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Associating data with your finished sound effects products is the final step before submitting your material to sound distributors. This data, called metadata, offers interested buyers information on each sound in your library. Details about the seven main types of metadata to be used when cataloging your sound effects follow. Finding the right format is the first step in creating your metadata document. The most frequently requested format for metadata is an .xls file with categories in columns and individual sounds in rows. Searching through your sounds according to File Name, or Time Length will be very easy if you use this type of format. 1. The Main Category column should contain broad categories such as Ambiences, Animal, Human, Transportation. Try to be as efficient in their use as possible in order to maintain a logical order to your library from the start. 2. The Sub-Category column is meant to break down each main category into various elements such as Animals:Birds, Animals:Dogs, Animals:Pigs etc. 3. If you associate a SKU number of three letters unique to you, such as your initials, and five digits such as SFX00001_DogBark with each sound effect upon their creation your sounds will be perfectly organized. The sound to follow the above example would begin with SFX00002 and so on which assigns a totally unique identity to each sound. This numbering system alleviates confusion in the future should you have multiple Dog Barks and only organize them alphabetically. 4. The Title is a friendly title to be displayed for the potential licensee such as Dog Bark 1. 5. Since shorter sound effects are generally worth less than longer sound effects it is important to include the Time Length in your metadata so that interested clients know the length of each sample they might license. 6. Track info stipulates whether the sample is stereo or mono as well as the sample rate, bit rate , and file type such as Stereo 48k 24bit .wav which informs the licensee about the quality of the sample. 7. One of the main ways that clients find your sounds will be by searching for keywords and thus your Keyword category is very important. Plurals of the sound, related sounds, phrases that include the sound, and misspellings can all help your sounds be found such as car, cars, vehicle, vehicles, car driving, driving a car, kar, kars. Once you have successfully cataloged your sound effects with organized metadata you are ready to submit your sounds to online sound effect libraries for licensing and profit.
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