Audiovisual archive

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Video tape Archive

In archives, the term "audiovisual" is frequently used generically to denote materials other than written documents. [1] Films, videos, audio recordings, pictures, and other audio and visual media are collected in audiovisual archives. [2] A vast amount of knowledge is included in audiovisual records, which are considered cultural treasures and must be preserved for future use. Print materials would not have the same reach across various audiences as audiovisual resources. [3]

Contents

History

Audiovisual archiving—the collecting, preserving, management, and use of audiovisual heritage—has established its credentials as a distinct profession. The first audiovisual archives came into existence about a century ago, but sustained growth is basically a phenomenon of the second half of the 20th century. [2]

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Andreas Bohnenstengel Negative

Importance

Audiovisual records are included in official programs given that they act as an effective, direct means of communication and are able to capture a wide range of information beyond what is capable of written forms. Written words cannot match the distinct dimension that audio-visual content possesses. Combining sound and images, audio-visual information provides a level of communication that textual text cannot match. By utilizing the synergy of sight and sound, it enhances the overall comprehension and impact of the content by conveying emotions, context, and complicated concepts. [3]

Challenges

The large number and variety of audiovisual materials have led to a major concern for many institutions: preservation. The goal of institutional preservation is to guarantee the materials' ongoing accessibility. The deterioration of audiovisual records is accelerated by improper handling and unsafe storage circumstances. [3]

The greatest barrier to the use of audiovisual materials stems from the fact that many of them are machine-dependent, which becomes a major barrier to their use in rural communities where the equipment and power supply might not be readily available. [3] A lot of archives are working hard to open up access to their holdings. They may work with educational institutions, sponsor exhibitions, and provide online venues for watching and listening to content. [4] The fragility of analog material, copyright constraints, and the quick development of digital forms provide obstacles for audiovisual archives. [5] Large-scale data management and preservation can be expensive and technically challenging. Digital technology advancements have boosted preservation techniques while also posing new difficulties. [6] To ensure the continuous usability of their collections, archives must stay abreast of changing standards and formats. [7] In particular, when working with sensitive or culturally relevant content, archives must straddle copyright and intellectual property rules as well as ethical considerations. [8] In order to ensure the continuous preservation of these priceless cultural materials, organizations and subject matter experts advocate for the benefits of audiovisual archiving and ask for funding and legislative support. [2]

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Assorted video tapes

Audio and visual assets with cultural, historical, and educational significance must be preserved and made available to the public through audiovisual archives. They are crucial for analysis, instruction, and the advancement of cultural heritage. They struggle to manage and preserve an ever-growing variety of analog and digital content, though, [2] but there are some principles, standards and formats which make these functions easier.

Principles

Like traditional archives but modified for visual and auditory media, audiovisual archives follow similar principles. [2] These principles include:

Provenance: Maintaining the original context and creator's intent for audiovisual materials. [9]

Original Order: Preserving the order and arrangement of audio and visual records as they were created or used. [9]

Access and Use: Balancing accessibility for research and education while respecting legal and ethical constraints like copyright and privacy. [9]

Preservation: Safeguarding audiovisual materials through digitization, proper storage, and restoration. [9]

Technology Integration: Staying up to date with evolving technologies to ensure the continued usability of digital formats and tools for managing and accessing audiovisual collections. These principles guide the organization, preservation, and accessibility of audiovisual materials. [10]

Standards

To ensure optimal management and preservation, audiovisual archives frequently follow several standards and models. Some of these standards include but are not limited to:

1. SMPTE The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers Timecode: A common standard for synchronizing audio and video in the broadcasting and film industries. [11]

2. Material Exchange Format (MXF): MXF is a standard file format for the interchange of audio and video material. It is common in professional video production and broadcast. [12]

3. PBCore: Developed by the Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellow project, PBCore is a metadata standard specifically designed for audiovisual materials in public broadcasting archives. [13]

4. FADGI (Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative): FADGI provides guidelines and standards for digitization and preservation of audiovisual materials, especially for government agencies. [14]

5. PREMIS (Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies): PREMIS is a widely recognized metadata standard for digital preservation, including audiovisual content. [15]

6. OAIS (Open Archival Information System): The OAIS model is a reference model for digital preservation, helping organizations manage, preserve, and provide access to their audiovisual archives. [16]

7. METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard): METS is a standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata about objects within digital libraries, which can be applied to audiovisual materials. [17]

8. Encoded Archival Description (EAD): While primarily used for textual materials, EAD is often adapted for audiovisual collections, providing a standardized way to encode finding aids. [18]

9. Dublin Core: is a set of fifteen main metadata items for describing digital or physical resources. [19]

The management and sharing of audiovisual archives is made simpler for institutions because of these standards and models, which also guarantee their compatibility, accessibility, and long-term preservation. [20]

Formats

Digital preservationists will require specific file type information in order to make the best decisions for long-term digital preservation. The following formats have been recommended for images, audios, and videos files: JPEG 2000, TIFF, FLAC, MP3, Wave, Broadcast Wave, Digital Cinema Package (DCP), Motion JPEG 2000, MPEG-2, MPEG-4. [21]

The Library of Congress releases a Recommended Formats Statement every year, which includes a list of recommended and acceptable formats that are most ideal for preservation and future access. [22] The 2023-2024 preferred video formats are Interoperable Master Format (IMF), FFV1 (Matrovska .mkv wrapper), ProRes, MPEG-2, and XDCAM. [23] In the 2023-2024 Recommended Formats Statement, the FFV1 format from was upgraded from an "acceptable" to a "preferred" format for video. [24]

See also

Related Research Articles

Material Exchange Format (MXF) is a container format for professional digital video and audio media defined by a set of SMPTE standards. A typical example of its use is for delivering advertisements to TV stations and tapeless archiving of broadcast TV programs. It is also used as part of the Digital Cinema Package for delivering movies to commercial theaters.

MPEG-7 is a multimedia content description standard. It was standardized in ISO/IEC 15938. This description will be associated with the content itself, to allow fast and efficient searching for material that is of interest to the user. MPEG-7 is formally called Multimedia Content Description Interface. Thus, it is not a standard which deals with the actual encoding of moving pictures and audio, like MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. It uses XML to store metadata, and can be attached to timecode in order to tag particular events, or synchronise lyrics to a song, for example.

Digital Picture Exchange (DPX) is a common file format for digital intermediate and visual effects work and is a SMPTE standard. The file format is most commonly used to represent the density of each colour channel of a scanned negative film in an uncompressed "logarithmic" image where the gamma of the original camera negative is preserved as taken by a film scanner. For this reason, DPX is the worldwide-chosen format for still frames storage in most digital intermediate post-production facilities and film labs. Other common video formats are supported as well, from video to purely digital ones, making DPX a file format suitable for almost any raster digital imaging applications. DPX provides, in fact, a great deal of flexibility in storing colour information, colour spaces and colour planes for exchange between production facilities. Multiple forms of packing and alignment are possible. The DPX specification allows for a wide variety of metadata to further clarify information stored within each file.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Digital Library Program</span>

The Library of Congress National Digital Library Program (NDLP) is assembling a digital library of reproductions of primary source materials to support the study of the history and culture of the United States. The NDLP brought online 24 million books and documents from the Library of Congress and other research institutions.

The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) is a file format for professional cross-platform data interchange, designed for the video post-production and authoring environment. It was created by the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), and is now being standardized through the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digitization</span> Converting information into digital form

Digitization is the process of converting information into a digital format. The result is the representation of an object, image, sound, document, or signal obtained by generating a series of numbers that describe a discrete set of points or samples. The result is called digital representation or, more specifically, a digital image, for the object, and digital form, for the signal. In modern practice, the digitized data is in the form of binary numbers, which facilitates processing by digital computers and other operations, but digitizing simply means "the conversion of analog source material into a numerical format"; the decimal or any other number system can be used instead.

The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a protocol developed for harvesting metadata descriptions of records in an archive so that services can be built using metadata from many archives. An implementation of OAI-PMH must support representing metadata in Dublin Core, but may also support additional representations.

In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal process to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable in the long term. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods and technologies, and combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and "born-digital" content, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time.

These tables compare features of multimedia container formats, most often used for storing or streaming digital video or digital audio content. To see which multimedia players support which container format, look at comparison of media players.

Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) is an extension of the popular Microsoft WAV audio format and is the recording format of most file-based non-linear digital recorders used for motion picture, radio and television production. It was first specified by the European Broadcasting Union in 1997, and updated in 2001 and 2003. It has been accepted as the ITU recommendation ITU-R BS.1352-3, Annex 1.

The term Open Archival Information System refers to the ISO OAIS Reference Model for an OAIS. This reference model is defined by recommendation CCSDS 650.0-B-2 of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems; this text is identical to = 57284 ISO 14721:2012. The CCSDS's purview is space agencies, but the OAIS model it developed has proved useful to other organizations and institutions with digital archiving needs. OAIS, known as ISO 14721:2003, is widely accepted and utilized by various organizations and disciplines, both national and international, and was designed to ensure preservation. The OAIS standard, published in 2005, is considered the optimum standard to create and maintain a digital repository over a long period of time.

FFV1 is a lossless intra-frame video coding format. It can use either variable-length coding or arithmetic coding for entropy coding. The encoder and decoder are part of the free, open-source library libavcodec in the project FFmpeg since June 2003. FFV1 is also included in ffdshow and LAV Filters, which makes the video codec available to Microsoft Windows applications that support system-wide codecs over Video for Windows (VfW) or DirectShow. FFV1 is particularly popular for its performance regarding speed and size, compared to other lossless preservation codecs, such as M-JPEG2000. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) lists FFV1 under the codec-family index "31" in their combined list of video codec references.

The Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) is a metadata standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library, expressed using the XML schema language of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The standard is maintained as part of the MARC standards of the Library of Congress, and is being developed as an initiative of the Digital Library Federation (DLF).

Preservation metadata is item level information that describes the context and structure of a digital object. It provides background details pertaining to a digital object's provenance, authenticity, and environment. Preservation metadata, is a specific type of metadata that works to maintain a digital object's viability while ensuring continued access by providing contextual information, usage details, and rights.

PREservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) is the de facto digital preservation metadata standard.

A metadata standard is a requirement which is intended to establish a common understanding of the meaning or semantics of the data, to ensure correct and proper use and interpretation of the data by its owners and users. To achieve this common understanding, a number of characteristics, or attributes of the data have to be defined, also known as metadata.

A Digital Cinema Package (DCP) is a collection of digital files used to store and convey digital cinema (DC) audio, image, and data streams.

The Entertainment Identifier Registry, or EIDR, is a global unique identifier system for a broad array of audiovisual objects, including motion pictures, television, and radio programs. The identification system resolves an identifier to a metadata record that is associated with top-level titles, edits, DVDs, encodings, clips, and mashups. EIDR also provides identifiers for video service providers, such as broadcast and cable networks.

SMPTE ST 2067. is a suite of standards published by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) that defines the digital delivery and storage of professional audio/visual master elements, known as Interoperable Master Format ("IMF"). Applications within the IMF framework provide standardized interchange and archival for versioned and localized media at a large scale.

References

  1. ↑ "SAA Dictionary: audiovisual". dictionary.archivists.org. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Edmondson, Ray (2016). Audiovisual archiving: philosophy and principles (3rd ed.). UNESCO Bangkok Office. ISBN   978-92-9223-536-9.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Lukileni-Iipinge, Hertha; Mnjama, Nathan (2018). "Preservation of Audio-Visual Records at the National Archives of Namibia". Journal of the South African Society of Archivists. 50: 70–99.
  4. ↑ Carlin, John W. (2000). The Strategic Plan of the National Archives and Records Administration: 1997-2007. National Archives and Records Administration.
  5. ↑ Mutsagondo, Samson; Tholanah, Sabina. "The plight of managing audio-visual archives in developing economies: The case of Zimbabwe". Library Philosophy and Practice. Spring 9-5-2022.
  6. ↑ Schüller, Dietrich (2008). "Audiovisual research collections and their preservation" (PDF). European Commission on Preservation and Access.
  7. ↑ "Digital Preservation Strategy 2022-2026". National Archives. 2019-09-04. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  8. ↑ Anderson, Jane; Torsen, Molly (2012). Intellectual Property and the Safeguarding of Traditional Cultures: Legal Issues and Practical Options for Museums, Libraries and Archives (PDF). World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
  9. 1 2 3 4 "Archives and Records Management Resources". National Archives. 2016-08-15. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  10. ↑ "Handbook - Digital Preservation Coalition". www.dpconline.org. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  11. ↑ SMPTE. "SMPTE | The home of media professionals, technologists, and engineers". www.smpte.org. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  12. ↑ "Material Exchange Format (MXF)". www.loc.gov. 2022-11-22. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  13. ↑ "PBCore Metadata Standard". PBCore Metadata Standard. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  14. ↑ "Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  15. ↑ "PREMIS: Preservation Metadata Maintenance Activity (Library of Congress)". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  16. ↑ "ISO 14721:2012(en): Space data and information transfer systems — Open archival information system (OAIS) — Reference model" . International Organization for Standardization. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  17. ↑ "Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) Official Web Site | Library of Congress". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  18. ↑ "EAD: Encoded Archival Description (EAD Official Site, Library of Congress)". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  19. ↑ "Dublin Core", Wikipedia, 2023-10-06, retrieved 2023-10-27
  20. ↑ "Resources - Publications: Managing Audiovisual Records". National Archives. 2016-08-15. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  21. ↑ Corrado, Edward M.; Moulaison, Heather Léa (2017). Digital preservation for libraries, archives, and museums (Second ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN   978-1-4422-7873-8.
  22. ↑ Green, Corey Marie (2021), "File Formats and Settings", The Podcaster's Audio Handbook, Berkeley, CA: Apress, pp. 1–26, doi:10.1007/978-1-4842-7361-6_1, ISBN   978-1-4842-7360-9, S2CID   243469025 , retrieved 2023-12-19
  23. ↑ "Recommended Formats Statement – Moving Image Works | Resources (Preservation, Library of Congress)". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  24. ↑ Holdzkom, Liz (2023-12-05). "Embracing FFV1 in Matroska Container as a "Preferred Format" in the RFS | The Signal". The Library of Congress. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
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