\label{sec:chaplin}

This document describes the Cinema \chaplin database so that collaborators can implement readers, writers, algorithms and viewers that perform different operations on Cinema databases. The document is broken into two main sections, one describing a \chaplin grammar, and one that describes the \chaplin implementation of that grammar. Applications and libraries that read and write databases that comply with both the grammar and the implementation in this document can expect to exchange, read and visualize data in a common format.

Subsections in the Grammar section (\ref{sec:grammar}) have corresponding sections in the Implementation section (\ref{sec:implementation}) of the document to fully explain the specification. There are several additional subsections in the Implementation section that provide file examples, and algorithms for mapping metadata to files on disc.

We invite public comment on this specification. Please send comments to \cdevemail.
