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Mar 31 2023 IPTC NewsCodes 2023-Q1 update, the biggest update in years

extract from IPTC MediaTopics Feb 2021Today, IPTC announces the biggest change to the NewsCodes vocabularies in years. Almost 200 terms have been modified in the Media Topics vocabulary, including many “retirements”, trimming the CV down to exactly 1100 terms.

Overall, three controlled vocabularies have been updated: Content Warning, Content Production Party Role and Media Topic.

The changes to Media Topic CV are the biggest ever, with 9 new concepts, 60 retired concepts and 120 modified concepts, including 79 hierarchy moves.

The NewsCodes Working Group has been working hard on this update for over six months, bringing much-needed clarity to the “economy, business and finance” branch.

As part of the review, the “economic sector” sub-branch has been re-named “products and services”, handle both the companies making products or providing services, and also the products and services themselves.

Specifically, we have changed the following:

Currently, the name and description changes have only been made in English (both en-GB and en-US variants). Other language versions will come soon when their maintainers can make the appropriate changes to their translations.

Changes to Content Warning CV

New terms Drug Use, Fantasy Violence, Flashing Lights, Personally Identifiable Information to match standard terms used in the industry. The “Flashing Lights” term is intended to be used for flagging content that may trigger photosensitive epilepsy, a key accessibility concern by many broadcasters and a legal requirement in some countries.

Label change: Suffering to Upsetting and Disturbing to match industry usage.

Changes to Content Production Party Role CV

New term Distributor. Changed definition of Information Originator.

More information on IPTC Controlled Vocabularies

As always, the Media Topics vocabularies can be viewed in the following ways:

For more information on IPTC NewsCodes in general, please see the IPTC NewsCodes Guidelines.

Dec 8 2022 Video Metadata Hub version 1.4 released

Video Metadata Hub explainer diagram

The IPTC Video Metadata Working Group is proud to announce the release of version 1.4 of the group’s standard, Video Metadata Hub.

See the updated properties table, updated mappings table and updated guidelines document.

All changes can be used immediately in Video Metadata Hub use cases, particularly in C2PA assertions (described in our recent post).

Version 1.4 introduces several new properties and several changes to add accessibility properties and to align it more closely with the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard:

New properties:

  • Content Warning: signals to viewers such as drug references, nudity or violence, and health warnings such as flashing lights.

  • Digital Source Type: whether the content was created by a digital camera, scanned from film, or created using or with the assistance of a computer.

  • Review Rating: a third-party review such as a film’s rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

  • Workflow Rating: equivalent to the XMP rating field, a numeric scale generally used by creators to tag shots/takes/videos that are of higher quality.

  • Alt Text (Accessibility): Short text describing the video to those who cannot view it.

  • Extended Description (Accessibility): Longer description more fully describing the purpose and meaning of the video, elaborating on the information given in the Alt Text (Accessibility) property.

  • Timed Text Link: refers to an external file used for text with timing information using a standard such as WebVTT or W3C Timed Text, usually used for subtitles, closed captions or audio description

Changed properties:

  • Date Created: modified description to align it with Photo Metadata.

  • Rating: modified description to make it more specifically about audience content classifications such as MPA ratings

  • Data Displayed on Screen: changed description.

  • Keywords: Pluralised label to match the equivalent in Photo Metadata.

  • Title: changed data type to allow multiple languages

  • Transcript: changed data type to allow multiple languages

  • Copyright Year: changed description to add “year of origin of the video”

  • Embedded Encoded Rights Expression: property label changed from “Rights and Licensing Terms (1)” to clarify and align with Photo Metadata

  • Linked Encoded Rights Expression: property label changed from “Rights and Licensing Terms (2)” to clarify and align with Photo Metadata

  • Copyright Owner: label change label from “Rights Owner” to align with Photo Metadata

  • Source (Supply Chain): Change label and XMP property to align it with Photo Metadata

New property structures:

  • Qualified Link with Language: used by Times Text Link, specifies an external file along with its role (eg “audio description”) and human language (eg “Spanish”)

Changed property structures:

  • “Embedded Encoded Rights Expression Structure” changed label from “Embedded Rights Expression Structure” to align with Photo Metadata

  • “Linked Encoded Rights Expression Structure” changed label from “Linked Rights Expression Structure” to align with Photo Metadata

  • Data type of “Role” in the “Entity with Role” structure was changed from URI to Text to align with Photo Metadata

The Video Metadata Hub mapping tables also include mappings to the DPP AS-11 and MovieLabs MDDF formats.

The Video Metadata Hub Generator can be used to explore the properties in the standard.

Please contact IPTC or the public Video Metadata discussion group with any questions or suggestions.

Nov 18 2022 NewsML-G2 updated to version 2.31

The IPTC’s flagship news exchange standard, NewsML-G2, is now updated to version 2.31. The change was approved at the IPTC Standards Committee Meeting at the IPTC Autumn Meeting 2022.

NewsML-G2 Generator v
The NewsML-G2 Generator was also updated to create version 2.31-compliant files.

The full NewsML-G2 XML Schema, NewsML-G2 Guidelines document and NewsML-G2 specification document have all now been updated.

The only change (Change Request CR00215) is that we now allow the hasInstrument element on any concept or assert. Previously we required hasInstrument to be declared on organisations only, but we realised that not every financial instrument related to an organisation: for example an exchange-traded fund, or the instrument for a commodity, do not directly relate to a specific company.

Interestingly, hasInstrument elements in <assert>s did appear to work in previous versions, but that is because of NewsML-G2’s use of the xs:any construct which allows asserts to be augmented with arbitrary elements. No validation took place on elements which were added in this way.

Examples

Example 1: hasInstrument as a child of concept

<concept>
  <conceptId qcode="P:18040196349" />
  <type qcode="cptType:97"/>
  <name>Invesco Capital Appreciation Fund;R6</name>
  <hasInstrument symbol="OPTFX.O" type="symType:RIC" symbolsrc="symSrc:RFT"/>
  <hasInstrument symbol="US00141G7328" symbolsrc="symSrc:ISO" type="symType:ISIN"/>
</concept>

Example 2: hasInstrument as a child of assert

<assert qcode="P:18040196349">
  <name>Invesco Capital Appreciation Fund;R6</name>
  <type qcode="cptType:97"/>
  <hasInstrument symbol="OPTFX.O" type="symType:RIC" symbolsrc="symSrc:RFT"/>
  <hasInstrument symbol="US00141G7328" symbolsrc="symSrc:ISO" type="symType:ISIN"/>
</assert>

Example 3: hasInstrument within  assert/organisationDetails

This usage still works, but is now deprecated.

<assert qcode="P:18040196349">
  <name>Invesco Capital Appreciation Fund;R6</name>
  <type qcode="cptType:97"/>
  <organisationDetails>
    <hasInstrument symbol="OPTFX.O" type="symType:RIC" symbolsrc="symSrc:RFT"/>
    <hasInstrument symbol="US00141G7328" symbolsrc="symSrc:ISO" type="symType:ISIN"/>
    <rtr:anyOtherElement>
      Other elements in other namespaces allowed here due to xs:any other
    </rtr:anyOtherElement>
  </organisationDetails>
</assert>

XML Schema documentation of version 2.31 version is available on GitHub and at http://iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/2.31/specification/XML-Schema-Doc-Power/.

NewsML-G2 Generator updated

The NewsML-G2 Generator has been updated to use version 2.31. There are no substantive changes but the version number of generated files has been updated to 2.31.

Thanks to Dave Compton of Refinitiv (an LSE Group Company) and the NewsML-G2 Working Group for their work on the update, and to Kelvin Holland on his work on the documentation.

To follow our work on GitHub, please see the IPTC NewsML-G2 GitHub repository.

The full NewsML-G2 change log showing the Change Requests included in each new version is available at the dev.iptc.org site.

Nov 10 2022 IPTC Photo Metadata Standard version 2022.1 released

Screenshot of the standard specification for the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard 2022.1 version.Today, the IPTC announces the release of the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard, version 2022.1.

The update has some changes to align the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard more closely which IPTC Video Metadata Hub, which helps with the integration into the C2PA specification as announced earlier this week.

The changes will be presented today (Thursday 10 November) at the IPTC Photo Metadata Conference, alongside sessions on AI and images, C2PA, and accessibility. You can still register for today’s Photo Metadata Conference, for free, at the IPTC Photo Metadata Conference 2022 event page. Video recordings from the event will be posted in the coming weeks.

The changes in detail

The IPTC Core schema has been updated to version 1.4, including the following changes:

  • Name of property Source changed to Source (Supply Chain)

  • Property Subject Code was set to legacy state

The IPTC Extension schema has been updated to version 

  • New property Contributor (matching the equivalent property in IPTC Video Metadata Hub)

  • The property structure for Product has been extended with a new property Identifier

The specification document has also been updated with some edits and additions to Help Texts and User Notes.

Technical Reference update

The IPTC Photo Metadata TechReference has also been updated to include the changes in version 2022.1. This can be used by software makers to easily include the changes in the new version.

For more information on how to use the Technical Reference, please consult the IPTC Photo Metadata Technical Reference documentation.

Questions? Comments?

For any questions or comments on this update or on the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard in general, please post to the public IPTC Photo Metadata forum at iptc-photometadata@groups.io.

Sep 23 2022 IPTC NewsCodes Q3 2022 update released

An extract of IPTC Media Topics vocabulary tree browser showing the new "show retired" button.

As is now traditional, the IPTC NewsCodes Working Group has released our regular update at the end of the calendar quarter.

This release includes updates to the Media Topic and Item Relation CVs.

Changes to the Media Topic vocabulary

Label and/or definition changes:

Retired terms:

Hierarchy moves:

New terms:

The release also includes no-NN (New Norwegian) translations for the updates released in Q2 2022. Other languages were already updated over previous months.

Changes to other Controlled Vocabularies

The itemrelation CV is used in NewsML-G2 to show types of links between news items. The vocabulary now has two new terms:

  • irel:translatedFromRoot: “The related resource contains the content from which this item was translated, either directly or indirectly via one or more other translations”
  • irel:wasPackagedIn: “Indicates that this Item was included in the target package”

Thanks to everyone from IPTC members and users of the NewsCodes CV for suggesting terms, and to the NewsCodes and Sports Content Working Groups who helped to put this release together.

Jun 15 2022 IPTC NewsCodes Q2 2022 update released

An extract of IPTC Media Topics vocabulary tree browser showing the new "show retired" button.
An extract of the IPTC Media Topics vocabulary tree browser showing the new “show retired” button.

Following on with our quarterly update cycle, the IPTC NewsCodes Working Group has released the Q2 2022 update of IPTC NewsCodes, including updates to the Media Topic, Subject Code, and Digital Source Type vocabularies.

Media Topic updates

In a related tool update announcement, we have now added a handy “show retired terms” checkbox to the Media Topics interactive tree browser tool, and we default to only showing the active (non-retired) terms. The new option can be seen in the picture at the top of this article.

Digital Source Type vocabulary updates

After asking for feedback on a draft of the work a few months ago, we have updated the Digital Source Type vocabulary to support the emerging area of “Synthetic Media.”

The single term “softwareImage” has been retired, which means that while it is acceptable in legacy content, we no longer recommend its use. The term is now replaced with 9 new terms covering the spectrum from purely human creation through to purely machine image creation:

To see more detail including the definition of each term, click the links above or view the entire IPTC Digital Source Type vocabulary.

Thanks to those both inside and outside of the IPTC community who gave feedback on our original proposal, your comments were very much appreciated.

Subject Code vocabulary updates – indicating its deprecated status

The IPTC Subject Code vocabulary was created over twenty years ago, in the year 2000. It was maintained through to 2010, but at that point the Media Topic vocabulary took over as IPTC’s preferred subject classification taxonomy. We will keep it on our vocabulary server, but we no longer recommend its use in projects due to some terms being out of date.

So we have put warnings on the pages of the Subject Code vocabulary that indicate its deprecated nature, and encourage users to look at Media Topic instead.

 

As always, the Media Topics vocabularies can be viewed in the following ways:

For more information on IPTC NewsCodes in general, please see the IPTC NewsCodes Guidelines.

Jun 6 2022 IPTC releases ninjs 1.4

Example of IPTC's ninjs format for syndicating news in JSON formatAt the IPTC Spring Meeting in May 2022, IPTC’s Standards Committee voted to approve ninjs 1.4, the latest version in the 1.x track of IPTC’s standard for news content in the JSON format.

Johan Lindgren of TT Nyhetsbyrån, Lead of the IPTC News in JSON Working Group, said:

“After the launch of ninjs 2.0 in the autumn of 2021, we received requests to add some of the new 2.0 features to the first generation of ninjs, so that those who are using the 1.x branch of ninjs can use the new features without making breaking changes. So we are excited to publish version 1.4 of ninjs, where these features are included.”

Those changes include:

  • New property contentcreated, denoting the date and time when the content of this ninjs object was originally created (as opposed to the date and time when the ninjs object itself was created). For example, an old photo that is now handled as a ninjs object may have a firstcreated and versioncreated of “2022-06-02T12:00:00+00:00”, but a contentcreated value of “1933-04-03T00:00:00+00:00”. The contents must be a valid JSON Schema date-time object.
  • New property expires, showing “the date and time after which the Item is no longer considered editorially relevant by its provider.” Note that this is not the same as a rights-related expiration, it simply conveys the desire of the content creator to highlight the content until a certain time. A good example might be a football match preview, which would no longer be editorially relevant after the game commences. The contents must be a valid JSON Schema date-time object.
  • New property rightsinfo, which holds an expression of rights to be applied to the content. It contains sub-properties langid (a URI which specifies the language used to specify rights such as RightsML or ODRL), and one of either linkedrights (containing a link to a remotely-hosted declaration of the rights associated with the content) or encodedrights (which includes an embedded encoding of the rights statements within the ninjs object).

Which version of ninjs should I choose for my project?

There might be some confusion since we have released ninjs 1.4 after the release of ninjs 2.0. Please note that this is simply an update to the 1.x branch of ninjs to make it easier for users who cannot upgrade to 2.x branch due to breaking changes.

If you are starting a new project that requires JSON-encoded news content, we recommend using ninjs 2.0. This version should be easiest for developers to work with.

If you are already using a 1.x version of ninjs, we recommend at least upgrading to version 1.4. This should be an easy change, because 1.4 is backwards-compatible with versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. We would also recommend upgrading to 2.0 if possible, but if not, 1.4 is the best version of the 1.x branch.

Supporting materials for ninjs 1.4 and ninjs 2.0 can be found at these locations:

Thanks to Johan and the IPTC News in JSON Working Group for working on this release.

Feb 3 2022 Media Topics update for Winter Olympics

We have just released a small update to the Media Topics contrextract from IPTC MediaTopics Feb 2021olled vocabulary for news and media content. The changes support the Winter Olympics which starts this week.

The changes are:

  • The definition of bobsleigh (medtop:20000854) was changed to reflect the fact that bobsleigh now offers a one-person version (which is incidentally referred to as “monobob”). The new definition is: One, two or four people racing down a course in a sled that consists of a main hull, a frame, two axles and sets of runners. The total time of all heats in a competition is added together to determine the winner.
  • Similarly, the definition of freestyle skiing (medtop:20001058) was changed to reflect new events this year. The new definition is: Skiing competitions which, in contrast to alpine skiing, incorporate acrobatic moves and jumps. Events include aerials, halfpipe, slopestyle, ski cross, moguls and big air.

We also took the opportunity to add a term which was recently suggested by ABC Australia and Fourth Estate in the US:

We would like to thank to all Media Topics users and maintainers for their feedback and support.

Dec 17 2021 2021 Q4 update to MediaTopics released

extract from IPTC MediaTopics Feb 2021

The IPTC NewsCodes Working Group has now released the Q4 update to Media Topics, IPTC’s subject taxonomy used for classifying news content.

The main changes were made to the religion branch as part of our regular review cycle, and to sport events after discussing the terms with the Sports Content Working Group. This means that we have retired 29 terms and added 15 others. So in total we currently have 1,159 active terms in the vocabulary.

All new terms were created in en-GB and en-US versions, and have translations in Norwegian thanks to NTB. Other language translations will be added as they are contributed.

Below is a list of all of the changes.

New terms:

Retired terms:

Label changes:

Definition changes:

Hierarchy moves:

  • medtop:20000423 environmental policy moved from medtop:06000000 environment to medtop:20000621 government policy
  • medtop:20000479 healthcare policy moved from medtop:07000000 health to medtop:20000621 government policy
  • medtop:20000480 government health care moved from medtop:20000479 healthcare policy to medtop:07000000 health
  • medtop:20000483 health insurance moved from medtop:20000479 healthcare policy to medtop:07000000 health
  • medtop:20000690 religious festival and holiday moved from medtop:20000689 religious event to medtop:12000000 religion
  • medtop:20000696 religious ritual moved from medtop:20000689 religious event to medtop:12000000 religion
  • medtop:20001177 Olympic Games moved from medtop:20001123 world gamesto medtop:20001108 sport event
  • medtop:20001178 Paralympic Games moved from medtop:20001123 world games to medtop:20001108 sport event
  • medtop:20001239 exercise and fitness moved from medtop:10000000 lifestyle and leisure to medtop:20001339 wellness
  • medtop:20001293 streaming service moved from medtop:20000045 mass media to medtop:20000304 media

As always, the Media Topics vocabularies can be viewed in the following ways:

For more information on IPTC NewsCodes in general, please see the IPTC NewsCodes Guidelines.

Dec 10 2021 NewsML-G2, IPTC’s flagship news exchange protocol, updated to version 2.30

At the recent IPTC Standards Committee Meeting, NewsML-G2 version 2.30 was approved.

The IPTC NewsML-G2 Generator has also been updated to produce NewsML-G2 2.30-compliant content.

The full NewsML-G2 XML Schema, NewsML-G2 Guidelines document and NewsML-G2 specification document have all now been updated.

The biggest change (Change Request CR00211) is that <catalogRef/> and <catalog/> elements are now optional. This is so that users who choose to use full URIs instead of QCodes do not need to include an unnecessary element.

The other user-facing change is CR00212 which adds residrefformat and residrefformaturi attributes to the targetResourceAttributes attribute group, used in <link>, <icon> and <remoteContent>.

Other changes CR00213 and CR00214 aren’t visible to end users and don’t change any functionality, but make the XML Schema easier to read and maintain.

XML Schema documentation of version 2.30 version is available on GitHub and at http://iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/2.30/specification/XML-Schema-Doc-Power/.

NewsML-G2 Generator updated

The NewsML-G2 Generator has been updated to use version 2.30. This means that catalogRef is only included if QCode mode is chosen. The Generator also uses the new layout which means that the target document is updated in real time as the form is completed.

To follow our work on GitHub, please see the IPTC NewsML-G2 GitHub repository.

The full NewsML-G2 change log showing the Change Requests included in each new version is available at the dev.iptc.org site.

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