Getting to Disk-based Lossless Digital Video Preservation

1
Getting to Disk-based Lossless Digital Video
Preservation An Introduction

• Paul Theerman, Walter Cybulski, Glenn Pearson
• National Library of Medicine
• NIH/HHS

2
Historical Audiovisuals at the National Library
of Medicine

• Paul Theerman, Ph.D.
• Head, Images and Archives
• History of Medicine Division, NLM

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• Origins as the National Medical Audiovisual
  Collection
• A clearinghouse for these materials
• Variously held here and at CDC, Atlanta
• Only relatively recently transferred to the
  History of Medicine Division

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• Current definition of the collection
• All audiovisuals before 1970
• Films and videos of historical interest dating
  after 1970that is, of interest for historical
  value, not informational value

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• The collection ranges from the first decade of
  the 20th century through the 1990s
• Content
• Early films on how to go to the doctorand other
  public service and public information films
• Films on the U.S. Public Health Service

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• Content
• Dental films due to an ADA donation
• Training films for surgical procedures
• Military battlefield surgical films
• Large recent donations from NIMH and FDA
• home movies
• Research footage
• Films promoting usage of films in medicine

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• Size the largest such collection in the U.S.
• Total number of titles 9650
• Number cataloged 4300
• Number inventoried 3550
• Number to be inventoried 1800
• Number preserved 2250

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• The ability to collect is dependent on the
  ability to preserve and to catalog, and, in the
  short run, to stabilize in order to preserve and
  to catalog in the future
• Controlled environments
• On-site cool vault for new accessions, masters
• Off-site cool and cold vaults for new accessions,
  originals

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• The decision to preserve and to catalog is not
  made lightly, because of the investment of
  resources
• Based on condition and content assessments

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• Condition assessment
• Age of medium
• Obsolescence of format
• Possible or actual deterioration of medium
• Nitrate
• Acetate
• Generation

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• Content assessment
• Ownership and restrictions
• Uniqueness
• Age, especially pre-1950
• Then a sliding scale, based on collection
  development guidelines

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• When both condition and content indicate, then
• Preservation copying, to three copies (in some
  cases two)
• Cataloging, either to full or core records

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• Currently we are on the cusp of moving to digital
  formats, but our originals are chiefly analog,
  and our duplication and viewing copies are as
  well
• Betacam SP for duplication copies
• VHS for use copies
• This also matches patron needs for Interlibrary
  Loan and production

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• The Preservation and Collection Management
  Section enters the picture
• Determining formats
• Technical specifications
• Managing vendor copying
• Managing on-site and off-site cool and cold
  vaults
• Managing shelving for use copies

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• New Ventures with Center for Information
  Technology (CIT) at NIH
• Videocasting service of history in the making
• Possible collaboration with NLM
• Interlocking systems for preservation and
  cataloging
• New venture for NLM in a large cache of digital
  materials

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Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

• New Library Research at NLM
• NLMs Lister Hill Center is looking at means of
  digital preservation
• The origin of this conferenceexcited what it
  will bring

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Analog Motion Picture and Tape Preservation at
NLM Duplication Offsite Storage

• Walter Cybulski, Preservation Librarian
• Preservation Collection Management Section,
• Public Services Division, NLM

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Examples of Film and Tape Media in the NLM
Collections
8mm 16mm 35mm
2 Quadruplex 1 Type C ¾ U-Matic ½ Beta
19
Deterioration
20
Nitrate added spice to the idea of deterioration
unfortunately, nothing but hot pepper
(There are no nitrate film materials at NLM)
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250 TEASPOONFULS OF VINEGAR FOR A 1,000 FOOT CAN
OF 35mm FILM
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(No Transcript)
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Main Objectives of Preservation

• Identify content that merits preserving
• Mitigate against known risks
• Extend useful life of content

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Mitigate against risk.
Temperature (F) Relative Humidity Years for Acidity to Double
Room Temperature 70º F 50 RH 5
NLM Cool Vault 55º F Magnetic Tape 30 RH 50
NLM Cold Vault 35º F Acetate Movie Film 25 RH 200
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SECURE, CLIMATE-CONTROLLED STORAGE AT IRON
MOUNTAIN
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Extend useful life copy onto new media



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For libraries and archives, obtaining new copies
may not be possible, and copying content on
deteriorated media to the same media (e.g. 35mm
to 35mm film transfer) can be prohibitively
expensive
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At this point, the most widely used AV
preservation media are BetacamSP and Digital
Betacam
But the clock is ticking even as we copy content
onto these formats
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Rapidly changing technology takes its toll
30
with each technological advance, the storage
picture changes
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WE ARE TRANSITIONING FROM FILMS AND TAPES TO
DATA, BUT THE QUESTION REMAINSHOW TO EXTEND THE
USEFUL LIFE OF THE CONTENT
10101010011000010101010101010101101010101010101010
1001101010110
10101010101010101010100101010100010010101010010110
10010001010101010101010101010101010101010101010101
11101001110101011010101010101010100
10101010101010101000101010101000010100101011100101
10101101010101010110101010101010101010101010101010
10100101010101010101001010100110010
10101010101010101011001101111101010111010101000000
1011010101110
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Getting to Disk-based Lossless Digital Video
Preservation Which Way Forward?
Glenn Pearson, Ph.D. Senior Software Developer

• Communications Engineering Branch,
• Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical
  Communications
• NLM

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Generational Loss Once Digital

• Migration as preservation strategy
• To cope with obsolescence of digital formats,
  gear
• If using lossy image compression algorithms
• No degradation when making exact copy
• Master ? Master
• Degradation when migrating (or editing)
• Master ? uncompress ? recompress ? Master
• Examples M-JPEGs, DVs, MPEG-1, -2, most -4
• Mathematically-lossless algorithms
• Avoid this problem
• Dont compress as well (2x 4x) as virtually
  lossless (5x 9x) or obviously lossy (web
  streaming)

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Lossless Video Storage

• Uncompressed video
• Can be stored with general binary file
  compressors (RLL, LZW zip ), typically 1.61 -
  21 compression
• Lossless video codecs
• Standardized, open (but may be patents)
• HuffYUV original, uses Huffman entropy
  encoding
• Apple Quicktime None codec documented, not
  standard
• JPEG 2000 Lossless (within, say, Motion JPEG
  2000)
• MPEG4/AVC Lossless
• Proprietary
• Matrox DigiSuite Lossless entropy-only portion
  of M-JPEG
• New - MatrixViews Adaptive Binary
  Optimization, from patented Repetition Coded
  Compression (boolean grids Huffman)

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Economics of Digital Storage
per GigaByte
Data is for computer tape, but digital video tape
uses the same technology, which drives media price
Sources E. Grochowski R. Halem, IBM Sys J,
42(2), 2003 (Disk, Flash) R. Harada, Comp Tech
Rev, June 2004 (Tape)
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The Twilight of Tape
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Economics of Subsampling and Lossless Compression

• Gold Standard for digital video 444
  uncompressed
• Not so affordable today for archives

In YUV colorspace Y is luma (BW intensity)
U, V are red, blue color differences .
respectively 444 full sample/pixel 422
sample for Y at full pixel resolution, for U, V
at half resolution
Chroma Luma 444 422
Uncompressed 1 2/3
Lossless 1/3 1/4

• 422 lossless
• will be affordable 2 years before 444
  uncompressed
• stay ¼ the cost
• When is 422 good enough for preservation?

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Film Master ? Digital Master

• Traditional good advice Film ? Film
• Can Film ? Digital be
• as good as/better than Film ? Film
• as affordable?
• Quality of source
• 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, 65/70m
• B/W vs color
• camera original, intermediate print, distribution
  print
• Versus quality of target
• HD video has1920x1080 (e-Cinema)
• Variety matching film best progressive-scan 24
  fps (1080p24)
• But video has but 8-10 bits linear/component
  less than films range
• Good enough for archiving some 16mm BW
  distribution prints?
• HD 169 aspect matches some sources, not others

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Film Master ? Digital Master- Hollywood Style

• Better than HD but
• 12 bit linear/component (36 bits/pixel)
• Or 10-bit log/component
• No subsampling
• 2K _at_ 24 fps most practical res. rate
• 2K 2048 x 1080
• Thats outer bounds for various aspect ratios

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3 Steps, 3 Types of File Formats

• Sources (Production)
• Digital Intermediate
• Package for Theatrical Release

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Sources

• Computer Graphics
• New cinema digital cameras
• Viper, Dalsa Origin 4K, Arri D-20, Kinetta
• Film Scanners
• Kodak Genesis, Northlight, Arriscan, Imagina
• Datacines (data telecines)
• Thomson Spirit, Cintel DSX, Millennium
• Raw, Unwrapped Frame-per-file Formats
• Flexible resolution, aspect ratio
• But sound, most metadata in separate files
• Awkward per-shot info
• Examples
• Kodak Cineon scanner .CIN (10-bit log rgb)
• SMPTE std DPX (derived from Cineon)
• Others TIFF, SGI, EXR, JP2
• Digital Negative from 1-CCD camera
• with Bayer-pattern color filters atop pixels

Magazine has 12 40 GB iPod Drives
42
Digital Intermediate Process

• Creates Digital Masters
• May include Digital Source Master from which
  multiple masters come DVD master, TV master,
  DCDM
• Typical Steps
• Color grading, compositing, editing, finishing
• Projects moved along in vendor formats or AAF
• End products archived in vendor formats or MXF
• Such unencrypted masters closely held by studios,
  but archivists could make their own

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Theatrical Distribution

• DCI Distribution Master (DCDM)
• MXF wrapper JPEG2000 frames
• But lossy due to real-time bandwidth constraints
  (250 Mb/s peak)
• Something Similar for Archivists?
• a lossless variety of this
• or MJ2 instead of MXF

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Roadblocks in Getting to a Disk-Based Lossless
Archive Master

• Rapid digital-technology change
• High current costs
• Top quality needs massive storage, high-speed
  pipelines
• An uncompressed color movie (2K _at_ 24 fps, 12-bit)
• Would consume 2 Gigabits per second bandwidth if
  realtime
• Needs 0.8 TB storage per hour of length
• Plus for color grading/restoration services
  software
• Analog tape ? SD digital is more affordable now
• A proliferation of standards
• File Formats
• Essence representation/codecs/color spaces
• Wrappers
• Metadata Rights Management
• Can we help find a way forward?