Report of the SC-03-06 Working Group on Digital Library and Archive Systems of the SC-03 Subcommittee on the Preservation and Restoration of Audio Recording meeting, held in conjunction with the AES 113th Convention in Los Angeles, CA, US, 2002-10-05
The meeting was convened by J. Nunn, chair of the AES Standards Committee, in the absence of the chair and vice chair.
The agenda and the report of the previous meeting were approved as written.
Current projects
AES-X98 Review of Audio Metadata
The two documents from D. Ackerman, "Core Audio Metadata" and "Process History Metadata," which had been submitted at the previous meeting, have been reformatted and were distributed during the meeting. Ackerman said he is prepared to redraft these documents into a standards format but before doing so he would like to get some feedback from other people.
C. Chambers asked how these documents might relate to the current work in SC-06-06 on descriptive tagging which emanates from the EBU. This involves defining a number of XML tags with names and descriptions. The meeting felt the SC-06-06 work was more closely related to the document submitted by W. Sistrunk at the last meeting and her document should be drafted into a standards format although there is still some reconciliation needed with the EBU specification Tech 3293, "EBU Core Metadata set for Radio Archives." The EBU specification could also serve as a useful model for the AES standard. Chambers and Sistrunk will discuss ways to rationalize any differences between the documents by SC-03-06 and SC-06-06. The reconciled document is expected to be reviewed at the next meeting in March 2003 and circulated a month prior to this.
The redrafted descriptive metadata document will be sent to IASA, EBU and SMPTE for comments.
The document "Core Audio Metadata" deals with those elements that describe the physical and file-based characteristics of an audio object. It is written in XML format.
The document "Process History Metadata," is concerned with tracking the audio processing to which an object has been subjected, a form of digital provenance. It was noted that this has a similar role to the EBU Broadcast Wave history chunk. It was felt the documents need to be presented in a form more readily understood by those people not familiar with XML and with a description of what the documents are seeking to achieve. It was suggested that the XML documents be converted to an HTML format so that an ordinary browser can be used to view the documents. The secretary will be asked to see how this can best be done. It was agreed the existing documents should be sent to IASA, EBU, and SMPTE for comments. Ackerman hoped to be able to redraft the documents by the end of the year.
AES-X99 Transfers to Digital Storage
The project remains suspended pending availability of effort.
AES-X100 Asset Management
The project remains suspended pending availability of effort.
AES-X120 Liaison with IASA
Nunn reported that following the last meeting D. Schueller contacted IASA, and it has been agreed that a formal liaison will be established. The secretary will be arranging the details of how this liaison will operate.
New projects
No new project requests were received or requested.
New business
Ackerman presented a short report on the activities of the AES Technical Council in the area of digital archiving.
Nunn raised the issue of the chairmanship of the working group as the current chair had only agreed to take on the position for a short period. Members of the group were asked to consider suitable people to drive the work forward.
The next meeting is scheduled to be held in conjunction with the AES 114th Convention in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
