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back File metadata

Upload metadata to add information that can't be extracted from the files.

BIIGLE supports metadata like the date and time of creation or the geo coordinates of a file. Every time a new image volume is created, BIIGLE attempts to automatically read the metadata from the EXIF information of JPEG files. This doesn't work for videos or if the images have another format than JPEG.

In this case you can upload a metadata file. By default, BIIGLE supports a simple CSV file format for file metadata. More file formats supported by this instance may be found below.

The CSV file should use , as delimiter, " as enclosure and \ as escape characters. Please note the additional explanation of video metadata below. The following columns are supported (multiple synonyms exist for some colums, including the standard proposed in [1]):

Column Description
filename
file

The name of the file the metadata belongs to.

This column is mandatory.
taken_at
SUB_datetime
The date and time where the file was taken. Example: 2016-12-19 12:49:00
lng
lon
longitude
SUB_longitude
Longitude where the file was taken in decimal form. If this column is present, lat must be present, too. Should be in the EPSG:4326 coordinate reference system. Example: 52.3211
lat
latitude
SUB_latitude
Latitude where the file was taken in decimal form. If this column is present, lng must be present, too. Should be in the EPSG:4326 coordinate reference system. Example: 28.775
gps_altitude
SUB_altitude
Altitude where the file was taken in meters. Negative for below sea level. Example: -1500.5
distance_to_ground
SUB_distance
Distance to the sea floor in meters. Example: 30.25
area Area shown by the file in square meters. Example: 2.6
yaw
SUB_heading
The yaw/heading in degrees of the underwater vehicle. 0° yaw should be north, 90° east. Example: 180

Example:

filename,taken_at,lng,lat,gps_altitude,distance_to_ground,area
image_1.png,2016-12-19 17:09:00,52.112,28.001,-1500.5,30.25,2.6
image_2.png,2016-12-19 17:09:31,52.215,28.501,-1502.5,28.25,2.1

The metadata CSV file can be uploaded when a new volume is created. For existing volumes, metadata can be uploaded by volume admins on the volume edit page that you can reach with the button of the volume overview. This will replace any previously imported metadata. Some metadata formats also contain annotations or file labels. In this case, BIIGLE will show buttons to initiate the import as well.

Video metadata

Video metadata can be imported either in the "basic" or the "timestamped" form. The basic form is equivalent to image metadata where a video file can have at most one entry in the metadata CSV file. The timestamped form requires the taken_at column and allows to import many metadata values for different times of the same video. To import timestamped video metadata, add multiple rows with the same filename but different taken_at timestamp to the metadata CSV. Metadata will be ordered by timestamp and the earliest timestamp will be assumed to mark the beginning of the video.

Example:

filename,taken_at,lng,lat,gps_altitude,distance_to_ground,area
video_1.mp4,2016-12-19 17:09:00,52.112,28.001,-1500.5,30.25,2.6
video_1.mp4,2016-12-19 17:10:00,52.122,28.011,-1505.5,25.0,5.5

Additional metadata file formats

  • COCO: This file format is often used in machine learning applications. You can use it to import automatically generated annotations into BIIGLE for further exploration or processing. A detailed description of the format can be found here.
  • iFDO: This is a versatile file format that can store various image and video metadata, including annotations and file labels. More information can be found in the iFDO documentation.

References

  1. Schoening, T. et al. An acquisition, curation and management workflow for sustainable, terabyte-scale marine image analysis. Sci. Data 5:180181 doi: 10.1038/sdata.2018.181 (2018). doi: 10.1038/sdata.2018.181