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

 Summary
• State of BBC Archives
• State of European Broadcast Archives
• PRESTO;
• New project: PRESTO-SPACE
Preservation Factory
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 20th C
– 5 million hours in 10 Broadcast archives
– 50 to 100 million hours of audiovisual material across
Europe
 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
 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%
 BBC TV Holdings: 1,500,000 items
representing 600,000 hours of content

Ektachrome Standard Film 30%

Reversal 12%
D3 16%
Digibeta
1%

2” Quad Betacam
1% 11%
1” C Format VHS
12% Umatic
14%
4.5%
 State of European Broadcast
Archives
• Results from PRESTO
 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
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
 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
 Obsolescence
• Videotape
– 2”; 1”; U-Matic: no playback equipment
• Film
– Disappearing in post production
• Audio formats
– Grams : no playback equipment
– ¼” ?
 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
 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
Conclusion: Preservation Factory
• Digitisation; mass storage; electronic
delivery
Certain key-link technology: film splicer
 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
 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 1st three years
• Approved spend of €22M over 2nd three years
• Key principle: Transfer to the most
economical and appropriate format
 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
 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: 100 – 500 € per
minute (or more)
– harder for both film and audio
• Heritage basis:
– again, no standard funding
 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.
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
GAME: save the BBC film Archive

Save the BBC film archive

 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
 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
 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
 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
 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
 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
 Four Work Areas

• Digitisation
Restoration
(… here)
Storage and
Archive
Management
(or here)
Metadata,
Access and
Delivery
 Thank you
Presto-Space contacts:
Daniel Teruggi
dteruggi@ina.fr
Richard Wright
richard.wright@bbc.co.uk