EBUEBUCore is the European Broadcasting Union's core metadata specification for describing audiovisual content across the media production lifecycle. Published as EBU Technical Document 3293, it serves as the standard vocabulary for identification, description, rights management, and technical characterization of broadcast media assets in public service and commercial broadcasting organizations worldwide.
Background
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) began developing EBUCore around 2000 to address the growing need for standardized metadata exchange among its member broadcasters. Broadcasting organizations were generating vast quantities of audio and video content but lacked a common vocabulary for cataloguing, searching, and exchanging descriptive and technical information about their assets. EBUCore was designed to fill this gap, drawing on Dublin Core principles while extending coverage to the specific requirements of audiovisual media.
Over time, EBUCore evolved alongside the EBU Class Conceptual Data Model (CCDM, Tech 3351), which provides a higher-level ontological framework for the broadcasting value chain from commissioning through playout. The two have since been merged into EBUCorePlus, the EBU's current flagship ontology for media enterprises, though EBUCore itself remains in active use.
Purpose and Scope
EBUCore provides metadata elements for:
- Descriptive metadata -- titles, subjects, descriptions, genres, and coverage information for audiovisual resources
- Technical metadata -- format, codec, resolution, bitrate, duration, and container information for audio and video files
- Rights metadata -- licensing, exploitation periods, and intellectual property information
- Publication events -- broadcast scheduling, platform distribution, and service association
- Acquisition metadata -- camera and capture parameters as defined in the companion Tech 3349
The specification is applicable to all types of media assets including video programmes, audio recordings, still images, and related documents encountered in broadcast workflows.
Serializations and Technical Formats
EBUCore is available in two primary representations:
| Format | Description |
|---|---|
| XML Schema (XSD) | Traditional schema for XML-based metadata exchange in production systems and MXF embedding |
| RDF/OWL Ontology | Semantic web representation enabling linked data and SPARQL-based querying |
The RDF representation has been published as a Linked Open Vocabulary (LOV) and is mapped to Schema.org, Dublin Core, and FOAF. EBU's XML Classification Schemes (reference data sets) have also been transformed into RDF SKOS for use with the ontology.
Governance and Maintenance
EBUCore is maintained by the EBU Technology and Innovation department's Metadata and Artificial Intelligence group (MIM). It is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, allowing implementers to adapt the specification to their needs while requiring attribution and non-commercial use. All EBU metadata specifications are published under the EBU namespace as defined in RFC 5174. Contact for the metadata group is metadata@ebu.ch.
Notable Implementations
EBUCore is widely adopted across European public service broadcasters including NRK (Norway), YLE (Finland), TV-2 Norway, SRG (Switzerland), and VRT (Belgium), among others. The MediaInfo application supports extraction of metadata into EBUCore format from a variety of file containers. The Audio Definition Model (ADM) defined in EBUCore's schema has been adopted by the ITU as Recommendation BS.2076. Elements from EBUCore have been jointly submitted to Schema.org by EBU and BBC to describe publication events for online and broadcast services.
Related Standards
- Dublin Core -- EBUCore draws on Dublin Core principles and the RDF representation is mapped to DC terms.
- Schema.org -- Selected EBUCore elements were contributed to Schema.org in collaboration with BBC.
- EBUCorePlus -- The successor specification merging EBUCore and CCDM into a unified ontology for media enterprises.
- NewsML-G2 (IPTC) -- EBU collaborated with IPTC on this news exchange format, defining audiovisual requirements.