Infrastructure and method for supporting generic multimedia metadata

Abstract

A method and apparatus are disclosed for providing access by applications/utilities/tools to multimedia file metadata originally provided in any of a set of supported formats. A metadata abstraction interface is interposed between multimedia files and applications that seek to read and/or modify metadata associated with the multimedia files. The metadata abstraction interface supports program access to multimedia file metadata provided in a variety of formats and comprises a multimedia application program interface corresponding to a set of core multimedia file metadata management functions accessible by multimedia applications. Applications/utilities/tools, through the application program interface, submit requests to multimedia file-specific decoders to read and/or modify contents of multimedia files. The requestors need only identify a multimedia file and a particular supported function to the abstraction interface. The applications/utilities/tools need not know or specify the format of the multimedia files and their corresponding metadata. The metadata abstraction interface includes an extensible set of file type-specific metadata decoders. Each decoder includes a metadata converter for parsing a metadata portion of a multimedia file stored in a particular native format (e.g., .bmp). The decoders render metadata in a generic format from the parsed metadata. The decoders and APIs insulate external programs from the differences present in the various native multimedia file formats. Thus, applications need only follow a simple set of interface rules when submitting a metadata related request.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.