Metadata and Media Files

[bawiseman]

Gedcom 7 zip files can include media files. Those files may contain metadata -- like face tags, title, description, date, location. FamilySearch has been promoting a set of metadata guidelines around handling embedded metadata in family history photos. See Photo Metadata. Sharing the story of the photo can be much simpler with metadata. Does Gedcom 7 have any guidelines or recommendations on how to handle embedded family history metadata in media files so that you would not have to add the metadata to the gedcom file directly, but read it out of the media file in a standard way (such as using the guidelines FamilySearch and other industry friends have recommended).

[tychonievich]

Does Gedcom 7 have any guidelines or recommendations on how to handle embedded family history metadata in media files

No, at present it does not

While a majority of the current GEDCOM steering committee participated in drafting the photo metadata recommendations you linked to, we did not see a clear way to indicate how image metadata should be kept in sync with GEDCOM files referencing those files.

However, we should probably add a note to the specification (probably under the FILE structure) noting that metadata can exist in the file, can have information relevant to GEDCOM, and that applications are encouraged to retain that metadata and seek to integrate it into the GEDCOM file with user guidance, possibly referencing the link you share which application developers can use to learn more. We'll create an issue to track this addition request.