Foundations of Digital Moving Images

Physical Formats Film Invented in late 18th century, still widely used until about 10 years ago. Kodak bankrupt in 2012 VHS Released in 1976, rapidly disappearing Born Digital

Before you digitize: Check Condition of Film Film: Must have some knowledge about film, condition Vinegar Syndrome What is the gauge, 8mm, 16mm, or 35mm Is there sound? White gloves, treat just like photography Sprocket holes in good condition? Are there splices that are worn?

Preserve Heritage and Provide Access Film requires cold room Vinegar Syndrome / other degradation factors Expertise needed Film projectors (no longer made) Watching on screen not practical or desirable except for film enthusiasts YouTube has spoiled/raised user expecatations

Video Standards If you digitize, you need to know the standard, and may have to covert from one to the other NTSC (National Television System Committee) Developed in the 1940s Used in North American and parts of Latin America PAL (Phase Alternating Line) Developed in 1950s Used throughout Europe and many UK/Commonwealth countries

Rise of Digital Formats DVD Released in 1996, dominant for over a decade Hard Disk Around for many years, only recently widely used for storing video (helped by explosion of Internet)

Digitizing Film / Telecine Still, relatively expensive Tobin Cinema Systems is now shipping the TVT-16 16mm Kinography (open source) meo.com /

Legacy Video Formats VHS (including S-VHS and Extended Play) 3/4" U-Matic Betamax Digital Betacam Betacam SP Video8 (8mm), Hi8 and Digital8 DV (including MiniDV, DVCAM, DVCPRO, etc.) DVD

Video Playback Devices As formats go obsolete, so do the playback machines Playback museum Equipment, might be, expensive When it breaks, who will fix it Takes some knowledge to operate Needs calibration and regular maintenance One of the major reasons many collections use vendors

Preservation Issues Video degrades over time, even in perfect conditions Always at risk of being demagnetized, vacuum cleaners anything with large magnets Audio drop outs / White snow Tapes may need baking like audio Keep tapes out sunlight/heat, water.

Digital Video Formats Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) has developed several standards from which some are highly used: MPEG-1 (1988) – typical application: VideoCD (VCD) MPEG-2 (1994) – typical application: DVD video or Digital TV MPEG-4/H.264 – typical application: DivX or Xvid movies, used on Blu-Ray Disc Motion JPEG 2000 (MJ2 or MJP2) is a file format for motion sequences of JPEG 2000 images and associated audio, Compressed, but considered visually indistinguishable Each frame is coded independently

Lossy and Lossless Formats Almost all video used is compressed except for a few high end video repositories or Hollywood productions. (HD/Full HD under 25GB hour) Uncompressed video 8 bit (76 gb/hour) 10 bit (101/gb) and 4k recording (764 GB/Hour!)

Container / Wrapper Formats MOV (Quicktime) AVI (Audio Video Interleave) MXF- is a "container" or "wrapper" format which supports a number of different streams of coded "essence“ Stores video and audio and metadata

Transcoding audio and video Transcode: Conversion of an audio or video data file from one format to another. Converting PAL to NTSC standard Downsizing Batchwork Handbrake Quicktime Pro Roxio Toast

Video Editors VideoLAN Movie Creator Final Cut Pro/iMovie Adobe Premiere Pro

Analog to Digital Conversion Box Time Base Corrector / Color Correction Relatively inexpensive analog to digital convertor

Access Systems/Methods Post file, and download to desktop Video can be posted to the web using HTML 5/Flash player Real Media server, still in use, but fading YouTube/Vimeo Digital Asset Management Systems (DAMS) LUNA ContentDM Hydra using Avalon (open source)

Storage Solutions (“Digital Mortgage”) Video (all digital content) cheap and easy to create Analog, expensive to create, but relatively cheap and easy to store Video files are huge and fragile Never mind long-term preservation, just keeping it alive short term can be difficult Video (all digital content), must be backed up and kept in physical distributed locations Optical and tape-based media increasingly less prevalent

Storage Solutions (aka “Digital Mortgage”) Doug Boyd U of Kentucky

Three-year, 27,000 drive study reveals the most reliable hard drive makers MDisc claims 1000 years, 5gb to 100 gb disc

Storage Solutions (aka “Digital Mortgage”) Doug Boyd U of Kentucky

Storage Solutions (aka “Digital Mortgage”) Doug Boyd U of Kentucky