Standardised Metadata
Concept
Many OVP/MAM systems provide the ability to add custom metadata key/value pairs to their assets.
We offer a standardised set of fields that can be interpreted and converted into our expected format. This way systems can be added into our ecosystem relatively straight-forward with us only having to implement the fetching logic and offloading conversion to this standardised set.
When a system offers a field natively instead of through definable key/value pairs an importer should always favour that field to ensure a customer has the best native editing experience as possible
Metadata Fields
The following fields will be accepted (and required where noted) on all assets.
| Required | Key | Example Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| FALSE | description | In Earth's future, a global crop blight and second Dust Bowl are slowly rendering the planet uninhabitable. Professor Brand (Michael Caine), a brilliant NASA physicist, is working on plans to save mankind by transporting Earth's population to a new home via a wormhole. | Description of the asset in question. NOTE: This is a required field in backstage, but if this field is not present then the asset will not fail to be created. Instead, it will be have its description set to '.' |
| FALSE | title | Interstellar | The title for the film. If this isn't present, then the standard name of the item in the system will be used (if applicable). |
| FALSE | age_rating_type | MPAA | See the Age Classification section |
| FALSE | age_rating_value | 14 | See the Age Classification section |
| FALSE | age_rating_indicators | TV-PG | See the Age Classification section |
| FALSE | crew | Brad Pitt; Director, Daniel Craig; Actor | Comma separated list of persons with an associated role, separated by a semi-colon. |
| FALSE | genres | Action, Horror, Sport | Comma separated list of genres. |
| FALSE | year | 2014 | Year of release |
| FALSE | duration | 1800 | Integer duration in seconds |
| FALSE | rating | 65 | integer rating out of 100 |
| FALSE | release_date | 2017-01-01 | Release date in format Y-m-d |
| FALSE | short_description | A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in space in an attempt to ensure humanity's survival. | Shorter version of the description. |
| FALSE | primetime_protected | true/false | must be a bool value |
| FALSE | start_date | 1576236075 | unix timestamp in seconds stating when the asset should become viewable |
| FALSE | end_date | 1576238145 | unix timestamp in seconds stating when the asset should become hidden |
| FALSE | subscription_tag_ids | DuKm1HcB_R_qTs-X3xWA,DeKl1HcB_R_qTs-X9BVX | Comma separated list of backstage subscription objects. |
| FALSE | hidden | true/false | Whether the asset will be marked as hidden when ingested. |
| FALSE | isAdult | true/false | Whether the asset will be marked as adult content or not. |
| FALSE | editions | HD:BACKSTAGE_PRODUCT_ID_1;BACKSTAGE_PRODUCT_ID_2, SD:BACKSTAGE_PRODUCT_ID1 | Allows you to map edition qualities to products for entitlements & monetization. When using Videostage Cloud you can use the qualities to also select for specific renditions to be returned, allowing you to have higher bitrates only available to higher tier subscriptions/purchases. Note: this only works with Videostage Cloud right now |
| FALSE | externalRefs | DAI | See the External References section |
The following fields are required in addition to the standard fields to represent a VOD asset as an episode. If these details aren't provided, then the asset will being imported as a movie.
| Required | Key | Example Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| TRUE | episode_number | 5 | Episode number of the episode in question. |
| TRUE | season_number | 1 | Season number of the episode in question. |
| TRUE | series_label | Game Of Thrones | This value is used to identify the series an episode should be linked too. This value must be identical across episodes for them to be linked to the same series. This value should also be human readable as it will be used as the series title. |
The following fields are required in addition to the standard fields to represent a VOD asset as a news series episode. If these details aren't provided, then the asset will being imported as a movie.
| Required | Key | Example Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| TRUE | release_date_time | 1728026396 | Release date and time of the news episode. |
The following fields are required in addition to the standard fields on channel assets.
| Required | Key | Example Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| TRUE | channel_number | 1 | The number of this channel, to aid in ordering etc within backstage. |
Live Events require no additional custom metadata, however they must have a start and end date set to be imported.
Age Classification
Backstage has the ability to configure content advisory metadata upon assets that can reference visual indicators for the front end to show (PG-13 icon, drugs icon etc.) These visual indicators can then be referenced on assets along with the other metadata to properly advise and restrict content by rating system and age.
In order to support this feature for data imported from the external system, we've specified 3 fields that are required together.
You cannot provide 1/3 values etc.
The age_rating_type field describes the type of classification ('MPAA' , 'v-chip' etc).
The age_rating_value field describes the age (in years as an integer) that a user must be to view this asset.
The age_rating_indicators field should be a comma separated list of which indicators should be shown on the asset. If these indicators are already present within backstage for the provided age_rating_type then they will be linked.
If they are not present within Backstage then they will be created with no images. Images must be uploaded for each indicator via Backstage.
External References
Backstage has the ability to configure ad-insertion providers such as Google DAI (Only one supported for now). These ad-insertion providers can be referenced on assets. In order to support this feature for data imported from the external system, we've specified 3 fields:
- The
typedescribes the type of the external ref (DAI) - The
vodCMSIddescribes the CMS ID supplied by DAI, only returned for VOD assets - The
vodVideoIddescribes the video ID supplied by DAI, only returned for VOD assets
Boolean values
Any value marked as boolean will be parsed the following way:
on,yes,1,truewill be marked astrue- Any other value will be marked as
false
Boilerplates
You can check some boilerplates for the most used importers in backstage.