Systems and methods for generating standard description records from multimedia information are provided. The system includes at least one multimedia information input interface (180) receiving multimedia information, a computer processor, and a data storage system (150), operatively coupled to said processor, for storing said at least one description record. The processor performs object extraction processing to generate multimedia object descriptions (200, 201, 205) from the multimedia information, and object hierarchy processing (410, 420) to generate multimedia object hierarchy descriptions, to generate at least one description record including the multimedia object descriptions (200, 201, 205) and multimedia object hierarchy descriptions for content embedded within the multimedia information.