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    Meta-info - Best practice

    Introduction:
    Making good meta-data can be challenging. I have added a bit of meta-data myself, and oftentimes I am in doubt about what a specific part of a Blu-ray should be categorized as.

    In case anyone else were also having these issues, I decided to write a bit about how I have chosen to do it so far. Some of it will probably be controversial, but I hope it can also help someone else with their meta-data contributions. My strategy is by no means the only available one. Feel free to add your own thoughts. This is just as much to get a discussion going about best practice. After all, we all benefit from the contributions of the community.

    I apologize in advance for being long winded.

    Main feature (movies):
    The main feature of the Blu-ray. That is of course the movie or documentary itself.

    Please use the nice search feature to add the title to the description.

    Episode (tv-shows):
    A single episode of the tv-show.

    This is specifically not the title that includes all the episodes. That title I normally categorize as "Special movie mode" instead.

    Again, please use the search feature if possible, to add the title of the episode to the description.

    TV-shows, I find, can be more problematic than movies to add meta-data for.

    Sometimes you will encounter a tv-show where the episodes is out of sync with the order that the search features wants them to be in. In this case I found its easier to try to figure out the search features order and use that episode number on the meta-data.

    On other occasions you can encounter episodes that actually come from other tv-shows on a disc. In this case I usually put the other episodes in the extra feature category under "Bonus clip".

    In very rare instances you will find multiple seasons on a single disc. Then you cannot really describe the content accurately with the current functionality. I find myself skip making meta for these discs for now.

    Luckily, in most instances, the episodes are pretty straight forward.

    Extra feature - Making of:
    This to me is one of the hardest categories, and probably one where I go in another direction than most.

    To me, it is very hard to define the difference between "Making of" and the "Featurette" as one of the definitions of featurettes is "a brief documentary film covering one or more aspects of the film creation process", which is pretty much also about the making of the movie.
    As a result, I very rarely use the "Making of" category. I only really use it if the clip actually has "Making of" somewhere in its title. But you could make the argument that most if not everything I mark as featurette belongs in this category.

    But I find myself sometimes using this one instead of "Featurettes", just because, well, the difference confuse me

    Extra feature - Deleted Scenes:
    I categorize titles in this category if
    • it is a deleted scene
    • it is an extended scene
    • it is not a gag-reel or alternate beginning or end which have their own category.

    Extra feature - Featurettes:
    As mentioned in the "making of" section, I mark most of the behind the scenes stuff as featurettes.

    This includes
    • Storyboard/feature comparison
    • Actor highlights
    • On Location
    • VFX breakdowns
    • Composing/Soundtrack information
    • ...

    Really, it is most stuff that is not covered by another category which makes this the broadest category.

    Extra feature - Interview:
    Besides actual interviews I mark the following in this category
    • Round tables
    • Comic-Con'ish segments

    Extra feature - Outtakes:
    Well, the parts where the actors or crew just screw up or have fun, whether they decided to call it outtakes, gag-reel, bloopers or something else.

    Extra feature - Sneak-peak:
    I find myself using this mostly on DC Comics animated movies where they like to include previews about upcoming projects, but featurettes that are not about the movie/tv-show itself, but rather about something else and marked as a preview or sneak-peak.

    Extra feature - Documentary:
    Titles that specifically are marked as documentaries are the only thing I put in this category, and only if it is not the main feature itself.

    Extra feature - Animation:
    Any short-animated movies or animated tv-show episodes that are included with an animated feature film.

    Extra feature - Interactive/Game:
    Clips that was part of a game on the Blu-ray. Usually these are meaningless on their own, but some may be using these, so I mark the clips that I can identify as part of such a feature. The difficulty often is to actually identify these and distinguish them from for example deleted scenes.

    Extra feature - Music video:
    Well, music videos or scenes from the movie where they specially only show a musical number of some sort.

    In addition to this I also put karaoke-clips in this category.

    Extra feature - Art gallery:
    I typically put the following in this category
    • Storyboards
    • Hand drawn art
    • Photo galleries

    Extra feature - Alternate start/ending:
    A special case of a deleted scene. In this case the scene has to specially at the very start or very end of the movie.

    Extra feature - Bonus clip:
    One of the tougher categories to define.

    I have found myself using it from time to time, but I will be hard-pressed to say exactly when to use it.

    Usually shorter clips that is not deleted from the movie or tv-show but rather an addition of sorts, or an Easter-egg on the disc.

    As mentioned in the "Episode" category I also sometimes use it to mark episodes that are included on the disc but are not actually from the tv-show in question.

    Extra feature - Special movie mode:
    The main purpose of this category, I think, is for the movies that has a special viewing mode where you can see pop-up or additional information appended to the movie.

    I do however also use it for duplicate main features if the main features are added multiple times as different titles. On a lot of discs, the movie appears twice, once with chapters and once with only one chapters. In these cases, I have selected to add the one with multiple chapters and the main feature and the one with only one as a special movie mode.

    Extra feature - How-to:
    Clips I put in this category more often than not come from animated movies or musicals and include
    • How to draw something
    • How to dance a specific routine
    • How to cook something

    But anyway, anything that attempts to teach us something.

    Demo clip:
    One of the weirder categories.

    The stuff I usually put in this one is titles that test or help you setup your sound or image.

    Trailer:
    Well, this one is one of the easier categories to identify.

    The trick usually is whether it is one trailer per title or a title with multiple trailers in it. If it is the former, I usually put the name of movie or tv-show its advertising in the description. If its multiple trailers in a title I usually get lazy and leave it blank. If I get ambitious, I either add the description to each individual chapter in the title or add all the names in the description separated by /.

    Besides trailers I usually also mark commercials in this category, even when it is not a movie or tv-show. An example of this could be a toy commercial.

    Logo - Unknown:
    I rarely use this one.

    Logo - Studio:
    While this category is probably meant for the studio that produced the movie, I do not live in either the US or United Kingdom, so a lot of the time the Blu-rays I buy are released by distributors. So, if the logo is either by the studio or the distributor, I end up using this category.

    Logo - Audio format (DTS, Dolby):
    Again, while this category is meant for sound logos, I have also been using it for video format logos as these do not fit anywhere else.

    Logo - 3D video:
    Though the purpose of this category seems clear, I do not think I have ever seen such a logo out of the cinema on any of my 3D discs. But then again, memory can be a tricky thing

    Logo - Rating board:
    Logos and clips that are part of the rating of the movie or tv-show. These can sometimes be hard to distinguish from other logos if you are not familiar with that countries rating board.

    Official nagclip - Unknown:
    I rarely use this one.

    Official nagclip - Please buy/Thank you:
    This one is pretty self-explanatory, the clips that ask you to buy the Blu-ray you just bought or thank you for doing just that.

    I always find it amusing that the only people that ever see the "please buy" clips are the ones that actually bought it.

    Official nagclip - FBI/Homeland:
    Here I add the clips that actual mention FBI or Homeland. In addition, in my part of the world, it can also be Interpol, so they get to go in this category as well.

    Offical nagclip - Ripping:
    Titles that specifically ask you not to rip the content.

    Offical nagclip - Copyright:
    This is really where most of the nag clips go. A copyright notice of some form in some language.

    As discs in this part of the world can cover multiple countries these are often included in numerous languages and I can only hope that I actually guess some of these correctly and it is not actually something else.

    Offical nagclip - Disclaimer:
    This can be various disclaimers.

    The one I most often put into this category is the "Can only be played in region X players".

    Adviser - Unknown:
    Rarely use it.

    Adviser - Ratings card:
    Rarely use it. Often the rating is included in the rating board logo and I have therefore put it in the logo section instead.

    Adviser - Put your 3d glasses on:
    While this one is self-explanatory, like the 3D logo, I do not think I have ever seen it outside the cinema.

    Adviser - Update firmware:
    Again, self-explanatory, but I have not encountered it.

    Junk/Fillers:
    This category is specifically hard to define as one person's junk can be another person's treasure after all.

    The stuff I put in this category includes
    • Menus
    • Disc certificates
    • Credits of various kinds
    • Small clips that just show up as black when you play them in the preview
    • Security by obfuscation - Titles that purposefully have the movie or episode out of order

    One of the things I have also chosen to put in this category is duplicate clips, features, deleted scenes or similar. Often, I find the same clip to be on the disc with another title, only a few seconds shorter. In this case I have chosen to mark the shorter version as junk and categorize the longer version.

    Summary:
    Well, that is it folks. Hope some will find this useful and others will be inspired to point out stuff that could be done differently.

    In any case, thank you are reading and thank you to DVDFab for this incredible application.

    #2
    This is excellent work Bemwen, thanks for sharing it here to the benefit of all users.I will place a copy of your post in the DVDFab Knowledge Base and make it a sticky thread here in the Meta forum.
    Supplying DVDFab Logs in the Forum ...........................User Manual PDF for DVDFab v11................................ Guide: Using Images in Posts
    Supplying DMS Logs to Developers................................Enlarger AI FAQ.....

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