Greatbear have just produced our 2016 ‘infomercial’.
The 4-page document includes details of our work and all the formats we digitise.
We are in the process of sending printed copies to relevant organisations.
Please contact us to request a copy and we will pop one in the post for you.
Is this the end of tape as we know it? Maybe not quite yet, but October 1, 2014, will be a watershed moment in professional media production in the UK: it is the date that file format delivery will finally ‘go tape-less.’
Establishing end-to-end digital production will cut out what is now seen as the cumbersome use of video tape in file delivery. Using tape essentially adds a layer of media activity to a process that is predominantly file based anyway. As Mark Harrison, Chair of the Digital Production Partnership (DPP), reflects:
Example of a workflow for the DPP AS-11 standard
‘Producers are already shooting their programmes on tapeless cameras, and shaping them in tapeless post production environments. But then a strange thing happens. At the moment a programme is finished it is transferred from computer file to videotape for delivery to the broadcaster. When the broadcaster receives the tape they pass it to their playout provider, who transfers the tape back into a file for distribution to the audience.’
Founded in 2010, the DPP are a ‘not-for-profit partnership funded and led by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 with representation from Sky, Channel 5, S4/C, UKTV and BT Sport.’ The purpose of the coalition is to help ‘speed the transition to fully digital production and distribution in UK television’ by establishing technical and metadata standards across the industry.
The transition to a standardised, tape-less environment has further been rationalised as a way to minimise confusion among media producers and help economise costs for the industry. As reported on Avid Blogs production companies, who often have to respond to rapidly evolving technological environments, are frantically preparing for deadline day. ‘It’s the biggest challenge since the switch to HD’, said Andy Briers, from Crow TV. Moreover, this challenge is as much financial as it is technical: ‘leading post houses predict that the costs of implementing AS-11 delivery will probably be more than the cost of HDCAM SR tape, the current standard delivery format’, writes David Wood on televisual.com.
Audio post production should now be mixed to the EBU R128 loudness standard. As stated in the DPP’s producer’s guide, this new audio standard ‘attempts to model the way our brains perceive sound: our perception is influenced by frequency and duration of sound’ (9).
In addition, the following specifications must be observed to ensure the delivery format is ‘technically legal.’
The shift to file-based delivery will require new kinds of vigilance and attention to detail in order to manage the specific problems that will potentially arise. The DPP producer’s guide states: ‘unlike the tape world (where there may be only one copy of the tape) a file can be copied, resulting in more than one essence of that file residing on a number of servers within a playout facility, so it is even more crucial in file-based workflows that any redelivered file changes version or number’.
Another big development within the standard is the important role performed by metadata, both structural (inherent to the file) and descriptive (added during the course of making the programme) . While broadcasters may be used to manually writing metadata as descriptive information on tape-boxes, they must now be added to the digital file itself. Furthermore, ‘the descriptive and technical metadata will be wrapped with the video and audio into a new and final AS-11 DPP MXF file,’ and if ‘any changes to the file are [made it is] likely to invalidate the metadata and cause the file to be rejected. If any metadata needs to be altered this will involve re-wrapping the file.’
The sector-wide agreement and implementation of digital file-delivery standards are significant because they represent a commitment to manufacturing full interoperability, an inherent potential of digital technologies. As French philosopher of technology Bernard Stiegler explains:
‘The digital is above all a process of generalised formalisation. This process, which resides in the protocols that enable interoperability, makes a range of diverse and varied techniques. This is a process of unification through binary code of norms and procedures that today allow the formalisation of almost everything: traveling in my car with a GPS system, I am connected through a digitised triangulation process that formalises my relationship with the maps through which I navigate and that transform my relationship with territory. My relationships with space, mobility and my vehicle are totally transformed. My inter-individual, social, familial, scholarly, national, commercial and scientific relationships are all literally unsettled by the technologies of social engineering. It is at once money and many other things – in particular all scientific practices and the diverse forms of public life.’
This systemic homogenisation described by Stiegler is called into question if we consider whether the promise of interoperability – understood here as different technical systems operating efficiently together – has ever been fully realised by the current generation of digital technologies. If this was the case then initiatives like the DPP’s would never have to be pursued in the first place – all kinds of technical operations would run in a smooth, synchronous matter. Amid the generalised formalisation there are many micro-glitches and incompatibilities that slow operations down at best, and grind them to a halt at worst.
With this in mind we should note that standards established by the DPP are not fully interoperable internationally. While the DPP’s technical and metadata standards were developed in close alliance with the US-based Advanced Media Workflow Association’s (AMWA) recently released AS-11 specification, there are also key differences.
As reported in 2012 by Broadcast Now Kevin Burrows, DPP Technical Standards Lead, said: ‘[The DPP standards] have a shim that can constrain some parameters for different uses; we don’t support Dolby E in the UK, although the [AMWA] standard allows it. Another difference is the format – 720 is not something we’d want as we’re standardising on 1080i. US timecode is different, and audio tracks are referenced as an EBU standard.’ Like NTSC and PAL video/ DVD then, the technical standards in the UK differ from those used in the US. We arguably need, therefore, to think about the interoperability of particular technical localities rather than make claims about the generalised formalisation of all technical systems. Dis-synchrony and technical differences remain despite standardisation.
The AmberFin Academy blog have also explored what they describe as the ‘interoperability dilemma’. They suggest that the DPP’s careful planning mean their standards are likely to function in an efficient manner: ‘By tightly constraining the wrapper, video codecs, audio codecs and metadata schema, the DPP Technical Standards Group has created a format that has a much smaller test matrix and therefore a better chance of success. Everything in the DPP File Delivery Specification references a well defined, open standard and therefore, in theory, conformance to those standards and specification should equate to complete interoperability between vendors, systems and facilities.’ They do however offer these words of caution about user interpretation: ‘despite the best efforts of the people who actually write the standards and specifications, there are areas that are, and will always be, open to some interpretation by those implementing the standards, and it is unlikely that any two implementations will be exactly the same. This may lead to interoperability issues.’
It is clear that there is no one simple answer to the dilemma of interoperability and its implementation. Establishing a legal commitment, and a firm deadline date for the transition, is however a strong message that there is no turning back. Establishing the standard may also lead to a certain amount of technological stability, comparable to the development of the EIAJ video tape standards in 1969, the first standardised format for industrial/non-broadcast video tape recording. Amid these changes in professional broadcast standards, the increasingly loud call for standardisation among digital preservationists should also be acknowledged.
For analogue and digital tapes however, it may well signal the beginning of an accelerated end. The professional broadcast transition to ‘full-digital’ is a clear indication of tape’s obsolescence and vulnerability as an operable media format.
2014 will no doubt present a year of new challenges for those involved in digital preservation. A key issue remains the sustainability of digitisation practices within a world yet to establish firm standards and guidelines. Creating lasting procedures capable of working across varied and international institutions would bring some much needed stability to a profession often characterized by permanent change and innovation.
In 1969 The EIAJ-1 video tape was developed by the Electronic Industries Association of Japan. It was the first standardized format for industrial/non-broadcast video tape recording. Once implemented it enabled video tapes to be played on machines made by different manufacturers and it helped to make video use cheaper and more widespread, particularly within a domestic context.
The introduction of standards in the digitisation world would of course have very little impact on the widespread use of digital technologies which are, in the west, largely ubiquitous. It would however make the business of digital preservation economically more efficient, simply because organisations would not be constantly adapting to change. For example, think of the costs involved in keeping up with rapid waves of technological transformation: updating equipment, migrating data and ensuring file integrity and operability are maintained are a few costly and time consuming examples of what this would entail.
Although increasingly sophisticated digital forensic technology can help to manage some of these processes, highly trained (real life!) people will still be needed to oversee any large-scale preservation project. Within such a context resource allocation will always have to account for these processes of adaptation. It has to be asked then: could this money, time and energy be practically harnessed in other, more efficient ways? The costs of non-standardisation becomes ever more pressing when we consider the amount of the digital data preserved by large institutions such as the British Library, whose digital collection is estimated to amass up to 5 petabytes (5000 terabytes) by 2020. This is not a simple case of updating your iphone to the next model, but an extremely complex and risky venture where the stakes are high. Do we really want to jeopardise rich forms cultural heritage in the name of technological progress?
The US-based National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) National Agenda for Digital Stewardship 2014 echoes such a sentiment. They argue that ‘the need for integration, interoperability, portability, and related standards and protocols stands out as a theme across all of these areas of infrastructure development’ (3). The executive summary also stresses the negative impact rapid technological change can create, and the need to ‘coordinate to develop comprehensive coverage on critical standards bodies, and promote systematic community monitoring of technology changes relevant to digital preservation.’ (2)
One step on the way to more secure standards is the establishment of File Format Action Plans, a practice which is being increasingly recommended by US institutions. The idea behind developing a file format action plan is to create a directory of file types that are in regular use by people in their day to day lives and by institutions. Getting it all down on paper can help us track what may be described as the implicit user-standards of digital culture. This is the basic idea behind Parsimonious Preservation, discussed on the blog last year: that through observing trends in file use we may come to the conclusion that the best preservation policy is to leave data well alone since in practice files don’t seem to change that much, rather than risk the integrity of information via constant intervention.
As Lee Nilsson, who is currently working as a National Digital Stewardship Resident at the US Library of Congress writes, ‘specific file format action plans are not very common’, and when created are often subject to constant revision. Nevertheless he argues that devising action plans can ‘be more than just an “analysis of risk.” It could contain actionable information about software and formats which could be a major resource for the busy data manager.’
To take an example from our work at Great Bear: we often receive tapes from artists who have achieved little or no commercial success in their life times, but whose work is often of great quality and can tell us volumes about a particular community or musical style. How does such work stand up against commercially successful recordings? Which one is more valuable? The music that millions of people bought and enjoyed or the music that no one has ever heard?
Ultimately these questions will come to occupy a central concern for digital stewards of audio data, particularly with the explosion of born-digital music cultures which have enabled communities of informal and often non-commercial music makers to proliferate. How is it possible to know in advance what material will be valuable for people 20, 50 or 100 years from now? These are very difficult, if not impossible questions for large institutions to grapple with, and take responsibility for. Which is why, as members of a digital information management society, it is necessary to empower ourselves with relevant information so we can make considered decisions about our own personal archives.
A final point to stress is that among the ‘areas of concern’ for digital preservation cited by the NDSA, moving image and recorded sound figure highly, alongside other born-digital content such as electronic records, web and social media. Magnetic tape collections remain high risk and it is highly recommended that you migrate this content to a digital format as soon as possible. While digitisation certainly creates many problems as detailed above, magnetic tape is also threatened by physical deterioration and its own obsolescence challenges, in particular finding working machines to play back tape on. The simple truth is, if you want to access material in your tape collections it needs now to be stored in a resilient digital format. We can help, and offer other advice relating to digital information management, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.