The EDCINE Project for Archives:
A System for Conservation and Access
Based on MXF and JPEG 2000

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

Arne Nowak
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, Germany

Luís Nunes
MOG Solutions, Portugal

Ernesto Santos
MOG Solutions, Portugal

Digital technologies can be used to ease and facilitate access to archived material. Digitally stored images and sound can be used to distribute films in a wide variety of different formats for different needs. Access copies for individual viewings, internet streaming, HDTV and even digital cinema presentation can be produced automatically and delivered without the costly movement of precious physical items.

Besides the problems of how to store such large amounts of data securely and how to ensure accessibility over a very long time, a key challenge for long term preservation is the definition of digital data formats suitable to this aim. In the course of the European EDCine project a system for conservation and access for digital film archives is developed, which is based on the open standards MXF and JPEG 2000. In this presentation we describe how film archives can take advantage of digital technologies without dependencies on proprietary software and file formats.

For the encoding of the image data JPEG 2000 provides a good foundation for several reasons. The most important: it is an open standard that is well documented and no patent or other claims restrict development of appropriate systems, at least concerning the basic functionalities required in this context. Besides, one of its most important features is a built-in scalability. This makes it possible to store a very high quality high resolution version which is only slightly or mathematically lossless compressed and create lower resolution / lower quality access copies without the need to perform computationally demanding conversions. The presented digital film archive system makes use of this feature to automatically produce access and dissemination versions of stored films. Finally, the fact that JPEG 2000 will be chosen by SMPTE for the standards for digital cinema distribution means that its use and know-how will become widely spread in the industry.

MXF is – just like JPEG 2000 – a well documented open standard to wrap media files and to store them together with the associated metadata in one or more files. In our concept MXF is used to give the individual compressed image files a higher meaning by bundling them in the right order together with sound, technical and descriptive metadata. Technical metadata comprise information needed for playback like frame rate, aspect ratio, anamorphism as well as historical metadata. The latter contains information about the origin of the digital objects, e.g. from which film element a certain image was scanned, how it was originally produced, what processing it underwent after scanning, etc. Descriptive metadata contains information about the contents of the movie etc. Unique identifiers are used to provide links between MXF files and to external databases. They can even point to film materials residing on a shelf in the archive.

The presentation describes a flexible system that makes use mainly of these two open standards and provides a scalable architecture that allows film archives to find a smooth transition into the digital film era and to exploit the benefits of digital technologies even for their existing access copy by making them available on- and off-line easily.

 

Arne Nowak
Arne Nowak graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany, in 2002. Subsequently, he worked as a research assistant at TU Ilmenau in the field of television studio technologies and virtual TV studios. In 2006 he joined Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS to work in the European EDCine project on the development of a digital film archive system.

Luís Nunes
Luis Nunes was born in Portugal in 1979. He graduated from Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon, Portugal) with a specialization in Computer Vision. He is an experienced Workflow Analyst, and he is currently with the Engineering Operations department at MOG Solutions, where he is deeply involved in customer's interfacing for requirements gathering and specification. In addition, he also has specific training in international R&D project management. Currently, he is the operational manager of MOG Solutions contributions to European Union R&D projects, such as WorldScreen (www.worldscreen.org) and EDCine (www.edcine.org).

Ernesto Santos
Ernesto was born in Portugal in 1976. He is co-founder and Head of Engineering Operations of MOG Solutions, a leading provider of MXF based solutions. He is an experienced contributor to standardization. He was active in MPEG in the development of MPEG-21, as a co-editor of Part 2 of the standard, Digital Item Declaration. Currently he is a member of SMPTE and the Chairman of SMPTE W25.10, the MXF Working Group. He also has extensive experience in contributing to European Union R&D projects over the years, such as Worldscreen, EDCine, CONTESSA, G-FORS, ASSET and NUGGETS, among others.