Insert the ISAN barcode in credits

Inserting the ISAN barcode in the credits is a recommended practice that is required in some situations. By doing so the ISAN barcode will act as a visible watermark for the content; that watermark can be read by humans for manual identification and can potentially be read automatically by digital scanners searching for the ISAN barcode.

Recommended practices for adding the ISAN barcode in credits

The barcode used to encode the ISAN identifier is a standard used for many purposes. Consequently, to contextualize the barcode, the ISAN logo should always be displayed next to the ISAN barcode. Should the situation exeptionaly not enable to display the ISAN logo, then the full ISAN number shall be displayed instead next to the barcode.

The is no recommendation in the choice of using a colour or black and white ISAN logo.

There is no dedicated area where the ISAN barcode should be placed. However the barcode should be large enough to be sharply visible and readable by a digital scanner.

If the content is intended for broadcasting, the barcode should preferably be placed in a sequence that is (likely to be) broadcasted.

The ISAN barcode shall correspond to the ISAN identifying the content related to the credits: 

• For a single work, the ISAN barcode of the non episodic work shall be used.
• Episodic works have a distinct ISAN for each episode. The credits of a given episode shall contain the ISAN barcode of that specific episode. 
• In exceptional cases where all episodes of the series share the same credits (e.g. short animated series), the ISAN barcode of the series shall be used in the credits.
• In exceptional cases where groups of episodes share the same credits (e.g. seasons of short episodes), a compilation ISAN that references all the ISAN of the group of episodes shall be created and that compilation ISAN barcode shall be used in the credits.  
• When the content is a variant of the original work (e.g. a reedited documentary, a remastered film) that is identified with a version ISAN (V-ISAN), the version ISAN should be used.

Obtaining the ISAN barcode 

The ISAN barcode image with the ISAN logo can be downloaded from the ISAN web interface in colour or black and white, in jpeg format or eps format. 

For more details, consult the article How to download the ISAN barcode?

Note: Only ISAN barcodes for single works and episodes can be downloaded from the ISAN web interface. ISAN barcodes for series can be requested by email at cs@isan.org

See also:

• Encoding the ISAN in video files using XMP