RE: Premium Video Content Markup

HI Jason, Paul and list,

If I'm not mistaken some of these distinctions can be made using the Indecs data model and dictionary:

http://www.doi.org/topics/indecs/indecs_framework_2000.pdf

...see especially the "model of making", and the "commercial view" which are concise entity-relation diagrams of the situation here.

In the area of TV & movies, this model has already been applied to form the compact and extensible EIDR registration metadata for AV assets, which also distinguishes movies, shorts, clips etc.:

http://eidr.org/documents/EIDR-1.03_Data_Fields.pdf

EDIR is designed with linking and interoperability in mind (see http://eidr.org/documents/EIDR_Interoperability_with_Other_Standards_Identifiers_March2011.pdf) so it may be worth a look :)

Cheers,

Michael

From: Jason Douglas [mailto:jasondouglas@google.com]
Sent: 30 May 2012 04:19
To: Paul K. Young
Cc: public-vocabs@w3.org
Subject: Re: Premium Video Content Markup

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Paul K. Young <pky@google.com<mailto:pky@google.com>> wrote:
Hi All,

I'm working on a proposal to extend the Schema.org markup for
VideoObject to better support premium video content (TV & Movies).
I'm new to Schema.org markup and would appreciate some suggestions, in
particular with the Good Relations markup for offers and for
identifying the video type (full content vs. trailer/clip/interview,
etc.).

* Catalog Info

There are several types of offerings common for premium content.

- Rent - Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, etc.
- Buy - Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, etc.
- Subscription - Netflix, Amazon Prime, Verizon FIOS subscriber, etc.
- Bundle - TV episodes are often available as a discounted bundle for
an entire season.

The Good Relations hasBusinessFunction covers the first two cases.
The latter two cases could be covered using custom license objects but
some semantic information is lost in doing so.  Moreover, it may be
useful if the provider could provide a subscription identifier as a
part of the offer.  Would this be best accomplished by subclassing
BusinessFunction or License and adding a subscriptionIdentifier field?
 The various offerings could be annotated as follows.

 <!-- Rent -->
 <div itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer">
   Rent for <span itemprop="price">$3.99</span> <span
itemprop="priceCurrency">USD</span>
   <link itemprop="gr:hasBusinessFunction" href="http://schema.org/LeaseOut" />
 </div>

 <!-- Buy -->
 <div itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer">
   Buy for <span itemprop="price">$9.99</span>
 </div>

 <!-- Subscription -->
 <div itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer">
   Subscribe for <span itemprop="price">$19.99</span>
   <div itemprop="gr:hasBusinessFunction" itemscope
itemtype="http://schema.org/Subscription">
     <link itemprop="provider" href="http://www.example.com/subscribe" />
   </div>

The tricky part about subscriptions is the indirection between the offer for the subscription and the content covered by the subscription.  For example, if "Bob's Burgers Season 1" is available on Netflix streaming, is Bob's Burgers the itemOffered or is it the subscription?


 <!-- Bundle -->
 <div itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer">
   Buy season 2 for <span itemprop="price">$39.99</span>
   <div itemprop="gr:hasBusinessFunction" itemscope
itemtype="http://schema.org/Bundle">
     <link itemprop="bundle"
href="http://www.example.com/show/season2/bundle" />
   </div>
 </div>

I'm not immediately getting why we need anything new/special for bundles.  Why isn't it just multiple itemOffered values?  (or just naming the bundle itself as the itemOffered.)


* Program Info

CreativeWork::about seems the most appropriate way to indicate program
information.  For premium content this would reference either a Movie
or TVEpisode object.

* Video Type

Providers should be able to distinguish between videos containing the
full content, trailers, clips, interviews, etc.  This could be
accomplished by adding an enum type called
VideoObject::aboutRelationship which takes one of the following
values.

http://schema.org/FullContent
http://schema.org/Trailer
http://schema.org/Clip
http://schema.org/Interview
http://schema.org/Review

So, for instance, the following could be used to annotate a
VideoObject for the feature filme "Pirates of the Carribean:  On
Stranger Tides."

 <div itemprop="about" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Movie">
   <h1 itemprop="name">Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides (2011)</h1>
   <span itemprop="description">Jack Sparrow and Barbossa embark on a quest to
   find the elusive fountain of youth, only to discover that Blackbeard and
   his daughter are after it too.</span>
 </div>
 <link itemprop="aboutRelationship" itemtype="http://schema.org/FullContent">

Dependent properties (like 'about' and 'aboutRelationship') only work if they're unique... can we really say 'about' will always be unique?



Best,
Paul