Pound Hill Software, a leading developer of metadata software tools, updated its MetaGrove dialog for DIMOC (http://www.defenseimagery.mil/). DIMOC's VIRIN recently adopted VISION ID for the photographer's identification component. MetaGrove is a software suite of products that provides custom XMP metadata capabilities to users of Adobe Creative Suite CS2 and CS3.

DIMOC (Defense Imagery Management Operations Center) is a centralized Internet repository of Department of Defense imagery and media. The DIMOC XMP schema (formerly known as JCCC, Joint Combat Camera Center) is based upon IPTC metadata, which is accessible as photoshop metadata in XMP. It consists of seventeen very-well-known metadata fields which are accessible in many image editing and viewing applications under various labels. DIMOC renames these field labels and uses the fields for specific purposes. A few, such as VIRIN, Classification, and Public Release Instructions have specific format guidelines.

DIMOC is different than DICOM, "Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine" metadata embedded in medical images such as x-rays, CAT scans, magnetic resonance scans.

The MetaGrove DIMOC dialog is compliant with the Department of Defense Captioning Style Guide (June 1, 2009) downloadable from a link on http://www.defenseimagery.mil/learning/captionstyle.html . In addition, it includes an enhancement to the VIRIN format definition that supports identification of a single image that has been split into multiple segments.

- MetaGrove schema for DIMOC (DIMOC.sch)

- MetaGrove dialog for DIMOC (DIMOC.mcr)

The MetaGrove DIMOC dialog consists of a single menu panel intended to display all DIMOC metadata together at a glance. In addition, three other read-only panels display camera and initial software processing metadata that may already exist in the image. If present, the camera information can be useful when filling in the DIMOC metadata fields (Date Shot, Photographer info, image sequence number, location of shoot). The Media History and Photoshop History are provided to quickly verify that the image is unaltered. Screen shots of comparible File Info panels are also displayed.

DIMOC metadata is captured by a large number of photographers using a wide variety of tools, making it hard to rely upon controlled vocabulary enforncement. In addition, various software applications migrate the metadata to and from two alternate metadata storage locations in the JPEG file. One visible consequence is that entries can be truncated to fit the IPTC-IIM constraints.

Established in 2001, Pound Hill Software Inc. develops, markets, and supports software tools that enhance the ability of digital media professionals to tag, identify and access today’s growing diversity of rich media files, regardless of file format. Pound Hill Software’s MetaGrove toolkit enriches the ability to define, capture and display XMP metadata beyond the basic tools in the native authoring environment.

Pound Hill Software is headquartered in Anaheim, California.

For more information, call 1-86-METADATA (1-866-382-3282).