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.
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.
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.