[Matroska-devel] Matroska v3

[Joseph Ashwood]

I'd like to see a few metadata changes for V3. Not having read the spec 
recently, and admittedly not having as much time to dedicate to this as I 
would like, some of this may already be included.

I know of one company with an interest in adding some metadata to various 
elements. This metadata would be safely ignorable, so any parser that 
doesn't understand the metadata can and should ignore it with no detrimental 
effects, except the small increase in file size. As such I'd really like to 
see some clarity in the spec that this is acceptable, along with clarity 
that such additional metadata MUST be safely ignorable. How widespread the 
use of this will be is debatable, but the hope is that files from [sorry not 
giving out even that data yet, at least not publicly] will be widespread.

The same company will be offering contributions on the tag discussion that 
was happening recently, but will happily work within whatever restrictions 
are finalized. The only problem I see with the proposals so far is that they 
don't cover that many videos and audios have different edits. Just off the 
top of my head, I know that Caligula had at least 6 different edits, ranging 
from a generally acceptable rating suggesting adult supervision, to one edit 
that is illegal throughout most of the world, not including the pre-release 
edits. Add in releases that are language specific, the various "child-safe" 
editting services, and the others. It is actually quite easy for a 
particular movie to have over a dozen versions, and having worked on music 
significantly, there are often several final versions; one for radio, one 
for CD, one for online sales, one for radio-edit CD, one for etc. Having 
some way for the file to identify itself among these different versions 
would be useful.

The big problem is the naming, unlike software versions, very often the 
versions are simultaneous, and I'm open to suggestions.
                    Joe