It’s the live sports world’s worst-kept secret: After the game-winning buzzer-beater is when the real work begins. Video, photos, and more flood in after game time from a dozen angles, captured by freelancers, staff, and even fans. And to keep track of all that footage, you need video metadata.
Metadata is the invisible glue that will have you dominating the field with your media workflow. It goes far beyond camera settings and timestamps: Metadata adds context, collaboration, and creative acceleration to your video content.
Let’s look at how video metadata can transform your post-production workflow from a scavenger hunt into a smooth relay race – especially when paired with cloud tools like MASV and Iconik.
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What is Video Metadata?
Meta data is a bit like a video description: It’s a set of data that describes and gives information about other data. Video metadata can be attached to a YouTube video or videos published on a web page, and along with a catchy video title can help improve video SEO and search engine results.
You can also use online tools, such as a metadata viewer, to extract metadata about an online video.
But this kind of structured data is also used internally to help post-production teams keep video files organized and searchable. In this case, it’s the hidden data that can help describe and categorize a photo or video file, and falls into two main categories:
- Embedded metadata: Automatically captured, the camera or device typically adds the video’s metadata directly to the file upon capture. This kind of structural metadata includes video details like:
- Camera make and model
- Resolution
- Frame rate
- Timecode
- GPS coordinates=
- ISO
- Aperture
- Shutter angle
- Color space
- Lens focal length
Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF data) is a type of technical metadata used by photographers that includes information around camera settings, date and time, and other data points.
- Custom (or contextual) metadata: Manually added by the user at the time of upload or later in video editing software, these fields are customizable and relevant to your workflow. For capturing sports and events, this kind of descriptive metadata could mean:
- Location data, such as name of the stadium or arena
- Game type (e.g., regular season, playoffs, exhibition)
- Opposing team
- Tournament or league name
- Specific players
- Tactical moments for scouting (e.g., “corner kick setup” or “ball recovery”)
Most modern cameras, mobile phones, and even drones capture rich technical metadata by default, but that’s only going to get you through the first inning. Knowing how to use it is what unlocks its true value, particularly in team environments reliant on a media asset manager like Iconik.
Why technical metadata matters
Technical metadata isn’t just for logging. It can drive things like automation, consistency, and organization in post-production workflows.
Examples:
- Shot matching: Group and color match shots based on camera model
- Timecode syncing: Align footage from multiple cameras without guesswork
- Location-based sorting: Filter clips by geospatial metadata to identify shots from specific arenas or fields
Enriching metadata with custom context
Raw technical data is useful, but contextual metadata brings your content to life. This includes:
- Who captured the footage
- What’s happening in the clip
- Why it matters
- Associated storylines, players, or plays
Contextual metadata is best captured immediately after filming, while the moment is still fresh. The closer to the point of capture, the more accurate and valuable the metadata becomes.
Gameday Media Ingest with MASV and Iconik
Let’s walk through a real cloud-based workflow involving a pro sports media team (and MASV client) using cloud solutions MASV and Iconik, a popular media asset manager (MAM) that helps teams find and use assets at scale, to ingest and organize high-quality content from three main sources.
Scenario: It’s game day, and you’re the away team. You need to collect content from three distinct groups: Team photographers, freelance video crews, and user-generated content (UGC) from fans. And you need additional metadata to keep your workflow efficient and your organization tight. No pressure!
Let’s start with photographers.
Step 1: Photographer portal
I’m going to create a new Portal in MASV. We’ll give it a name like “Game Day – Photography,” add recipients, and upload our logo and background to make it on-brand.
Now the important part: our custom metadata form. Team and accredited photographers submit images via a MASV Portal configured with required fields:
- Email.
- A dropdown menu with options: “Pre-Game / Game / Post-Game”
- Text field: “Photographer Name”
- And a radial button for “Staff / Freelancer”
I’m setting all of these fields to required. That means anyone using this Portal must fill this out before they are allowed to submit files. If something isn’t filled out, it won’t go through. You can enable SSO, MFA, or even passwords for portals, so only users you approve can submit content.
Step 2: Video team portal
All done? Great. Let’s duplicate that portal quickly and customize it for our video team. Same idea, but lets add a few other required fields for freelancers or in-house shooters capturing B-roll and gameplay footage:
- Camera and lens info
- Timecode in/out
- Resolution and frame rate
- Clip description (e.g., “Coach halftime speech”)
Step 3: Fan submission portal
Now for the fun one: fans!
This is a Portal just for UGC. The idea is to have a QR code fans can scan at the venue, which brings them to our MASV Portal. We’re going to add a legal checkbox with a terms of service form. This makes sure we’ve got consent and clarity on rights usage.
Engaged fans are encouraged to upload footage and reactions through a branded submission page. Metadata fields include:
- Seat number
- Favorite player
- Moment captured
- Terms and conditions agreement
Once the content has been ingested to cloud storage/the Iconik MAM and edited accordingly, broadcasters can use content delivery networks to distribute content efficiently across multiple global destinations.
The importance of Custom Paths
Each of these portals is mapped to an organized delivery path into your Iconik environment or any one of MASV’s 20-plus integrations. With Custom Paths enabled, MASV sends each content type to its designated folder inside Iconik – ready to be searched, tagged, and shared.
Why this works:
- Editors and producers get properly tagged assets in the right location
- Creative leads can search for specific themes (e.g., all footage tagged “final whistle”)
- Legal and marketing teams get clear permissions on UGC
It turns a chaotic post-game content dump into a structured, searchable media pipeline.
Note: Visit MASV support for a full suite of instructions on connecting MASV to Iconik.
Metadata and the Sports Archive
Metadata isn’t just about knocking it out of the park today. It’s about teeing you up for success tomorrow.
Sports teams typically add massive amounts of media to their libraries over a single week, let alone an entire season, and without strong metadata your archive becomes a digital junk drawer. When your media is filled with rich and consistent metadata:
- Producers can locate content by event, player, or moment
- You reduce redundancy by knowing what assets already exist
- Future editors save hours by avoiding blind scrub-throughs
Organizing your archive with accurate metadata pays off in every highlight reel, docuseries, or brand campaign down the line. Iconik’s tagging, filtering, and collections system thrives when fed detailed, structured metadata during ingest.
When Metadata Matters Most: Right After Capture
Metadata is most accurate and valuable when collected as close to capture as possible. Every minute you wait, context fades and accuracy declines. Capturing metadata at the moment of upload or ingest helps:
- Ensure accuracy while the details are still fresh
- Empower editors to start work immediately
- Eliminate bottlenecks in the review and approval process
As a best practice (and to cut down on time spent herding cats), use upload portals that enforce the collection metadata from contributors as they submit files. You can even configure some upload portals (like MASV’s) to not accept the upload until your collaborator has provided the right metadata. Ensure submitters provide who shot the clip, what happened, where was it recorded, and any required legal or creative details.
This simple step makes a big impact on downstream efficiency.
MASV Video Metadata + Iconik FTW
Video metadata and other types of metadata aren’t just for search engines – they’re force multipliers for fast-paced, real-time sports video workflows. When you capture metadata as close as you can at the source, the benefits ripple through every stage of your media lifecycle – from game-day highlight reels to long-term archival – by reducing time spent searching, improve accuracy, and organization, and future-proof your archive.
MASV is great at collecting detailed metadata:
- MASV Custom Forms can be added to any MASV upload Portal (which can be sent as a link, or embedded into web pages) to collect custom metadata, and are easily configurable.
- Portal owners can set up custom fields and make them required before upload (or not), for a centralized video details page with multiple choice options such as checkboxes, dropdown menus, and radio buttons make it easier on your collaborators.
- MASV Upload Rules can also be implemented to block any upload that doesn’t correspond to your preferred file size, file type, extension type, or package name format, or if a fan or other user doesn’t click on your terms of use agreement.
Tag early, tag often, and let MASV and Iconik take care of the rest.
Make MASV metadata your MVP: Sign up for MASV for free – you can spin up as many Portals as you like at no cost to test your metadata ingest workflows.
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