Outcomes

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ABSTRACT A survey has been made of the holdings and preservation requirements of ten major European public service broadcast archives. The survey also covered "the business they do and how they do it": the contribution made by the archives to their companies. The archives also gave their plans for future services as media moves from "tapes on shelves" to mass storage and electronic distribution. This report summarises the findings.

ABSTRACT - This document is a survey and a state of the art of existing and emerging preservation technologies:

ABSTRACT Based on outcomes of the technology survey performed in WP3.task1, this specification is aimed to provide the detailed requirements for a number or "new key links" to be developed in WP 4, 5, 6 and 7- the new tools needed to make preservation work more cost effective.

INTRODUCTION A labour-intensive task in preservation work is human monitoring of playback and recording equipment, to see if a signal is present and clear, and if the new digital signal matches the original signal. The goal of the task 4.1 was twofold: 1.to develop an automatic digitisation monitor - operating in software and on-line - able to provide the human operator with information useful for detecting possible problems of the digitisation process; to implement an automatic quality monitor - operating in software and off-line - for the automatic evaluation of the quality of the signal, based on a set of parameters computed for the purpose. This "meta-data" can be exploited both during the ingestion stage - for example to take the decision that a restoration is needed - and during the future use of the archive - for example to select only items with a given quality.

ABSTRACT This document provides a detailed definition of the workflow for optimised audio archive preservation, also incorporating key-links developed by PRESTO.

Introduction The present Deliverable includes a report on the results of implementation of the audio key links related to the analog part of the transcription chain individuated and described in Deliverable 3.2, section 4.5. The analysis performed then revealed two areas of work: the identification and assembly of a reference turntable to be employed in all the vinyl transcription chains and the selection of optimal analog to digital conversion technology. The two items touch different optimisation aspects of the analog part of the transcription chain, as the former is related to the improvement of the chain efficiency, by introducing automation and flexibility, and to the acquisition of know-how about key equipment that are disappearing from the market, while the latter has a direct impact on the quality of the signal that is captured by the transcription process, and that will be preserved in future.

The average coding ratio of the audio codecs is close to 0.5 for 24 bit materials and close to 0.33 for 16 bit materials. This implies that it would be possible to halve the storage requirements for 24 bit materials and to divide it by three for 16 bit materials, provided that the test sequences are representative of the average of the archive content. These figures will be verified during the field trials.

ABSTRACT Film scanning and printing methods are investigated with respect to costs and quality, for a reassessment of the cost and performance trade-offs for the telecine conversion or high-resolution scanning of film, to investigate whether it is cost-effective, over a 20-year media life-cycle, to scan at sufficient resolution that the film originals may safely be discarded.

The basic idea is to hold beside or instead of analogue film a single digital film master, which can be converted on demand to the required video or film output formats. The main advantage for broadcast usage is that cost intensive multiple scans are avoided. The main advantage for archival usage is the long term digital preservation of film. To be able to convert a single digital master to all intended output formats (i.e. SDTV, HDTV, film reprint) the minimum scan quality is given by the highest quality output format. Maximum useful scan quality can be derived from stock properties (e.g. for 35mm original negative about 8 Mega pixels with about 12 bits per channel logarithmic quantisation). To avoid quality decrease due to the scanning process the sampling structure of the digital film master is equivalent to the original film sampling structure (i.e. 24p, 18p). All output formats are derived from the single digital film master. Several output format properties have to be taken into account, proper handling of interlaced and progressive formats with different field/frame rates, spatial and densitometric resolution and aspect ratio (i.e. letter box). There are solutions for format conversion available on the market, but they are either limited in spatial or densitometric resolution, in conversion quality or in system throughput. A software solution has no limitation in spatial and densitometric resolution, can provide high conversion quality because of no limitation of algorithmic complexity (i.e. motion estimation) and has non-realtime system throughput.

This document contains an theoretical as well as practical survey about high quality compression techniques for film and video.

ABSTRACT: The VIDEO QUALITY CONTROL SYSTEM performs an automated quality control of the transfer from an analogue video format (3/4 Inch) to one or more digital formats (for instance digital BETACAM and/ or MPEG files).

The role of Snell and Wilcox in the PRESTO Project is to develop a "Stand alone black box" to be positioned at the output of the UMATIC VCR. The function of this equipment is, to prevent loss of synchronisation and to detect and compensate for picture drop outs. The object is to provide a continuous output signal to enable effective transfer of archive programme material into a long term tape or disc store.

ABSTRACT Multilevel encoding report as a key point for video archive preservation workflow efficiency introduces description of possible solutions to be implemented for transfer from tape to files of a video programme: real time hardware based as well as non real time software based multilevel encoding solutions are described with results of tests and first level of integration ; cost per encoded hour and advisable choices for archive preservation are as well introduced.

ABSTRACT: This document presents a detailed definition of the workflow for optimised archive preservation. The automated management of metadata requires a process control system (workflow management software), which provides an efficient central controller for an entire preservation process.

Summary: There are many aspects of metadata. Two major considerations are examined in this document: cost, and standardisation. Cost: Metadata updates in preservation work can be seen as just an extra cost, but experience has shown that an investment in metadata automation provides the central "process control" for total system automation, leading to maximum workflow efficiency, high quality control and reduced cost. Standardisation: The greatest overall benefit of investment in preservation work is obtained when the documentation of the preserved materials is in a standard format, for greatest access. Audiovisual metadata standardisation is currently a field of intense activity. Within the consortium are the key archives and personnel leading European activity relating to broadcasting, and they have links to related work in libraries and archives standardisation, and internet standardisation. There is an emerging consensus, which will be explained and justified. This document shows how metadata can be handled to reduce rather than increase total cost, and provides a guide through the labyrinth of existing and proposed standards

Scope This document describes the technical aspects of the Broadcast OPAC developed within PRESTO, but also contains a user"s guide and administration and configuration instructions of the Broadcast OPAC.

Preservation Technology for European Broadcast Archives