EIDR-Cedar Herald Index

The Entertainment Identifier Registry, or EIDR, is a global unique identifier system for a broad array of audiovisual objects, including motion pictures, television, and radio programs. The identification system resolves an identifier to a metadata record that is associated with top-level titles, edits, DVDs, encodings, clips, and mashups. EIDR also provides identifiers for video service providers, such as broadcast and cable networks.

As of June 2020, EIDR contains over two million records, including almost 400 thousand movies and almost one million episodes from over 40,000 TV series.

EIDR

EIDR is an implementation of a digital object identifier (DOI).

EIDR

History

Media asset identification systems have existed for decades. The common motivation for their creation is to enable the management of media assets through the assignment of a unique id to a set of metadata representing salient characteristics of each asset. Over time such systems tend to proliferate, with each arising to deal with a specific set of issues. As a result, there is considerable variation between systems in terms of which assets are categorized, which metadata is associated with each asset, and the very definition of an asset. To name a few examples, should a "director's cut" of a film be distinct from the original theatrical release? How should regional variations (e.g. translation of the title or dialog into foreign languages) be accounted for? Further complications include the procedures (and required credentials) for adding new assets, editing existing assets, and creating derivative assets.

EIDR

EIDR was created to address these issues, as well as others encountered in video asset workflows, both in a business-to-business context and the intramural post-production activities of content producers. EIDR has the following characteristics: A central registry available to all participants Ability to easily register new assets An asset ID that is immutable (and in particular with respect to changes in asset ownership or location of the metadata or the asset itself) Detection/prevention of duplicates of the same asset being created Ability to create a set of video assets derived from an abstract work (e.g. original theatrical release, director's cut, language variants) Ability to group video assets by more general relationships (e.g. episodes of a season of a TV series) A core set of metadata to differentiate assets, even when closely related Scalable, immutable, persistent

EIDR is intended to supplement, not replace, existing asset identification systems. To the contrary, a key feature is to allow an EIDR record to include references to that asset's ID under other systems. This feature is particularly useful for film and television archives, making it easy for them to cross-reference their holdings with other sources for the work and metadata about it. By design, EIDR does not replicate features of other asset ID systems, e.g. commercial systems that seek to add value through enhanced metadata (e.g. plot summaries, production details). It is also a non-goal to track ownership and rights information, which can, however, be implemented as applications that use the EIDR ID.

Content model

EIDR is built on a collection of records (which are further sub-divided into fields) that are stored in a central registry. These records are referenced externally by DOIs, which are assigned when a record is created, and each identifier is immutable thereafter. The identifier resolution system underlying DOIs is the Handle System and so each native EIDR Content ID is a handle formatted, in increasing specificity, to handle, DOI and EIDR standards.