Hi Bob,

By:

"In the way that xpointer can point to a portion of an XML file, is there
a parallel standard to point to a portion of a WAV of mp3 file?"

Do you mean for someone to actually call "file.mp3" and automatically
have your audio player advance to point X within that file?  Or are you
simply approaching this from a "how do I describe this track at point X
within file.mp3"?

If the former, I don't know of a technology that will allow you to jump
to the middle of a track based on a parameter passed in the URL.
*Maybe* SMIL or one of the more recent MPEG (non-MPEG 2, 3, or 4)
standards.  If you're wanting to do the latter, as Daniel suggests:
METS and SMIL would work nicely.  NYU Libraries have a nice example of
METS working in conjunction with SMIL.

Clay

Bob Walser wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> We're deepening the cataloging of the Carpenter collection to include
> item-level entries of sound recordings. Imagine an LP record with 6
> tracks
> digitized as a single file. We have 179 objects of this sort containing a
> thousand or so discrete items. This gives rise to two questions to
> this list:
>
> 1) In the way that xpointer can point to a portion of an XML file, is
> there
> a parallel standard to point to a portion of a WAV of mp3 file?
>
> 2) Assuming the answer to the above is, for the moment, negative, what
> would be the "best practice" tags to use inside the item <did> to tag a)
> the start time within the sound file for the particular item (e.g. 02:37
> meaning 2 min 37 seconds from the start) and b) the duration (since
> <extent> is only allowed as a sub-element of <physdesc> which applies to
> the higher level where we catalog the whole physical (and now digital)
> object).
>
> Thanks for your help.
> Bob Walser
>
>
> Robert Young Walser  - [log in to unmask]
> The James Madison Carpenter Project
> http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/carpenter/
> Office telephone 1-612-374-4364
> - -  -   -    -     -      -       -        -         -