Improving Video in MusicBrainz (relationships and more!)

good evening~

I’m gonna be putting in a few tickets to improve video in the database. mostly relationships, but also a new Secondary Release Group Type. I’d like some input if there’s something I missed.

Video secondary Release Group type

after discussion in this thread, I believe a new “Video” secondary type is in order. especially since we can have video albums, video singles, video broadcasts, and other video releases. currently it seems all video releases just get dumped into the “Other” primary type, which just doesn’t seem right to me.

I don’t think all releases with video should have this secondary type though, such as deluxe editions or regular albums with a bonus DVD or the like. just for cases where the video is the focus of the release.

I will note, there are surely some cases where a CD is the bonus content, such as home video anime releases (MB) sometimes bundle a soundtrack CD or some concert video releases. in cases where the CD is a bonus, it would have the Video type. (not that I think we should necessarily include the video part of these anime home video releases, I just don’t know of any music releases like this off-hand).

Relationships

we’re also missing several relationships to properly add many video-specific credits. I’ve added several that already have tickets, and a few from STYLE-176 as well.

a ticket that might help keep video credits only on video recordings would be MBS-9647.

(I’ll try and keep this list updated with new suggestions)

Artist-Recording

  • Video Producer (name pending, often just Video or Movie)
  • Artwork (name pending, if including Animation) - STYLE-2042
    • Animation (could be a separate category)
    • Design
      • Typography
      • Graphic Design
    • Illustration
  • Camera (Photography?)
  • Video Editor (could be a subtype of Editor)
  • Style & Makeup (there may be an actual name for this department)
    • Costume Design - STYLE-1028
    • Styling (might be Artist-Release, not specific to video)
    • Hair & Makeup (this one too)
  • Stage Design - STYLE-909
  • Subtitles (recording)
  • Director of Photography (release, booklet page 7)

Recording-Recording

  • Behind-the-Scenes video for (recording) (name pending)

Release Group-Recording

  • Behind-the-Scenes video for (recording) (name pending)

Artist-Release

  • DVD Authoring (should probably be Artist-Medium instead)

Label-Recording

  • © Copyrighted by (likely also Artist-Recording for self-owned recordings) - STYLE-646
  • Post Production Sound Services

Other related tickets

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concert videos that come with a bonus CD (with the same concert in audio only):

Some examples:

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I often have full concerts or interview discs that need a home and “other” always seems wrong as there was never a CD only version. Agree also that “bonus discs” added to deluxe releases should not be in this section as they are clearly part of the original album. But now they would have a home when release as a separate item.

One puzzle though - what about that concert album that is released as CD and separate DVD\BluRay? They will need carful guidelines. I would suggest they stay under “album” - but it is an edge case that will come up and needs to be in the guidelines from day one.

4 Likes

that could be an option, or perhaps a new Release Group–Release Group relationship, like “Video Version” or something. that would also cover music video singles like the one I linked in my original post.

I’ve seen a lot of pressure to keep videos out of “traditional” release, and I’m beginning to agree a bit, since they’re technically different recordings and not usually interchangeable and all.

I knew there was probably some of these, I just hadn’t seen any in my editing. added an example~ :wink:

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The examples I gave I believe should still be standard albums. That is how they are released. That is the artists aim. Even more so with that deluxe album with bonus concert disc, again an album. MB currently has those correctly filed and should not be changed.

But when the media is ONLY a video, then it seems like a new RG category.

Focus on the primary media.

I see the complexity when you are wanting to post YouTube videos. Personally, I would much prefer these to end up in a separate category. A video of a single is usually a different edit to the actual CD or Digital Media release. They have a relationship to link them, but will not count to the same chart.

And then it gets messy. Some YouTube videos will be official releases that do count to chart plays equal to a Spotify track. Now I am at a loss…

Also when is a YouTube video good enough to post? An official artist’s channel, yes, but some random person who uploads without copyright permission?

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When it’s official (by artist or label). For live videos, I’d consider something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg6B56rK02E also a valid addition, but for music videos I would not consider someone other than the artist/label putting up the video on YouTube as an acceptable link.

8 Likes

you lost me a bit here, since in all three release groups you linked, all the releases are either audio (CD, cassette, etc.) or video (Blu-Ray or DVD), none are both audio and video.


my proposal would be to split Video versions of releases from the Audio-only versions, for example:

(I know they’re in the same release group right now, I’ve got an edit in to split them)

these releases are both the same song, released a day apart from each other. the artwork is similar enough, just edited for a different aspect ratio. however, since one is a video, (and it seems the community wants it this way), they should be in separate Release Groups. they would, of course have relationships between them, so one could be found from the other and vice versa.

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Sorry to confuse. I thought some of those Roger examples had a CD+BluRay package.

I would not agree to splitting these. This is a Release on multiple media. They should stay together. Otherwise you’ll have some RGs that list CD, LP, Digital Media, Cassette and the lone BluRay gets sliced out and lost in a different section of the database. That would be wrong as they were release as the same album on different media.

Or to put it another way - Don’t split the concert video from concert audio just because of different media abilities.

I quite agree with that.
There are exceptions (like always), when the packaging are really made different, maybe those 2, for instance: AJICO SHOW

2 Likes

I’m on unfamiliar ground, but is everyone really keen to split these?
We group vinyl and streaming which are quite different, so I thought video would just be another ‘format’.

That said I am very much in favour of video options for release groups and release sub-types as well.

edit: this all plays into my evil plan to eventually be able to credit composers for the films/games etc they’ve worked on that didn’t get an audio-only release :innocent:

4 Likes

In many cases I wouldn’t separate them. I know many live albums that are available in different variations. You might get it as CD, DVD + CD , Vinyl, Vinyl + DVD + CD etc. They get advertised as one album by label and band, they all get released on the same day and they all share a common cover design.

Splitting these up in different release group would just be weird, and there could be endless debates which version goes into which group.

If the releases are instead more different, that e.g. there is both an audio only and a video release of the same concert, but they were released independently from each other and cannot be considered the same album, than there should be of course separate release groups. But that would be current practice anyway.

7 Likes

honestly, we don’t necessarily have to split these release groups, I just remember there was talk about doing this kinda thing with digital releases in this thread. that, and it just made sense to me, since most often a music video is not interchangeable with a non-video single, in my humble opinion. :wink:

(that and y’all are mostly talking about Live Concert releases, which aren’t quite the same as a music video)

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just made a ticket for probably the biggest video credit (at least, in my area of expertise) :wink:

a couple examples of these credits from my collection:

feel free to add other Artwork/Animation credits to the thread~

any other video credits missing from my OP would be appreciated as well~

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I’m currently working on adding credits for a ZUTOMAYO music video and these relationships would definitely help clean them up. It would be great to not have to rely on miscellaneous support tasks.

Based on credits I’ve seen on ZUTOMAYO’s videos, I’d like to suggest prop stylist, animation compositing, layout and key animation, background art, story direction/design (this may be too specific), 3DCG and VFX, motion graphics, and production design roles. A subtitle animation relationship could also be useful, depending on how broad a Subtitles relationship would be.

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a lot of these could maybe fall under some of the categories I’ve got… I think most of these should have a “Task” field, that way we might not need “Background Art” in particular, and could just do “Illustration” with task “Background”, “Character”, or whatever. that way, we’d only need to add 40 relationship types instead of 400 (hopefully I’m exaggerating a bit)

…and I think it’s finally hitting me just how big a task this is, and how much closer it gets us to MovieBrainz… lol

I will add those to the list shortly tho~

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I went ahead and created a ticket to group any video improvements under~ feel free to add your own~

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Here is another example I just came across, both of these two video song recordings:

are (partly or fully) using the same animation which you can find at three addresses:

It would be great to be able to credit Garry Bardin (Wikidata item Q1959564) for the animation used by these two video song recordings through a relationship with proper attributes after STYLE-2042.

In this case, the animation has been reused, it isn’t an animation made for these songs.

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