Apple Final Cut Pro 7 - Manual (Page 1630)

About XML
XML, or eXtensible Markup Language, is a markup language. Markup languages clarify
the content in a document by tagging the elements of the document. A well-known
markup language is HTML, the standard language for writing webpages. The benefit of
working with XML is that it is an open standard. The structure and rules for working with
XML documents are well documented by the World Wide Web Consortium
(
http://www.w3c.org ). XML is also quite simple and understandable: you can view an
XML file in any text editing application and even edit its content. Because XML is an open
standard, anyone with sufficient understanding can process an XML document into other
formats, such as plain text, HTML, or even other XML formats.
Tags and Elements
Tagging content gives the content of a document structure and specific meaning. Each
tag defines an element of the document. For example, compare the following excerpts
from a text file before and after tags have been added.
Original text file:
Coffee house wide shot
17
300
Good
Tagged document:
<clip>
<name>Coffee house wide shot</name>
<reel>17</reel>
<duration>300</duration>
<good>TRUE</good>
</clip>
In the original text file, you have to make assumptions about the meaning of the numbers
17 and 300. In the tagged document, the tags clarify that 17 is actually the reel name of
a clip and 300 is the clip duration (in frames).
In XML, elements can contain other elements. In the example above, the <clip> element
encompasses all of the other elements.
1630 Chapter 97 Using Final Cut Pro XML and QuickTime Metadata