Contents:
- Executive Summary
- Introduction
- Test Description
- Test Results
- Conclusions and Discussion.
This short report subtitled “summary findings and conclusions” presents the results of a study undertaken by the ARSC Technical Committee on the persistence and integrity of embedded metadata in digital audio files over time. The study was concerned with two things in particular, what happens to the metadata when handled by various software applications over time; and during the process of creating a derivative. Three tests were carried out: to evaluate interoperability and semantic shifts; persistence and integrity through editing operations; and persistence and integrity through derivative creation. The basic conclusion: few of the standard metadata chunks are supported in their entirety by any software application. The introduction gives some background on the variety of embedded audio metadata types it studies (in particular the LIST-INFO chunk, bext chunk, aXML chunk, iXML chunk and XMP). This is followed by the test description, methodology and summary results. The conclusions end the report. The report includes links to the reference files tested and in depth test results.
This important summary report sheds light on a significant problem for rights holders, production personnel and end-users, but most importantly, for archivists responsible for preserving the integrity and authenticity of audio files and their associated metadata over time. Although the target audience for the detailed findings are digital audio file technicians and specialists, this summary report presents conclusions audio archivists and audio archive managers can understand and should be aware of. It is also clearly intended to inform the audio hardware/software application market about the short comings current market solutions offer for those in the preservation business.