Audiovisual Mega-Preservation Status and Prospects of BBC Archive Preservation and European Broadcast Archives and European Audiovisual/Film Archives

Transcription

1 Audiovisual Mega-Preservation Status and Prospects of BBC Archive Preservation and European Broadcast Archives and European Audiovisual/Film Archives Richard Wright, Technology Manager, BBC Information & Archives MUSICNETWORK Leeds 18 September 2003

2 Summary State of BBC Archives State of European Broadcast Archives PRESTO; New project: PRESTO-SPACE Preservation Factory

3 What are Broadcast Archives? Purpose Research material and footage for making NEW radio and television And internet and new media Content Audiovisual record of the 20 th C 5 million hours in 10 Broadcast archives 50 to 100 million hours of audiovisual material across Europe

4 What s in the BBC Archives? 1.5 million items of film and videotape 750,000 radio recordings 3 million photographs 1.2 million commercial recordings 4 million items of sheet music 22 million newspaper cuttings 550,000 document files 20,000 rolls of microfilm 500,000 phonetic pronunciations

5 Use of the Archive The BBC Archive is a key resource for public service and commercial exploitation 1 million issues per annum 600,000 enquiries per annum The Customers are mostly internal to the BBC Programme makers 70% News 20% Commercial Arm 6% Others 4%

6 BBC TV Holdings: 1,500,000 items representing 600,000 hours of content Ektachrome Reversal 12% Standard Film 30% D3 16% Digibeta 1% 2 Quad 1% 1 C Format 12% Umatic 4.5% VHS 14% Betacam 11%

7 State of European Broadcast Archives Results from PRESTO

8 EC Project PRESTO GOAL: reduce preservation cost 30% 24 months, 10 partners, 4.8 M BBC, INA, RAI 7 technology partners Audio: ACS Video: EVOD, S&W, Vectracom Film: NTEC (also ITK) General: Joanneum, ITC/IRST and SVT, ORF, SWR, NRK, YLE, NAA, TTR Vectracom

9 Holdings: The survey of ten major archives found about 1 million hours of film 1.6 million hours of video recordings 2 million hours of audio recordings Total European holdings of broadcast material are AT LEAST ten times larger: 10 million hours of film 20 million hours of video 20 million hours of audio

10 Preservation Status: Obsolescence: At least 2/3 of the material in archives cannot easily be used in its existing form Deterioration: Approximately 1/3 of the material has one form or another of deterioration Fragile media: Roughly ¼ of the material cannot be released for access because the media are too easily damaged

11 Obsolescence Videotape 2 ; 1 ; U-Matic: no playback equipment Film Disappearing in post production Audio formats Grams : no playback equipment ¼?

12 Deterioration Videotape decay of adhesive 2 ; 1 ; U-Matic (30% read failures at BBC) Audio decay of adhesive ¼ tape (depends upon brand) Magnetic sound tracks Vinegar syndrome Other Acetate other sources of acetic acid Decay of film splices General decay of polymer materials

13 Fragile Media Vinyl and shellac Film 10 plays per print (videotape: 50) Video or audiotape can easily be physically damaged or affected be magnetic fields

14 Conclusion: Preservation Factory Digitisation; mass storage; electronic delivery Certain key-link technology: film splicer

15 Cost / Effective Preservation Main issue the overall process Mass transfer assembly line Model: RAI radio: 200k hours in 2.5 yrs on-demand preservation can seem free, but true cost is approx 3x GREATER than cost using an efficient mass transfer process Key factors: quality, metadata

16 What s the BBC doing with its preservation factory? The BBC has made provision for a ten year preservation programme Budget provision of 90M - 100m Approved spend of 30M over 1 st three years Approved spend of 22M over 2 nd three years Key principle: Transfer to the most economical and appropriate format

17 Making the Savings Purpose-built preservation areas to optimise equipment and streamline movement of material Dedicated preservation facilities In-house or commercial Links to the wider business process programme documentation subtitle information rights clearance creation of new metadata to improve catalogue extraction of key frames automatic speech recognition

18 Preservation Funding In General - Broadcast Archives have NO standard funding for preservation Commercial basis (business case): solid for most broadcast archive material Commercial value of TV footage: per minute (or more) harder for both film and audio Heritage basis: again, no standard funding

19 Cost per use: total lifecycle cost True cost of an asset is total lifecycle cost. True benefit is related to the number of times that asset is used over the lifecycle. Archive preservation strategy: lowest cost per use over the life cycle of the new media, NOT the lowest transfer cost.

20 Future of film in the BBC Archive Amount of film: 60k hours Ektachrome reversal News and current affairs; copied to Digibeta ACCESS project, not preservation 180k hours everything else Usage: under 5% access per year; falling! comparison with video: above 20% and increasing

21 GAME: save the BBC film Archive Save the BBC film archive

22 Future of film in general Consider: the direction of technology Digital Cinema Software restoration tools Broadband public access Networked mass storage High Definition telecine Advances in DVD technology Add: the importance of access Conclusion: the future of film is: digitisation ; mass storage; electronic delivery

23 Role of Restoration: In audio, detecting and logging defects during digitisation is standard practice Quality control Information needed for re-use Reduces cost/time of on-demand restoration So, effective film digitisation requires at least the basic detection of defects Coded as decisions (in x,y,t space); In MPEG-7 PLUS- any restoration that is both necessary to broadcast use, and can be totally automated

24 GAME: Save the Cultural Heritage Film Archive An exercise for the student It s not a game! Broadcasters and film specialists propose Presto-Space: to make factory preservation available to all archives

25 The Proposal: Presto-Space Preservation Factories on a pay-as-you-use basis Small and medium collections can migrate at lowest cost at archive quality With new methods of access as the way to obtain funding for the whole process

26 What it will deliver A full solution: old material comes in, website and catalogue and new access technology come out A digital solution for film, beginning with 16mm black & white A pay-as-you-use service at factory prices Based on working with professional media services in your local area

27 Who is Presto-Space? INA, BBC, RAI, ORF, B&G Joanneum Research and Sheffield University And about 30 more, mainly SMEs WHY US? There is a problem with all audiovisual media Broadcasters have demonstrated that we have a solution: the preservation factory Presto-Space brings that solution to collections of all sizes

28 Four Work Areas Restoration ( here) (or here) Digitisation Storage and Archive Management Metadata, Access and Delivery

29 Thank you Richard Wright Presto-Space contacts: Daniel Teruggi