bc to ky and back again: crossing borders to discover new processes for digital a/v cindy mclellan...

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


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



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


Mike Collier, at the test screening for Celebrating Yaletown Productions

Photographer, Jeffery Chong.

Expansion of U.S. Copyright term


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


Walk to Coal Harbour

AM336-S3-2-: CVA 677-484


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


http://www.matroska.org/

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


http://www.ebu.ch/metadata/cs/web/ebu_StorageMediaTypeCode_p.xml.htm

http://www.ebu.ch/metadata/cs/web/ebu_StorageMediaTypeCode_p.xml.htm

George BloodStandards are like toothbrushes. Everyone agrees that they are a good idea but no one wants to use the same one.


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.



QC of files

AV Arifact Atlas. Image gallery. http://preservation.bavc.org/artifactatlas/index.php/Image_Gallery

Digitization metadata: excerpt


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


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


Error code http://xkcd.com/1024/


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.


bc to ky and back again: crossing borders to discover new processes for digital a/v cindy mclellan...

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