BC to KY and back again: Crossing borders to discover new processes
for digital A/V
Cindy McLellan MAS MLISBeyond Borders: Annual Meeting of the SAA
August 11, 2012 San Diego CASession 607
Outline• Introduction – the City of Vancouver Archives and the records
of Yaletown Productions Inc.• Initial appraisal• Why we chose to preserve video digitally• FFV1 and choosing a preservation format• Educate yourself! Your memory institution and the Copyright
Law of the United Sates of America• Digitization specifications• Quality checking• Using Archivematica: digital preservation system• Final thoughts
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
Cordova St[reet looking west from Carrall Street] : July 1886 - five weeks after the fire. AM54-S4-: Str P7.1
Some of the formats we received:• 1” Type C• ¾” U-Matic• Betacam• Betacam SP• VHS• Hi8 ME• D1• D2• Digital Betacam• HDCam
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
Preliminary assessment of the condition of videos
Photograph by Howard Besser. http://www.nyu.edu/tisch/preservation/media/images/2005_02_dc/0502dc-nara205.JPG
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
Mike Collier, at the test screening for Celebrating Yaletown Productions
Photographer, Jeffery Chong.
Some factors in video preservation• Many proprietary formats• Obsolescence of playback machines• Proprietary playback machines can often be
expensive or hard to come by depending on the format
• Inability to fix remaining machines because of parts or a lack of experts
• Parts inside the videocassettes break down• Tape itself is fragile• Damaged by time, heat, water, cold, any extreme
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
Target File FormatContainer format: Matroska version 2 (.mkv) • Specifications: http://www.matroska.org/• Must produce a “the file appears to be valid” output on assessment with
mkvalidator, version 0.3.4 or higher.
Video • Codec: ffv1• Chroma subsampling: 4:2:2• Colorspace: YUV• Bit Depth: 8 (yuv422p)• Frame Size: 720x486• Pixel Aspect Ratio: 9/10• Display Aspect Ratio: 4/3• Frame Rate: 30000/1001 (29.97…) frames per second, constant frame rate
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
MetadataMetadata Tag Usage Example
ORIGINAL_MEDIA_TYPE Format of the source tape. Use the Term Name vocabulary from EBU at http://www.ebu.ch/metadata/cs/web/ebu_StorageMediaTypeCode_p.xml.htm
Digital Betacam format digital television tape, Small cassette
ORIGINAL_MEDIA_TYPE/BARCODE Barcode or other identifier from the tape. 2011-99.123
ORIGINAL_MEDIA_TYPE/COMMENT Comments on the condition of the source, any preparation for playback of the source tape (if relevant). For comments on the digitization event itself see DATE_DIGITIZED/COMMENT.
Tape had minor exterior damage. Tape was cleaning with an XYZ machine.
DATE_DIGITIZED Date and time of the file creation process. Enter in ISO 8601 format.
2011-01-13T19:20:30-05:00
DATE_DIGITIZED/COMMENTS Comments about the digitization process including notable time-based events (if relevant).
Damage to the source tape prevented digitization of the first ~10 minutes of content.
ENCODED_BY Name of the technician or organization responsible for the encoding and file creation process
Vendor ABC, Inc.
ENCODED_BY/URL URL for the technician or organization listed in ENCODED_BY.
www.example.com
ENCODED_BY/COMMENTS Comments on hardware, software, tools, and settings utilized in digitization process.
Sony VO 5800, BlackMagic Design HD DeckLink Pro
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
George BloodStandards are like toothbrushes. Everyone agrees that they are a good idea but no one wants to use the same one.
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
Delivery Specifications
Media:– Filename: Named after an
identifier provided by City of Vancouver Archives, appended with the proper file extension. It is very important that this format is followed exactly! Linux is case sensitive.
– .mkv (digital preservation file)
– .mp4 (access copy)
Checksum: the sidecar checksum file– Format: MD5– Filename: Named
“checksum.md5”, containing the md5 checksum value and relative filepath to the assessed file.
– File attributes: The date modified attribute of the checksum file should be the same as the time when the checksum was generated.
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
QC of files
AV Arifact Atlas. Image gallery. http://preservation.bavc.org/artifactatlas/index.php/Image_Gallery
Transfers to Archivematica
• Prepare transfers of digitized files
• Create transfer directories
• Put the object files in the transfer directories
• Create CSV• Create digitization
metadata spreadsheet
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
Prepare Transfers of Digitized Files
Archivematica
• Ingest transfer of digitized files– Load properly structured Transfers on to an external device– Copy the Transfers into standardTransfer.bak, an unwatched directory
outside of the Archivematica– When ready to process the Transfers, cut and paste as many Transfers
as scalability testing shows will process successfully (currently: 5) into standardTransfer
• Switch to the Archivematica dashboard– Go to the Transfer tab– Select Transfer Complete from dropdown – Wait (check that the server has not frozen)– Transfer has processed successfully all the way through and created
and AIP and a DIP
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012
Works cited• "A/V Artifact Atlas." AV Artifact Atlas. AVAA, 13 Nov. 2011. Web. 27 May 2012.
<http://preservation.bavc.org/artifactatlas/index.php/A/V_Artifact_Atlas>.• Sue Bigelow. “So you want to make an AIP (from digitization to output.” (2012) City of
Vancouver Archives internal document. • "Matroska Media Container." Matroska Media Container. Matroska, 2011. Web. 25 May
2012. <http://www.matroska.org/index.html>.• Neidermayer, Michael. "FFV1 Video Codec Specification." FFV1 Video Codec Specification. 12
June 2011. Web. 25 May 2012. <http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/~michael/ffv1.html>.• Raymond, Eric Steven. The Art of Unix Programming. 2003. Web. 22 July 2012.
<http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/index.html>.• Texas Commission on the Arts. Texas Commission on the Arts: Videotape Identification and
Assessment Guide.” 2003. Web. 23 May 2012. <http://www.arts.state.tx.us/video/identify.asp>.
• United States. Congress. U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Law of the United States and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code. Washington: U.S. Copyright Office, 2011. Print. Circular 92.
C.McLellan, Beyond Borders: San Diego 2012