"Metadata" is a term used to describe the titles, captions, and hyperlinks assigned to album content. Metadata can be assigned either manually or automatically.
On the "Settings" screen of every album is a module named "Content Metadata" (see right). This utility assigns titles, links and captions to all existing content already uploaded to an album. It will also assign the same data to all newly uploaded content. This way you can setup the type of metadata you want all your album content to use, and all future uploads will use the same criteria.
New albums do not assign any metadata by default (hence the display of "None" as the value of all metadata options). If you'd prefer all new albums to assign metadata, you may change this by modifying the "Content Metadata Defaults" module on the application Settings screen, which is provided as a link at the top-right of every page in SlideShowPro Director.
If you'd prefer to not automatically assign metadata to all content, "Custom" albums allow you to assign titles, hyperlinks and captions directly to the photos and videos they contain. To edit, you click on the "Content" link inside an album, then double-click on any image to open the edit image pane. The image will load, and display all the metadata fields available to you.
If you've setup automatic metadata for a custom album, and you manually edit the metadata assigned to an image or video, your changes will take precedence. For example, if you setup automatic metadata so that all album content were assigned "Date uploaded" for their captions, and you manually edited thereafter an image's caption to something else (like "My caption"), "My caption" would take precedence and would be used as the image's caption in your slideshow.
If you've setup automatic metadata for a smart album, that metadata would override any metadata assigned to the asset through its parent album. This way your smart albums can display a unique set of metadata about their content instead of using metadata that may only be relative to the asset's parent album.
If automatic metadata has not been setup for a smart album, the smart album will use the metadata assigned to the asset in its parent album.