With the switch from analog to digital technology the entire process of production, distribution, and archival of a film and tv program large amounts of data are created. Besides recorded and processed audiovisual information, in each single step of the production process and furthermore throughout the entire media value chain new metadata is created, administrated, and put into relation with already existing metadata mandatory for the management of these processes. Due to competing standards as well as to proprietary and incompatible interfaces of the applied software tools, a significant amount of this metadata cannot be reused and is not available for subsequent steps in the process chain. As a consequence most of this valuable information has to be costly recreated in each single step of media production, distribution, and archival. Currently, there is no generally accepted nor commonly used metadata exchange format that is applied throughout the media value chain. But, also the market for media production companies has changed dramatically towards the internet as being the preferred distribution channel for all media content. Today's available limited budget for media production companies puts additional pressure to work in a cost and time efficient way and not to waste resources due to the necessity of costly reengineering of lost metadata. The dwerft project aims to apply Linked Data principles for all metadata exchange through all steps of the media value chain [4]. Starting with the very first idea for a script, all metadata is converted according to either existing or newly developed ontologies to be reused in subsequent steps of the media value chain. Thus, metadata collected during the media production becomes a valuable asset not only for each step from pre- to postproduction, but also in distribution and archival. This paper presents results of the dwerft project about the successful integration of a set of film production tools based on the Linked Production Data Cloud, a technology platform for the film and tv industry to enable software interoperability used in production, distribution, and archival of audiovisual content.
The core of the dwerft project is the Linked Production Data Cloud (LPDC),
a technology platform for the film and television industry that allows lossless
interoperability between software and hardware tools used in production,
distribution, and archiving of audiovisual content. Based on Linked Open Data
principles [
The Film Ontology3 vocabulary was designed in collaboration with
domain experts to create a suitable terminology describing the different tasks of
media production and all associated metadata. The ontology schema is capable
of representing film scripts (e.g., scenes, scene content, characters, sets, etc.),
production planning metadata (e.g., film crew, departments, cast, filming
locations, shooting schedule, used equipment, etc.), on-set information (e.g., shots,
takes, and associated clips), post production metadata (e.g., timecodes, codecs,
resolutions, and formats of recorded and further processed clips), as well as
metadata for quality assessment of archived audiovisual material (e.g., surface
damages, splices, bulges, glued areas, etc.). Where ever possible, already existing
vocabularies have been reused, mapped, and interlinked, such as e.g., Broadcast
Metadata Exchange Format (BMF)4, EBUcore5, or DBpedia Ontology6. The
collaborative design of the Film Ontology was carried out with WebProtégé [
RDF Metadata generated by different converters is stored in a RDF triplestore and can be queried via SPARQL. As a proof of concept, semantic metadata originating from a test film production at the Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin is available for further use8 and can be searched9.
In a setting where data from heterogenous sources is transformed, aggregated,
and stored in a triplestore, it is essential to manage updates of the data. In our
approach, we have integrated the linked data versioning system TailR [
An exemplary set of tools, representative for the different stages pre-production, planning, shooting, post-production, distribution and archiving, was chosen, analyzed with respect to interoperability and connected to the Linked Production Data Cloud. DramaQueen10 is a script writing software to develop, visualize, and analyze stories. It allows working from the first idea to the final script using predefined formatting, storylines, characters, outline, synopsis, and story charts. DramaQueen is a Java based standalone application and uses a proprietary data format based on XML to store script projects. PreProducer 11 is a film production management software to support the complete preproduction planning process. It features general project management, script analysis, management of crew, cast, inventory, and filming locations, development of shooting schedules, budgeting and financial calculations. PreProducer is a web-based application and offers partial export and import based on XML documents via a REST API. LockitScript 12 is a mobile web application used during film shooting. It supports 7 The dwerft tools framework is available at https://github.com/yovisto/dwerft 8 http://filmontology.org/resource/DWERFT 9 http://filmontology.org/search/ 10 http://dramaqueen.info/about-en/?lang=en 11 http://www.preproducer.com/index.html 12 http://lockitnetwork.com/home/ the script supervisor to oversee the continuity of the movie and keeps track of the daily progress. It also manages the linking of scenes and takes to filmed clips and uses a special hardware device to directly synchronize camera data with its backend. LockitScript offers limited export facilities for daily reports and camera metadata in the web interface. AVID Log Exchange (ALE)13 is a file format used by various cameras and post-production tools (e.g., Arri Alexa, AVID Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve, Silverstack) to exchange metadata about filmed movie clips. The integration of ALE is challenging, because each tool defines custom columns in the CSV format. While the previously described tools primarily produce metadata, the distribution phase of a film production usually requires metadata of all steps of the production process. Two tools already benefit from the early availability of semantic metadata using SPARQL queries: rightsmap14, a licence management solution for film and tv productions, and the "Medienbegleitkarte" (MBK), a metadata set based on the Broadcast Metadata Exchange Format (BMF) mandatory for delivery at German public-service tv broadcasters. Finally, media condition analysis tools by the German Broadcasting Archive directly insert analysis reports as RDF data into the LPDC. 4
With the dwerft project and the LPDC framework a first subset of applications and tools has been integrated for lossless metadata exchange in the media production cycle. Metadata from media production and archival thus become a valuable asset used to enable better search and retrieval as e.g. for video on demand platforms, where it can also be used to support content-based recommendation and customized advertising.
Acknowledgement: This work has been funded by the German Government, Federal Ministry of Education and Research under project number 03WKCJ4D. 13 http://www.avid.com/en/media-composer/features (Log and track metadata) 14 http://www.recoupmentpro.de/