that. eg
>>>>
>>>>http://homepage.mac.com/kevinmarks/bacon.mov
>>>>
>>>>Open in qt player to see the licence, which reads:
>>>>
>>>>This work is licensed under a <a rel="license"
>>>>href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">Creative
>>>>Commons License</a>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>On Jul 20, 2005, at 9:01 PM, Jon Phillips wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 13:33 +1000, Mark Fallu wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>>>Hey folks,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>What is the current state of embedding CC metadata in Quicktime?  Do
>>>>>>you know if anyone has made a start on the .mov format?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>>>>>It would be great to develop a library that would work on multiple
>>>>>formats, and develop a generic system that could work for quicktime as
>>>>>well to embed cc metadata.
>>>>>
>>>>>I did a google search, but couldn't find much (although I stayed at
>>>>>under 100 searches). I'm sure Mike, or others could speak to this
>>>>>better.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>cc-metadata mailing list
>>>metadata at creativecommons.org
>>>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-metadata
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>    
>>



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