MediaItems

A mediaitem is a record representing a single media asset within a media library, digital asset management system, or content management system. It serves as the canonical reference to a stored file while encapsulating metadata, rights information, and management attributes used for discovery, delivery, and governance.

A mediaitem typically includes identifiers, descriptive metadata, and technical data. Common fields are a unique id, title, description, mime_type, file_size, creation_date, and modification_date. Optional technical attributes may include duration for audio or video, width and height for images, frame_rate, and bitrate. Metadata standards such as EXIF, IPTC, or XMP may be stored, along with credits, author, license or rights, source, location, and keywords or tags. The item may also record a storage reference (URL or storage key), a checksum, and version history.

Mediaitems can reference different renditions or derivatives of the same asset, such as thumbnails, lower-resolution streams, or alternative formats. They often participate in relationships with collections, albums, or playlists, and may be linked to users or contributors for provenance and access control. Provenance, access rights, and publication status are commonly tracked to support governance and licensing.

Typical operations include uploading, editing metadata, searching and filtering, sorting, and retrieving assets. Delivery may involve generating or selecting appropriate renditions, caching or CDN delivery, and applying access controls. In practice, mediaitems underpin media libraries across domains such as websites, e-commerce, publishing, education, and cultural institutions, enabling efficient organization, rights management, and delivery of digital media.