How to Catalog Sound Effects for Sound Libraries
Associating data with your finished sound effects products is the final step before submitting your material to sound distributors. This data, called metadata, offers interested buyers information on each sound in your library. Details about the seven main types of metadata to be used when cataloging your sound effects follow.
Finding the right format is the first step in creating your metadata document. The most frequently requested format for metadata is an .xls file with categories in columns and individual sounds in rows. Searching through your sounds according to File Name, or Time Length will be very easy if you use this type of format.
1. Broad categories should be used for the first Main Category column such as Animals, Machinery, and Vehicles. Be as minimal as possible in picking the main categories for maximum simplicity and organization.
2. The Sub-Category column is meant to break down each main category into various elements such as Animals:Birds, Animals:Dogs, Animals:Pigs etc.
3. If you associate a SKU number of three letters unique to you, such as your initials, and five digits such as SFX00001_DogBark with each sound effect upon their creation your sounds will be perfectly organized. The sound to follow the above example would begin with SFX00002 and so on which assigns a totally unique identity to each sound. This numbering system alleviates confusion in the future should you have multiple Dog Barks and only organize them alphabetically.
4. Simply friendly titles such as Car Honk 1 are best for the Title category because they will be displayed for interested customers.
5. A simple but significant bit of metadata is Time Length since long sound effects are usually priced higher than shorter sound effects and the buyer deserves to know how much sound they are getting for their money.
6. Track info stipulates whether the sample is stereo or mono as well as the sample rate, bit rate , and file type such as Stereo 48k 24bit .wav which informs the licensee about the quality of the sample.
7. The importance of Keywords cannot be overlooks, as they are the main method by which interested licensees will find your sounds. Associated sounds, plurals of the sound, misspellings, and phrases should be used such as bird, birds, bird chirp, bird chips, fly, flying, nature, berds.
The next step after cataloging your sounds according to the above seven steps is submission to online distributors for sale of licensing rights.
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