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cc-metadata - Metadata in .mov files?

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Subject: discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

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  • From: Adam Conover <adam AT tweebiscuit.net>
  • To: cc-metadata AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Metadata in .mov files?
  • Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 21:33:33 -0500

Hello --

I'm in a college sketch comedy group called Olde English, and in the next week we'll be putting our video work up on the internet. Before our site ( http://www.oldeenglish.org ) went down, a few of our videos were extremely popular (specifically, "How much money would it take for you to kill a puppy with your bare hands?" got the most exposure, if anyone's seen it), and we want to apply CC licenses to them (Attribution, No Commercial, No Derivative Works) so they can be freely distributed. Our primary goal is self-promotion, so we want to get our work distributed as widely as possible while still retaining attribution, etc. (You can think of us as akin to those unsigned bands that Napster claimed were its main beneficiaries.) From a bit of exploratory browsing, I've gathered that there's no standard recommendation for how to include CC metadata in video files yet, but we're putting them up in the next week, so I thought I'd ask what the best way to implement them would be considering our particular needs. Here's a list:

1) We want the videos to be viewable on the web. (This is easy -- we will simply have the CC button on the website.)

2) We want to encourage people to download the videos and share them through P2P apps, but we still need the licensing information to be included in the file in some form. (From what I gather, you're supposed to include the URL of the license instead of the license itself, so that's what we'll do.)

3) While we think metadata is terrific, our main concern is getting the information in there rather than advancing the goal of metadata standardization.

Considering that our goal is a quick-and-dirty solution, what is the best way of including the licensing data in the files? These seem to be our options:

1) .mov metadata. Quicktime doesn't seem to have as standardized a metadata format as, say, ID3 tags in MP3s, so where, if anywhere, should this information go in the metadata, and what form should it take? I don't have a huge amount of experience with the .mov format, so any advice would be appreciated.

2) Another option is to include the URL of the license IN THE VIDEO ITSELF, as a video title. This wouldn't work great on the metadata level, but would at least preserve the link to the licensing information in a way that would be relatively difficult to mess with.

3) Since, again, our main expected avenue of distribution is P2P filesharing services, what about the various P2P metadata catalogues, such as Bitzi tickets?

Again, I hope this was the right forum for this question, but I haven't been able to find even a mention online of the proper way to go about this. If anyone has any recommendations, I would be extremely appreciative -- so appreciative, in fact, that I'd gladly mail a sampler CD of our best work to anyone who could help out. (Please reply directly to this e-mail address -- I'm not subscribed to the list.)

Thank you!

- Adam Conover




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