Blu-ray / PS3 Metadata

[dvdboy]

Is there any documentation on what you can do with Metadata on Blu-ray other than the PS3 Thumbnail?

I find myself once again following the Sonic Knowledgebase article (memory is going in my 'old' age), and it seems as if it was designed for greater things. :D

[rik1138]

I don't think there really is anything else you can do with it.

In theory, you can have the name of every Title on the disc, and names of the individual chapters too... Maybe even movie title and actor info (can't remember that for sure), but as far as I know the only player that even uses the Metadata is the PS3, and it just displays a thumbnail and movie title.

Take a look at the XML in some current studio titles, you can see all the information that some of them fill out... It's just not used much.

PS4 makes more use of the thumbnail, showing it in the display that comes up over the movie similar to when you hit the 'Display' button on the PS3 remote. In addition to run time, timeline, etc, it displays the movie title and thumbnail image.

[dvdboy]

Thanks Rik, I'll take a look.

[rik1138]

Digging through the spec, apparently there IS a lot you can do with Metadata (but again, just not sure if any player supports it). You can have multiple thumbnail images (one for each title on the disc), and you can include things like actors, director (and other crew), and even key words to describe scenes (so the user could, in theory, search for any scene with a 'CAR' in it, for example). You could also make it so you can view all the scenes that a particular actor is in (you can store in/out points in the metadata)... I have to admit, I really had no idea it could do so much... :)

Under the META directory you can have 3 sub-directories: DL, ES and TN.
DL is the Disc Library, this is the metadata for the whole disc and would include the title of the movie (or the overall content), and the image thumbnail that the PS3 displays. This is the only directory you need if you just want a thumbnail image and title to appear on the PS3/4
ES is the information for Title Scene Search, this is where the names of titles would be located along with key words for searching them. Also, individual thumbnails for each title would be stored here.
TN is for Track/Chapter display. This is where the names/text for individual tracks and chapters would be located.

There's schemas for creating the XML files included with the Blu-ray Spec... If you have access to that, you can look them up there. I'm not sure if there's any publicly available documentation on creating the files. Scenarist can probably create all of this (or at least some of it) with it's metadata editor... I know the editor appears to do a lot more than I've ever used it for.

[dvdboy]

Very Interesting. Unfortunately my company never invested in the BD Spec, so all I have is the Sonic / Rovi documentation to work with.

I might try and have a bit of a play at some point.

The irony is that of all players, the PS3 appears to be the only one which uses thumbnails - even the documentation calls it "Creating Thumbnail Images for PS3" - whereas a lot of what you're mentioning looks like it was designed to be read by a front display - it all seems like the spec writers thought this would be the ultimate replacement for DVD_TEXT and JACKET_P and then no one bothered to implement it!

I wonder if Sony BD players support any of it?

[mp3dom]

It's nice for the thumbnails (and almost all BDs out there have DL folder for PS3) but too much informations starts to be quite boring to compile every time.

[dvdboy]

Do you know of any players that display such information mp3dom?

[mp3dom]

Panasonic, LG and Samsung (the players I have here for test) doesn't display any information (even thumbs).

[dvdboy]

Finally got around to random testing in a PS3 slim, and it looks like Titles under DL and Track / Chapter display don't show up - shame as that might have been a nice touch on extra special titles.

Looks like metadata starts and ends with PS3 Thumbs for Blu-ray...

[rik1138]

The PS4 uses the Metadata a little differently, it might actually take advantage of track and chapter names... I only got to test code on one for about an hour, and Metadata wasn't really one of our priorities. :) But I did notice it was putting the thumbnail image in different places, and was displaying the title of the movie on the timeline that you can up bring during playback (like when you hit 'Display' on a PS3 remote). So maybe chapter names would show up there if they are in the Metadata...

But, with that possible exception, I think you are right, it's just an image for the PS3...

There might be some computer software players that would use it, but I can't say I've noticed in PowerDVD or Arcsoft...

[dvdboy]

Thanks Rik, I haven't seen anything in WinDVD Developer edition either. Another geeky opportunity missed ;-)

[rik1138]

Do you know of a disc off hand that actually has the chapter names and titles listed out? I know I've seen some in the past, but every title I check now just has the movie name... Seems people have gotten lazy with it.

I _think_ the PS4 might support more of this. When playing a movie, it shows the title of the movie, and under that it says:
Title - 1
Chapter - 1

Which I think is just default numbering because the meta isn't filled out... I want to find an example to test. (Also one with something in the ES and TN folders...)

Annoying that the PS4 doesn't show the thumbnail of the inserted disc when it's not playing though. The only way (that I can find) to tell what disc is in the player is to launch it (with movie discs at least).