The DPC, Richard
Wright and Charles Beagrie Ltd are delighted to announce the release of the
latest DPC Technology Watch Report ‘Preserving Moving Pictures and Sound’,
written by Richard Wright, formerly of the BBC.
‘Moving image and
sound content is at great risk’, explained Richard Wright. ‘Surveys have
shown that 74 per cent of professional collections are small: 5,000 hours or
less. Such collections have a huge challenge if their holdings are to be
preserved. About 85 per cent of sound and moving image content is still
analogue, and in 2005 almost 100 per cent was still on shelves rather than
being in files on mass storage. Surveys have also shown that in universities
there is a major problem of material that is scattered, unidentified,
undocumented and not under any form of preservation plan. These collection
surveys are from Europe and North America because there is no survey of the
situation in the UK, in itself a cause for concern.’
‘This report is for
anyone with responsibility for collections of sound or moving image content and
an interest in preservation of that content.’
‘New content is born
digital, analogue audio and video need digitization to survive and film
requires digitization for access. Consequently, digital preservation will be
relevant over time to all these areas. The report concentrates on digitization,
encoding, file formats and wrappers, use of compression, obsolescence and what
to do about the particular digital preservation problems of sound and moving
images.’
The report discusses
issues of moving digital content from carriers (such as CD and DVD, digital
videotape, DAT and minidisc) into files. This digital to digital ‘ripping’ of
content is an area of digital preservation unique to the audio-visual world,
and has unsolved problems of control of errors in the ripping and transfer
process. It goes on to consider digital preservation of the content within the
files that result from digitization or ripping, and the files that are born
digital. While much of this preservation has problems and solutions in common
with other content, there is a specific problem of preserving the quality of
the digitized signal that is again unique to audio-visual content. Managing
quality through cycles of ‘lossy’ encoding, decoding and reformatting is one
major digital preservation challenge for audio-visual as are issues of managing
embedded metadata.
DPC members have
already had a preview. Pip Laurenson of Tate commented ‘This is a terrific report. Thank you so much for
commissioning it - it is the best thing I have read on the
subject.’
The report has also
been subject to extensive review prior before publication. Oya Rieger and
colleagues at Cornell University who reviewed the final draft welcomed the
report: ‘It is a very thorough report. We realize that it was a challenging
process to gather and organize all this information and present it in a
succinct narrative. Another virtue of the report is that it incorporates both
analog and digital media issues. The final section with conclusions and
recommendation is very strong and provides an excellent summary.'
Another reviewer
explained why the preview for DPC-members was so timely: ‘We are currently
working on a grant proposal focusing on new media art and having access to the
preserving moving pictures and sound report was very useful. The report
provides a thorough characterization of the current practices, shortcomings,
and challenges. Having access to the report has saved us from spending
expensive time on conducting a literature review. ‘
DPC Technology Watch
Reports identify, delineate, monitor and address topics that have major bearing
on ensuring our collected digital memory will be available tomorrow. They
provide an advanced introduction in order to support those charged with
ensuring a robust digital memory and they are of general interest to a wide and
international audience with interests in computing, information management,
collections management and technology. The reports are commissioned after
consultation with members; they are written by experts; and they are thoroughly
scrutinised by peers before being released. The reports are informed,
current, concise and balanced and they lower the barriers to participation in digital
preservation. The reports are a distinctive and lasting contribution to the
dissemination of good practice in digital preservation.
‘Preserving Moving
Pictures and Sound’ is the second Technology Watch Report to be published by
the DPC in association with Charles Beagrie Ltd. Neil Beagrie, Director of
Consultancy at Charles Beagrie Ltd, was commissioned to act as principal
investigator and managing editor of the series in 2011. The managing
editor has been further supported by an Editorial Board drawn from DPC members
and peer reviewers who have commented on the text prior to release. The
Editorial Board comprises William Kilbride (Chair), Neil Beagrie (Series
Editor), Janet Delve (University of Portsmouth), Sarah Higgins (Archives and
records Association), Tim Keefe (Trinity College Dublin), Andrew McHugh
(University of Glasgow) and Dave Thompson (Wellcome Library).
The report is online
at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7207/twr12-01 (PDF
915KB)
No comments:
Post a Comment