How do you store your metadata? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by howrar@lemmy.ca to c/datahoarder@lemmy.ml

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By metadata, I'm talking about things like text descriptions of a photo/video and where they come from, or an explanation of what a certain binary blob contains, its format, how to use it, etc.

The best solution I have right now is xattrs, but those are dependent on the file system, and there's no guarantee that they will stay when the files get moved, especially if the person moving them is unaware of its existence. The alternative is to keep a plaintext file with this metadata alongside every photo/video/binary/etc, but that would be a huge pain to keep in sync since both files have to be moved together.

So my question to you: do you keep this kind of metadata? If so, how do you manage them?

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[-] saltywolver@pawb.social 3 points 1 year ago

I've been burnt by filesystems when moving around between external drives and FTP, so while I'd strongly prefer if there was a universally accepted way to include arbitrary metadata in the file itself, I'm instead using a separate metadata file. My metadata files are named exactly the same as the original, including their original extension, with a ".metadata" appended, to minimize confusion, and use INI/TOML format to maximize the chances that I'll be able to understand and find tools to easily parse the files after several decades.

this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023

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