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MXF+JPEG-2000+HDD = Future of Video Preservation?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the archivists-know-how-to-party dept.

Anonymous Archivist writes "Media Matters, a technical consultancy specializing in archival audio and video material, recently completed a Mellon Foundation funded Digital Video Reformatting Preservation Project for the Dance Heritage Coalition. They conclude that MXF is the recommended container format, JPEG-2000 is the recommended encoding format and HDD is the recommended storage media. It's a very valuable series of experiments and offers a strong indication of where the archival preservation of analogue video is heading."

9 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. JPEG-2000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why would they go with a compression format that doesn't do inter-frame compression?
    It might be nice for editing, but you could get more quality in the same space with something like h264, or even h263 if they have to do this right now (i.e. before h264 is quite ready for prime time).

  2. Why HDD? by Orinthe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The HDD recommendation doesn't seem to make much sense. The article talks about cost-per-gigabyte, but obviously it is much cheaper to use CDRs or DVDRs. This is video preservation, after all, not storing indefinitely for video /editing/, which would require a more malleable storage medium. And before someone points out that there are studies showing that the longevity of CDR/DVDR discs is questionable, surely proper storage of discs (and not buying the Best Buy free-after-rebate special) would be sufficient. HDD, after all, is susceptible to head crashes, and being a magnetic medium can be more easily overwritten.

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    1. Re:Why HDD? by FireBug · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I didn't read the article (or the rest of the /. comments), but hard drives make much more sense than any optical storage medium in certain cases.

      Media will always wear out, regardless of what type it is. When you have huge amounts of data to back up, it's much nicer to be able to copy it to the latest greatest storage medium quickly and efficiently. Thousands of CDs/DVDs even with an automated "disc changer" would take a hell of a lot longer to transfer than a bunch of servers with hard drives.

      With a hard drive solution, you can just build a new server with new drives and copy everything over from the old one as fast as the hard drives and network allow. Couple this with RAID and multiple servers in different physical locations and you have a pretty damned resilient data archive. ... and just for fun, here's an (old) example of people using hard drives for large scale backups.

      http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20030425/index .html

  3. JPEG 2000 for video? Huh? by Zarhan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Okay, so JPEG 2000 uses wavelets and is therefore quite advanced, but as I have understood, it's still geared for still images (ok, there is probably some form of motion jpeg 2000?).

    I would think that most optimal method would be to use something like DIRAC instead (or Ogg Theora). DIRAC uses wavelets and adaptive arithmetic coding, so it should be "on par" with JPEG 2000 - and should also be free of patent encumberance.

    JPEG 2000 has one feature that might make it better in "archival" purposes - there is a lossless mode which still achieves higher compression ratios than PNG.

  4. Turn it up! by belg4mit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ummm what about the sound?!

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  5. HDs by eno2001 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I could have told people this as they've replaced video tape, and audio tape for me for the past decade. I find them much more convenient, portable and cross platform. I have SCSI drives from 1994 that will still work in a PC (Linux or Windows) or Mac today. They are easy to backup to and restore from. The HD is about as close to perfection as you can get in a storage medium. At least until you get flash drives that can store 1 terabyte at minimum, and have an infinite number of writes. At least a 100 year lifespan.

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  6. Ars Technica... by EMIce · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...had a guide on capturing analog video, said to be the part of a 3 part series, going over each capturing, cleaning, and compressing. Only part I ever came out - Ars do you read slashdot? - I am waiting on the last guides for some advice on how to preserve these rotting home VHS tapes.

    Meanwhile, does anyone else have advice on capturing and cleaning video since we are already talking about compression? What settings are good for capturing and what sort of software exists to clean up VHS and give it the appearance of more clarity? I am using a WinTV card as Ars recommended it.

  7. Simplistic by fm6 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I suspect that your picture of the survivability of film stock is a little optimistic. But I'll leave that issue to somebody who actually knows the technology. What really bothers me about your argument is your focus on a single factor: keeping the data available as long as possible with an absolute minimum of maintenance. If that were the only consideration, then film is actually a bad choice. Many more archival techniques are obviously more survivable. You could, for example, etch the data on platinum plates.

    But survivability isn't the only consideration. Cost is always an issue. (So much for my platinum plates, though your approach isn't exactly cheap either.) You also want to be able to able to access the data in the short term. I worked my way through college operating film projectors. It's is not a convenient medium!

    One thing I'd like to know is why archival-quality optical discs weren't considered. (Presumably there's something in the document about this, but it's a poorly structured word file, and finding key facts is more work than I care to expend.) They cost 5 times as much as standard CD-Rs and recordable DVDs, but their manufacters claim the data is good for 300 years. Of course, you need some fairly complicated technology to play them back, but CD and DVD drives are pervasive consumer devices -- they should be around for a very long time.

  8. Intraframe vs. interframe by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For whatever reason (I'm not a video expert) many people prefer intraframe codecs for archival. As you probably guessed, Motion JPEG 2000 just treats each video frame as a still image and compresses it with JPEG 2000.

    Dirac will give much better compression that JPEG 2000, but it also introduces the possibility of interframe artifacts.