Will Your Production Last? Problems in Moving Image Preservation. Will Your Production Last?- What s challenging about Moving Image Collections?

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1 2/7/7 Will Your Production Last? Problems in Moving Image Preservation Howard Besser, Director Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program NYU s Tisch School of the Arts Will Your Production Last?- Why moving image preservation is important Understanding why film & video become unplayable: Problems with Analog Preservation General Digital Preservation Issues File format issues Accidental erasure Distribution platforms The Cloud Libraries, Archives, Repositories Personal Digital Archiving Moving Images are critical to understanding our cultural heritage Both fiction & documentaries shape any time period s views of the past (Moses & 0 Commandments; Cleopatra; Caesar s Rome; 940s urban US; Hitler, Holocaust, WWII; Vietnam War, ) We are shaped by the cultural icons of our childhood (Leave it to Beaver, Lassie, James Bond, police shows, Mickey Mouse, Road Runner, ) We are also shaped by the advertisements, industrial, and educational films of our childhood (Maytag repairman, How to be a good homemaker, ) To understand our time period, people in the future will need to have access to the cultural artifacts of our time (imagine trying to understand 950s and 960s gender dynamics without pop cultural views of the family) What s challenging about Moving Image Collections? You can t browse a collection Many different purposes (documenting events, telling stories) Published works have variant forms (think of all the versions of Blade Runner!) Many physical formats (film gages, video sizes and encoding, digital encoding and compressions), and all of them become obsolete relatively quickly Lots of Formats; Hard to Store (VidiPax) Moving Images are highly unstable, and an enormous # have already disappeared 50% of all titles produced before 950 have vanished (approximate number as of late 970s) This reflects full-length features; survival rates are much lower for other types (studio newsreels, shorts, docs, independent, ), and these orphans are particularly in peril Fewer than 20% of features from 920s survive in complete form; survival rates of 90s is <0% (& none of these are negatives) -Film Preservation 993: A Study of the Current State of American Film Preservation, Vol : Report, June 993, Report of the Librarian of Congress (

2 2/7/7 Film Decay (LC Dayton) DETERIORATION & DESTRUCTION Academy--decay Some reasons why Moving Images are disappearing Most pre-sound films weren t saved at all Nitrates hazard Eastmancolor fading Video--changing formats, magnetic particles not adhering to backing, little recognition of importance of saving Who should be responsible for saving works without lucrative financial value Color Restore (VidiPax) HURRICANES Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 2

3 2/7/7 New Orleans: Film Projector New Orleans Films projected Helen Hill films New Orleans Films projected Helen Hill films New Orleans Films projected Helen Hill films Eyebeam Disaster Recovery (Sandy 202) Eyebeam Disaster Recovery 3

4 2/7/7 Technical Composition & Deterioration NATURAL DETERIORATION We know a lot about deterioration and maintenance of formats that have existed for a while; we need to understand the chemistry, physics, and electronics in order to preserve these Film- Video and Audio Tapes- Film Layers ScreenSound Film Preservation Handbook Surface Physical Damage Topcoat Emulsion (content) Subbing Layer (adhere) Base (cellulose triacetate, cellulose diacetate, cellulose nitrate, or polyester) Backing Layer Perforation Scratches Water droplet damage to emulsion ScreenSound Film Preservation Handbook Mold Damage ScreenSound Film Preservation Handbook Shrinkage ScreenSound Film Preservation Handbook Usually in gelatin part of emulsion layer Interesting patterns 4

5 2/7/7 Vinegar Syndrome Deterioration Image Permanance Institute Signs of Vinegar Syndrome sour smell Shrinkage buckling of the emulsion the appearance of crystals that obscure the image Film--Acetate Decomposition cupping--home Film Preservation Guide--filmforever.org Film--Acetate Decomposition emulsion cracks--home Film Preservation Guide--filmforever.org IPI A-D Strips Acid Detection Strips at NYU Library (Internship) 5

6 2/7/7 Structure of Tape Van Bogart Binder--Functions as a carrier for the recording material & Bonds it to the substrate Substrate--Base material on which the recording material is coated (eg. an aluminum platter or a thin ribbon of polyester film) Tape Substrate Early tape used cellulose acetate Moisture/hydrolysis Vinegar syndrome More recent tapes are polyester terephthalate (PET) or polyethylene napthalate (PEN) Chemically stable Resist hydrolysis and oxidation Video Cleaning Machine Longitudinal Recording Van Bogart Helical Scan Recording Van Bogart Tape Pack Problems Van Bogart 6

7 2/7/7 Tape Pack Problems Packing problems can lead to playback problems Tracks for helical scan can be skewed Storing Tapes Tapes should be stored fully wound in one direction or the other Store tapes upright (like a book) Do not store near potential magnetic fields Storage cases should be opaque and kept away from source of light and humidity Do not store tapes in plastic bags Exercise the tape every few years Temperature & Humidity for Tape Storage Variance of less than 2ºC and 5% RH per 24 hours Ideally 8ºC and 25% RH Other options 20 C (68 F) and 20-30% RH 5 C (59 F) and 20-40% RH 0 C (50 F) and 20-50% RH Never store below 8ºC amianet.org 2003, & ISO 8923 FILE FORMAT ISSUES We re always reformatting, and dealing with wide variety of formats Nitrate Super8 Cinemascope 3-D Cartridge 7

8 2/7/7 Old Film Formats Various Formats Intermixed (Hampton) Old Video/Digital Formats ( Old Video Formats Old Digital Formats Masters are different from distribution copies In the film world, negative masters were low contrast and fine-grained. Often much higher resolution than distribution copies In today s digital world, copies distributed on Internet are much lower quality than the Master In the full digital world of the future, Masters will continue to have higher quality and more metadata than distribution copies Distribution copies can be compressed and encrypted; Masters should not be 8

9 2/7/7 Selected Digital Video file formats Digital Video file formats Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Digital Video wrappers/containers Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Selected Digital Video wrappers Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 MXF AIFF METS Matroska QuickTime Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) Digital Cinema created in March 2002 joint venture of Disney, Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros. Studios DCI's primary purpose is to establish and document voluntary specifications for an open architecture for digital cinema that ensures a uniform and high level of technical performance, reliability and quality control. DCI will also facilitate the development of business plans and strategies to help spur deployment of digital cinema systems in movie theaters. Only about distribution, not about capture or Masters Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 NTSC Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 2K 4K 9

10 2/7/7 Digital Cinema Quality Issues 2K (2048 X 080) vs 4K (4096 X 260) 2K captures roughly the quality of 35mm release print (but not negative) but when Blu-Ray or HD-DVD give people 2K in their homes, will theaters need higher quality to attract people there? Sharp released an 8K camera Dec 207 DCP isn t a preservation format DCDM DPX What about newer formats & developments? Moving images on DVDs becoming interactive; need for more extensive source materials Video installation works Net-based works incorporating moving images Images & rich media; new media and multi-media works DIGITAL PRESERVATION Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Serious Longevity Problems What we know from prior widespread digital file formats Previous formats required little ongoing intervention (remote storage facilities, Iron Mtn); digital formats require intense ongoing management The Short Life of Digital Info- The Short Life of Digital Info: Digital Longevity Problems Disappearing Information The Viewing Problem The Scrambling Problem The Inter-relation Problem The Custodial Problem The Translation Problem 0

11 2/7/7 The Viewing Problem Digital Info requires a whole infrastructure to view it Each piece of that infrastructure is changing at an incredibly rapid rate How can we ever hope to deal with all the permutations and combinations The Scrambling Problem Dangers from: Compression to ease storage & delivery Encryption to enhance digital commerce Paradigm Shift From managing artifacts to managing disembodied information over time Preservation Repository with strong devotion to management over time including Periodic refreshing Either emulation or migration (or some other strategy that may emerge CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS AS PRESERVATION REPOSITORIES Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Cultural Institutions Are best equipped for managing moving image material over long periods of time Preservation Repositories: Open Archival Info System Model Producer Consumer Management

12 2/7/7 OCLC/RLG Digital Repository Attributes Administrative responsibility Organizational viability Financial sustainability Technological suitability System security Procedural accountability Hampton Collection (3) Hampton Collection (interviews) Hampton Collection (exhibits) Hampton Collection (negatives) Cinemateca Brasileira (film storage) 2

13 2/7/7 Hampton Collection (atmosphere cntrl) Academy-Atmosphere Digital Disasters-Toy Story ACCIDENTAL ERASURE OF DIGITAL Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Oakland Police delete 25% of Videos A quarter of all video clips captured by Oakland police body-worn cameras during stops and investigations were accidentally deleted nearly two years ago when city employees installed a software upgrade. Nothing should have ever been lost from the system, Burke said in court, later adding, The settings were set to never delete. Instead of hitting preserve everything, the IT employees mistakenly checked a box marked preserve, Digital Disasters-Personal "Results show 40 percent of desktop owners and 3 percent of laptop owners have experienced data loss, most often because their device crashed. -Western Digital Survey -Miami Herald, /9/203 3

14 2/7/7 Study of metadata loss through uploading to services PROBLEMS WITH COMMERCIAL SERVICES Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Woz hates The Cloud (/2) Woz hates The Cloud (2/2) I've had too many personal experiences get messed up just because companies change things on the cloud. I've come to a depressed state of feeling that I own nothing on the cloud and have no ability to keep things working the way they do. Features change and get dropped, things you depend on disappear, etc. Not long after upgrading to Mountain Lion, one of my three primary Google calendars disappeared. It no longer existed. I have multiple Google calendars and some people have read ability while others can create events but I have the sole admin account that could have deleted a calendar. I would never do this, and checked to make sure it's not easy. In fact, a dialog appears telling you to ok that you will lose all your events. I would never do this. Cloud Storage not safe from Snooping Digital Privacy NYU LFI 4

15 2/7/7 PDA Covers born-digital PERSONAL DIGITAL ARCHIVING FIELD & CONFERENCES Correspondence/ Personal photos and group photo albums Manuscript drafts Personal documents Home movies And has been extended to encompass: Family history Community/Ethnic history & Movements Genealogy Digital humanities. Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 PDA History Personal Digital Archiving Initially started by Internet Archive with co-sponsorship from Netherlands Sound & Vision, LC/NDIIPP and CNI 200 Internet Archive 20 Internet Archive 202 Internet Archive 203 Univ of Maryland 204 Indiana State Library 205 New York University 206 Univ of Michigan 207 Stanford Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 PDA Video Preservation Paul Dougherty, 40 Years of Video Husbandry (PDF) Zack Lischer-Katz, Reflections on Digitizing a Personal Audiovisual Collection (PDA) Rebecca Fraimow, Digital Video Remix: A Risk Assessment. (PDF) Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 5

16 2/7/7 Workshop on Do-It-Yourself Personal Digital Archiving Workshop on Do-It-Yourself Personal Digital Archiving Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Workshop on Archiving Last Summer s Tisch class Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 207 Summer Session class Tu, Th 6-9PM, May 23-Jun 30 Save Your Stuff: DIY Media Archiving 207 Summer Session class, CINE-GT/UT 809 In a world where individuals are constantly generating digital content for personal and professional use, learning how to organize and save this material is essential for ensuring its longterm accessibility. This introductory course will impart practical skills from the world of archiving to help students take control of the media they store at home, in the studio, or online. Students will learn to identify file formats, assess a digital collection, and plan for the ongoing care of their media. Designed for anyone who wants to save their digital content, this course is especially well-suited for students, scholars, artists, filmmakers, musicians, activists, bloggers, and journalists. Emphasis will be placed on preserving audiovisual and photographic materials, with additional consideration of documents and social media. 6

17 2/7/7 Personal Digital Archiving links 205/08/report-on-the-personal-digitalarchiving-205-conference/ What can you do now? For Film, Video & Digital Label elements as well as you can Limit the number of formats as much as possible, and avoid lossy compression if you can Make logical divisions for your digital folders, and include a ReadMe file in each, indicating what kinds of elements are in that folder Save important production elements Be sure to indicate which is your final edit Make back-up copies on another device (and preferably in another location) Try to keep things at a low humidity and temperature Consider depositing copies in a cultural institution (at least when you win an award or become famous) and give that institution Rights that will allow them to continuously reformat to keep the work alive- Be concerned about For preservation a cultural institution may need to reformat, but with recent changes in copyright laws, they may not have the right to re-format Intellectual property rights are very difficult, particularly considering that most films and videos have extensive underlying rights that the cultural institution could never get prior permission for (stock footage, historical footage, music composition, music performance, ) [ Eyes on the Prize ] And even if the cultural institution has the right to reformat for preservation, they might not have the right to show what they have preserved Crea%ve Commons Guidance Crea%ve Commons lets you mix-and-match four different condi%ons: A=ribu%on: You let others copy, re-use and distribute your video, but they must credit you. Share-Alike: You let others copy, re-use and distribute your video, only if they do the same with the work they create. Non-Commercial: You let others copy, re-use and distribute your video for non-commercial purposes only. No Deriva%ve Works: You let others copy and distribute your video, but not to create new works using it. You can use these condi%ons in different combina%ons to share your work in a controlled way. Crea%ve Commons licenses are legal tools that depend on pre-exis%ng copyright laws. Having a Crea%ve Commons license on your work may give you legal recourse, but it may not actually prevent people from downloading and re-using your video illegally. Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 Marking Crea%ve Commons licenses There are a few ways to mark your video with a Crea%ve Commons license. One way is to include a Crea%ve Commons bumper or text card in your video. Crea%ve Commons has created some with graphics that you can download from their website. This method is useful if your video is going to be shared offline (e.g. on DVD, live screenings), as the license informa%on is a=ached to the video itself. Another way to mark your video with a Crea%ve Commons license is to publish your video on plarorms that are Crea%ve Commonsenabled, such as YouTube, Vimeo, or Internet Archive. These plarorms allow you to easily select a license during the upload process. This method is useful because the license is machinereadable. A search engine, for example, can detect the license. Will Your Production Last? Problems in Moving Image Preservation Howard Besser NYU Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program Besser-Film Production, 2/7/7 7