# Presentation: 467449

## Getting to Disk-based Lossless Digital Video Preservation –An Introduction

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

## Historical Audiovisuals at the National Library of Medicine

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

## 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

## Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

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

## 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 doctor”and other public service and public information films
- Films on the U.S. Public Health Service

## 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

## 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+

## 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

## 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

## Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

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

## Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

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

## 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

## 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

## 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

## 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

## Historical Audiovisuals at NLM

- New Library Research at NLM
- NLM’s Lister Hill Center is looking at means of digital preservation
- The origin of this conference—excited what it will bring

## Analog Motion Picture and Tape Preservation at NLM – Duplication & Offsite Storage

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

## Examples of Film and Tape Media in the NLM Collections 

- 8mm
- 16mm
- 35mm

- 2” Quadruplex
- 1” Type C
- 3⁄4” U-Matic
- 1⁄2” Beta

## Deterioration

## Nitrate added spice to the idea of deterioration – unfortunately, nothing but hot pepper

- (There are no nitrate film materials at NLM)

## “250 TEASPOONFULS OF VINEGAR FOR A 1,000 FOOT CAN OF 35mm FILM”

**“****250 TEASPOONFULS OF VINEGAR FOR A 1,000 FOOT CAN OF 35mm FILM”**

## Slide 22

## Main Objectives of Preservation

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

## 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 |

## SECURE, CLIMATE-CONTROLLED STORAGE AT IRON MOUNTAIN

**SECURE, CLIMATE-CONTROLLED STORAGE AT IRON MOUNTAIN**

## +

**Extend useful life :**
**copy onto new media**

- =

- =

## 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

**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**

## 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...**

## Rapidly changing technology takes its toll

**Rapidly changing technology takes its toll**

## with each technological advance, the storage picture changes ...

## WE ARE TRANSITIONING FROM FILMS AND TAPES TO DATA, BUT THE QUESTION REMAINS:HOW TO EXTEND THE USEFUL LIFE OF THE CONTENT

**101010101010101010101001010101000100101010100101101001000101010101010101010101010101010101010101010111101001110101011010101010101010100**

**101010101010101010001010101010000101001010111001011010110101010101011010101010101010101010101010101010100101010101010101001010100110010**

**101010100110000101010101010101011010101010101010101001101010110**

**101010101010101010110011011111010101110101010000001011010101110**

## Getting to Disk-based Lossless Digital Video Preservation –Which Way Forward?

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

- Glenn Pearson, Ph.D.
- Senior Software Developer

## 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
- Don’t compress as well (2x – 4x) as “virtually lossless” (5x – 9x) or obviously lossy (web streaming)

## Lossless Video Storage

- Uncompressed video
- Can be stored with general binary file compressors (RLL, LZW [zip] ), typically 1.6:1 - 2:1 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 - MatrixView’s “Adaptive Binary Optimization”, from patented “Repetition Coded Compression” (boolean grids + Huffman)

**Notes:**
MatrixView’s Adaptive Binary Optimization, Repetition Coded Compression

## Economics of Digital Storage

- Sources:	 E. Grochowski & R. Halem, IBM Sys J, 42(2), 2003 (Disk, Flash)
- 	 R. Harada, Comp Tech Rev, June 2004 (Tape)

- $ per GigaByte

- Data is for computer tape, but digital video tape uses the same technology, which drives media price

**Notes:**
The figure shows recent trends in costs, based on data from 1998 to 2002 or 2003.  Straight lines mean a fixed rate of halfing, which for the disk drives is annually.  Improvements to the price of hard disk drives and tape media are largely due to improvements in bit density.  These improvements are happening faster for disk drives than for tape.  The 2.5 inch drives are higher performance and found in servers.  The total cost of a storage system is more than just the disk drive, but also has DRAM caches & buffers, CPUs, RAID controllers, power supplies, cooling systems, frames, cases, racks, and system software.

## The Twilight of Tape

**Notes:**
Extrapolating these trends, a bit on a disk is now as cheap as a bit on a tape, and getting cheaper.

]Click] Eventually, the traditional hierarchical file storage system will migrate from one based on disk and tape to one based on solid state disk and hard disks.  The hard disks, like those in laptops today, will go to sleep to say power when not in use.

When will this occur?  a dozen years from now on the basis shown here (or much less considering tape-equipment costs, and the faster performance and convenience of the new configuration.

## Economics of Subsampling and Lossless Compression

- Gold Standard for digital video: 4:4:4 uncompressed
- Not so affordable today for archives

|            Chroma
Luma | 4:4:4 | 4:2:2 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Uncompressed | 1 | 2/3 |
| Lossless | ~1/3 | ~1/4 |

- 4:2:2 lossless
- will be affordable 2 years before 4:4:4 uncompressed
- stay 1⁄4 the cost
- When is 4:2:2 good enough for preservation?

**In YUV colorspace:**
**  ****Y is luma (B&W intensity)**
**  ****U, V are red, blue color differences ****.**** respectively**
**4:4:4 = full sample/pixel**
**4:2:2 = sample for Y at full pixel resolution, for U, V at half resolution**

## 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 film’s range
- Good enough for archiving some 16mm B&W distribution prints?
- HD 16:9 aspect matches some sources, not others

## 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 @ 24 fps = most practical res. & rate
- 2K = 2048 x 1080
- That’s outer bounds for various aspect ratios

## 3 Steps, 3 Types of File Formats

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

## 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

## 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

## 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

## 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 @ 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?