Method and apparatus to bind media with metadata using standard metadata headers

1. A method comprising:

providing a metadata schema file and a metadata instance file;

providing a media file having a binary capable user field;

compressing the metadata schema into metadata schema fragments by a first compression method;

assembling the compressed metadata schema fragments;

compressing the metadata instance file into metadata instance fragments;

assembling the compressed metadata instance fragments;

setting a media file header to indicate binary data payload;

appending a data start file indicator to the assembled metadata schema and the assembled metadata instance;

inserting the assembled metadata schema and the metadata instance into the binary capable user field of the media file; and

providing an extensible markup language (XML) schema and XML instance data as corresponds to an XML document;

processing the XML schema apart from the XML instance data to provide resultant compressed XML schema data;

processing the XML instance data to provide a corresponding XML instance table; and

compressing the XML instance table to provide a resultant compressed XML instance table.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, inserting other binary data, not associated with metadata into the user field of the media file.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the media file has an EXIF header.

4. The method of claim 3 , further comprising inserting the assembled metadata schema and the metadata instance into a UserComment field of the EXIF header.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the media file is an MPEG 1 Layer III (MP3) file including at least one of an ID3 header or an ID3 footer.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the media file is a JPEG file.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising appending after the metadata instance a data end file indicator.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the XML instance table comprises at least one node code with corresponding node instance path information and node value information.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein compressing the XML instance table further comprises compressing a representation of the XML instance data.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the at least one node code comprises a plurality of node codes wherein the plurality of node codes are differentially coded prior to being compressed.

11. The method of claim 9 wherein compressing a representation of the XML instance data comprises compressing node instance path information using a first compression technique and compressing node value information using a second compression technique with the first compression technique being different than the second compression technique.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein at least one of the first compression technique and the second compression technique is selected from a plurality of available compression techniques based at least in part on a quantity of information to be compressed.