Descriptive Metadata for Television

3 Metadata Schemes, Structures, and Encoding

First, it is important not to confuse metadata structures and schemes with how they are encoded for use within a digital system. This is easy to do and is one of the most common causes of misunderstanding. It is important to be clear that what a metadata element is (a list of elements in a metadata structure or dictionary) and how it is used (metadata scheme) has nothing whatsoever to do with how it is encoded for that use. Example encoding schemes are key-length-value (KLV), used for wrapping video or audio data into computer files between media servers, and eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML), frequently used for wrapping metadata into computer files between databases in the form of XML schema.