So Many Standards, So Little Time: An Analysis of theDevelopment and Adoption of Video Digitization Standards
Jimi Jones
25 October, 2018
No Time To Wait 32018
London, EnglandIntroduction• Analog video recordings are deteriorating rapidly - content
will be lost
• Many standards to choose from for digitizing video atpreservation quality• This thesis is a qualitative analysis of two examples ofstandards development and their implementation2

Industry-Influenced Standards• Developed with considerable input from cinema andbroadcast industries• ‘AS-07’ developed to support the digitization efforts at theLibrary, especially their AV facility in Culpeper, VA• MXF (Material Exchange Format) container and JPEG2000
lossless compression for picture essence3Open-Source Standards• Completely open specifications, not beholden to industry;developed with considerable input from the memory realm• CELLAR working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force(IETF)• Standardizing Matroska (MKV) multimedia container and FF
Video Codec 1 (FFV1) lossless video compression codec4

Theoretical Lenses
Social Construction Of Technology• Draws from the work of scholars like Trevor Pinch, Jonathan
Sterne and Steve Woolgar• Technologies as evolutionary - as a result of variation andselection and not as a smooth, orderly progression• It is not always the ‘best’ technologies that win out• Technologies themselves also have interpretive flexibility

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Theoretical Lenses
Political Economy• Draws heavily from the work of Vincent Mosco• Looks at market relationships beyond the traditional economic
binary of ‘producers’ and ‘consumers.’• Studies the power relations that define development,consumption and distribution of resources• Standards, like any product, can be influenced by power relations

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Research Questions1. How do power and influence dynamics affect two particular standards
development groups as they work to create high quality video
digitization standards and to define the concepts of quality andsustainability for the moving image preservation community?

1. What roles do open-source and industry-influenced moving image
digitization encodings and formats play in the moving image preservation
community’s efforts to solve problems related to their work?

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Methods
Interviews to learn about standards development• People who develop the standards– Kate Murray, LC– Dave Rice, CUNY, MKV/FFV1• People who use the standards and worked on their development– James Snyder, engineer, LC– Mike Casey, Indiana University

8Methods
Site visits for interviews and observation••••

National Audiovisual Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA
Indiana University, Bloomington
Vienna for No Time To Wait 2
Scene Savers in Cincinnati, OH

9Methods
Critical discourse analysis for studying standards documents andcommunications of standards groups•••••••

10Standards documents
Drafts of standards documents
Email list communications
Forum posts
Professional blogs
Conference presentations
Meeting minutes and other internal documents

Discussion• Shift in adoption of technology from industry hand-medowns to memory community influenced and/or opensource tools• Development of digitization tools is more participatory andless “wait and see”

11Discussion• Cost of standards documentation is often a hindrance toadoption of said standards• This cost makes open technologies like FFV1 and Matroska
more attractive

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Discussion• Early adopters like the Austrian Mediathek got a lot ofresistance to their avant-garde implementation of FFV1
• Synchronous and asynchronous communication tools make itmuch easier to collaborate and to disseminate information
about new technologies• Lowered cost and increased availability of user-friendly
digitization and editing software tools increases theattractiveness of technologies like FFV1 and MKV
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Discussion• Matroska and FFV1 is being adopted by some European
broadcasters• American broadcasters will, ultimately, need to deal withthese standards as well, even if they do not implement themfor preservation or broadcast

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Discussion• Conscious shift in alignment for some preservation
professionals.
• Mike Casey, Indiana University, 2017: “We also believe that
it is more fruitful, given our specific preservation
requirements, to align ourselves with the FFmpeg
community rather than with QuickTime developers andApple.”

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BUT!
• This paper does not take an open-source vs. industry
position.
• And it is not a story of adversaries. This is, among otherthings, the story of a growing shift in attitude in thepreservation realm re: open-source technologies.

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Closing• The clock is ticking for legacy magnetic video materials• Institutions are feeling the pressure to digitize video• My work can help illuminate how standards are developedand implemented for video digitization

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Thank you!

Jimi Jones
jjones7@illinois.edu
https://ischool.illinois.edu/people/jimi-jones

18Selected References
Casey, Mike. Encoding and Wrapper Decisions and Implementation for Video Preservation Master Files. Available at:https://mdpi.iu.edu/doc/MDPIwhitepaper.pdf. Accessed on October 1, 2018.
Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI). (2010). Audio-Visual Format Documentation Project: Background
Paper. Available at: http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/guidelines/FADGI-AV_AppSpecProj_Bkgd_101007.pdf. Accessed onOctober 1, 2018.
MediaConch. http://www.preforma-project.eu/mediaconch.html. Accessed on October 1, 2018.
Mosco, Vincent. (2009). The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
Pinch, Trevor J. and Wiebe E. Bijker. (1987). “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Scienceand the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other”. In The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press. 17-50.
Sterne, Jonathan. (2012). MP3: The Meaning of a Format. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

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