Preserving Digital Public Television
Part One

Download Presentation (ppt).................... . Speaker Bios

Dave MacCarn
WGBH-TV

Thomas Edwards
PBS

Carl Fleischhauer
Library of Congress

As part of the National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP), NYU, WNET, WGBH, and PBS have spent the past few years collaborating to preserve digital public television content. The two panels will discuss the development of the work and the project’s progress to date.
Coordinated by Nan Rubin, Project Director, Preserving Digital Public Television.

Part One
An Overview of MXF and the Search for the Video File Wrapper

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) has released the Material Exchange Format (MXF) format for the inter- change of audio-visual material. Many open source projects for video codecs have appeared. Has the technology caught up with the proposal for a "Universal Preservation Format (UPF)?" This presentation will evaluate if the union of these "standards" can lead us to a digital moving image preservation format. It will detail the creation of MXF AS/PBS for video distribution and the extension of MXF for use in video archiving, including new collaboration between U.S. public television and Turner Broadcasting to create an MXF wrapper for video production. It will also include a look at the availability of open source codecs and look at an example of storing digital moving image material with the application of these available technologies.

Part Two

Carl Fleischhauer
Carl Fleischhauer's work experience includes film and video production, including a six-year stint at public television station WWVU-TV in West Virginia. At the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, he carried out field research and developed publications and exhibitions. Fleischhauer was a coordinator of the Library's American Memory pilot program from 1990-1998, and now works in the Library's National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) program, concerned with the preservation of content in digital form. Publications include record albums and CDs, a laser videodisc, and various books and articles, the most recent being the photographic book Bluegrass Odyssey, 1966-1986 (University of Illinois Press, 2001).

Thomas Edwards
Thomas Edwards is the Senior Manager, Interconnection Engineering for the PBS Interconnection Replacement Office. He is currently responsible for the engineering management of the PBS Next Generation Interconnection System (NGIS). Before joining PBS in 2002, he was the streaming media product manager at Cidera, where he developed a broadband desktop video channel for technical employees delivered using IP-over-satellite. He has had significant experience with streaming media production and delivery at the Internet service provider DIGEX as well as his own streaming media company, The Sync. Edwards holds a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, and is a member of IEEE and SMPTE.

David MacCarn
David MacCarn is Chief Technologist for the WGBH Educational Foundation. He is currently responsible for long-term planning, investment and adoption of new technologies. His career with WGBH began in 1985 as director of engineering. Mr. MacCarn co-authored "Universal Preservation Format," a recommended practice for archiving media and electronic records for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives. He is also co-author of an article entitled "Understanding the Preservation Challenge of Digital Television" for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program of the Library of Congress. Mr. MacCarn has a patent pending for a "Universal Digital Data Preservation System." He received a BS degree in Computer Science from the University of Missouri, St. Louis where he held the honor of University Scholar, and did graduate work in Computer Architecture at the University of New York at Stony Brook. He is a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery.