Starting in Windows 7, Media Foundation exposes metadata through the IPropertyStore interface. Property keys are wide-character strings. Values in multiple languages are not supported.

Properties can have values in multiple languages. Stream-level properties are not supported. Only file-level properties are supported. Properties can apply to the entire file, or at the stream level. Properties are compatible with the Shell property system. Properties are not compatible with Shell property system. Shell metadata in general does not require Windows 7, but Media Foundation did not support Shell metadata prior to Windows 7.

The following table compares the features and limitations of each metadata API. Shell metadata pertains not only to media files but to a much wider range of files on the system. The Windows Shell IPropertyStore interface (Shell metadata).The IMFMetadata interface (Media Foundation version 1 metadata).There are two ways to read metadata in Media Foundation: Currently Media Foundation does not support DRM properties through metadata, with the exception of the PKEY_DRM_IsProtected property. DRM properties contain information on usage restrictions.It can be faster to access this information through metadata than through media-type attributes. Metadata can also describe encoding parameters.

Metadata contains descriptive information for the media content, such as title, artist, composer, and genre.

For more information about media-type attributes, see Media Types.

Media-type attributes specify the encoding parameters, such as the encoding algorithm (media subtype), video frame size, video frame rate, audio bit rate, and audio sample rate.

In Microsoft Media Foundation, these properties can be categorized as follows: Media files contain properties that describe the contents of the file.

Audio and video metadata editor