Videoidun

Videoidun is a term used in discussions of multimedia information management to describe a hypothetical or experimental standard for indexing, describing, and delivering video content. It envisions a unified data model that combines video frames, timing, transcripts, annotations, rights information, and provenance metadata to support search, recommendation, and verification across platforms.

The name blends "video" with idun, a nod to preservation and youth in mythological symbolism, signaling its aim to preserve semantic information through viewing sessions. In practice, videoidun appears in academic articles and prototype projects exploring interoperable metadata schemas and cryptographic integrity for video assets.

Technical characteristics include a modular metadata schema that can accommodate core video data such as duration, frame rate, resolution, and codecs, as well as scene graphs, subtitle tracks, speaker labels, and user-generated annotations. It emphasizes provenance and rights management through cryptographic signing and content-addressable storage, enabling verification of authenticity and origin. The framework is designed to work with existing streaming technologies and can interoperate with standard delivery formats via adapters or translators.

Development history is largely theoretical, with most work conducted in research labs and open-source communities. While it informs discussions about metadata interoperability and digital preservation, videoidun has not been adopted as a mainstream standard and remains a reference point for exploring ideas around end-to-end video data ecosystems. Related concepts include MPEG-7, MPEG-DASH, WebVTT, schema.org VideoObject, and other metadata and delivery standards.