A need for improved standardization of metadata for consumer devices

There is an urgent need for metadata to accompany and describe media data essence. With the growing amount of personal content, user generated descriptors tend to be vague to the point of uselessness. There is a need for standardization in the metadata format to allow a full and useful description of content that is interoperable between consumer devices. Manufacturers need to ensure that the metadata generated by a device is complete and understood by other products as well as allow for the creation and use of more subjective metadata. This paper provides a background on metadata levels and existing metadata standards with the aim to show deficiencies within current standards and to indicate the need for improved standardization.