A computer readable medium and method to generate a multimedia database that represents a collection of files having different file extensions is provided. The method includes receiving the collection of files from a file system, extracting and storing metadata in multimedia objects stored in the multimedia database. The metadata includes fast and slow metadata associated with the collection of files, which are extracted from the collection of files. Policies associated with the file extensions are applied to the collection of files to determine the fast metadata that should be extracted before the slow metadata. The multimedia objects are created to store the fast metadata and references to the collection of files. After extracting the fast metadata from the collection of files, the slow metadata is extracted and stored in the multimedia objects.