Proposal
Standard (plug-and-play-like) content labeling and indexing method for
multimedia on various media types
Justification
As new multimedia formats arise, there is an increasing need for a consistent
way
to organize them. From the earliest days of computing, folks
have put pictures, audio, and text files on standard floppy disks.
The most universal way to index such disks was to simply write their
contents on the label. This was fine but it did not lend itself
to
interactivity. Floppy discs generally contained a rather small
amount
of content as well.
As content becomes more vast, for example network drives, CD's, and
DVD's,
writing content on a label becomes less practical. A more recent
example of this is the MP3 CD. Such CD's can contain 100's of
files of
content but with only a limited number of methods to index their content.
m3u and playlists are examples of such methods. However, they
do not
apply to mixed content CD's (for example a CD with mp3 files, wav files,
and jpeg pictures). In some cases, someone may put a text
file at the root level directory
of the media, giving it a label like "contents" or "index". This
works only for the
user and does not adhere to any standard format.
An application cannot consistently parse these text files.
Lessons Learned
autorun.inf
Microsoft has attempted to solve the problem with a file
called autorun.inf. When you insert a CD containing this
file, the
Windows OS will automatically open the file and execute whatever
runnable files are contained therein. The problems with
such a method
are:
1. Only works with a Microsoft OS
2. Currently applies to CD's only
3. autorun.inf is not an indexing format, but rather an
auto launching
format.
CDI
There have been indexing standards in from years ago that never really
took off. The most memorable example would be CDI, invented
by
Philips Electronics. The primary downfall of CDI was the
ridiculous
NDA and licensing fees that a content developer had to subject
himself
to. The technology was good for its time but it also suffers
from
being a CD-only format.
CDI lives today only because of the huge Video CD market in China.
Note that most computer based VCD players just ignore the CDI
and directly
play the mpeg video files.
A new, open, freely available, standard for indexing on various content
media
is needed. Such a standard is vital to for developers of software,
standalone media units, operating systems, and content developers.
Concept
A single file on a media (eg a CD-ROM) that contains the properties
and
references to the multimedia files
This is sometimes called playlist, content, index, toc, or even readme
in some contexts.
It is the file one generally looks at to list the contents and get
descriptions.
This file is usually in the root directory of the media.
If such a list contains a standardized, well structured layout, applications
can parse this data consistently
across different media types and present the parsed information to
the user. CDI is a rough example of how this works.
HTML is another example of this concept (although a less rigorous one).
The following illustration shows how a front-end application might
handle the standard index.
Clarification
This is not a proposal for a new media-format or filesystem (like iso9660).
Rather, it is a proposal for
a rather simple (a single file) extension to the vast array of existing
media formats.
Requirements
This format shal be open to ALL developers.
This format may not take content from commercial or proprietary standards.
This format may take look-and-feel from existing commercial formats so
long as
the end result is one that was independently developed
and can be proved in
an international court of law.
This format shal apply to as many media-formats as possible, for example
CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, Zip disks, Network Drives, floppy's,
etc.