Whitepaper

Audiovisual Metadata Platform (AMP) Planning Project: Progress Report And Next Steps

20 March 2019

This report documents the outcomes of a workshop funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and hosted by Indiana University as part of a planning project for design and development of an audiovisual metadata platform (AMP). The platform will perform mass description of audiovisual content utilizing automated mechanisms linked together with human labor in a recursive and reflexive workflow to generate and manage metadata at scale for libraries and archives. The partners leading this planning project were the Indiana University (IU) Libraries, University of Texas at Austin (UT) School of Information, and AVP.

Authors: Dunn, Jon W.; Hardesty, Juliet L.; Clement, Tanya; Lacinak, Chris; Rudersdorf, Amy

Download the report (PDF)

Harvard Digital Preservation Format Assessments

12 October 2017

Harvard Library collections include:

  • a variety of computer media that will be imaged using forensic disk imaging techniques,
  • image sequences, a format used primarily in motion picture film scanning, and
  • video assets in a variety of formats.

These materials will be preserved in the Library’s preservation and access repository – the Digital Repository Service (DRS). As a first step towards providing support for this material in the DRS, the Library engaged AVPreserve in late 2015 to assist with the analysis. The goals of the analysis were:

  • Recommended formats to accept and prefer for the DRS
  • Recommended technical metadata schema(s) to use for these formats
  • DRS content models for these objects
  • Recommendations for enhancing Harvard Library’s FITS tool to better support these objects

The driving principles of this work were to:

  • Provide interoperability with the existing metadata schemas and workflows of the DRS
  • Provide sufficient metadata for long-term preservation of these objects
  • Adhere to existing standards where possible
  • Propose simpler models over more complex ones where possible

Specifically the analysis was conducted in three areas: formats, metadata and tools. See assessment results on the Harvard Wiki page:

A Study of Embedded Metadata Support in Audio Recording Software

1 October 2017

This report presents the findings of an ARSC Technical Committee study, coordinated and authored by AVPS, which evaluates support for embedded metadata within and across a variety of audio recording software applications. This work addresses two primary questions: (1) How well does embedded metadata persist, and is its integrity maintained, as it is handled by various applications, and (2) How well is embedded metadata handled during the process of creating a derivative? The report concludes that persistence and integrity issues are prevalent across the audio software applications studied. In addition to the report, test methods and reference files are provided for download, enabling the reader to perform metadata integrity testing.

Audiovisual Metadata Platform (AMP) Large-Scale Tool

5 May 2017

Indiana University, UT Austin, and AVP were awarded a Mellon planning grant in 2017 —called “Audiovisual Metadata Platform” (AMP)—to continue investigating large scale metadata generation of audiovisual materials. This presentation given at the Digital Library Federation conference in 2017 reports on the outcomes of an in-person meeting of archivists and technical experts who gathered as part of the grant for a three day workshop focused on AMP’s technical architecture and design.

AUDIOVISUAL METADATA PLATFORM (PDF)

ARSC Guide To Audio Preservation

19 June 2015

The ARSC Guide to Audio Preservation is a practical introduction to caring for and preserving audio collections. It is aimed at individuals and institutions that have recorded sound collections but lack the expertise in one or more areas to preserve them. Among the many expert authors of the Guide, AVP President Chris Lacinak contributed Chapter 7, “What to do after digitization”, and Senior Consultant Kara Van Malssen contributed Chapter 9, “Disaster prevention, preparedness, and response”.

The ARSC Guide to Audio Preservation was commissioned for and sponsored by the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress, and was co-published by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC), the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), and The Library of Congress. More information can be found on the CLIR website.

Open Reel Audio Duration Calculator

11 December 2014

A simple Excel spreadsheet that shows the total capacity for 1/4 inch open reel audio, using variable for Track Configuration, Sound Field Configuration, Tape Thickness, and Reel Size. Assumes full tape reels and full use of capacity. Look for an online app version coming soon.

What’s The Real Impact Of SHA-256?

5 August 2014

There are a variety of algorithms that can be used for generating checksums, with two in particular – MD5 and SHA-256 – being the most common. The comparative benefits and drawbacks of both are well-understood: while MD5 is weaker against random and deliberate collisions, it is faster to generate than SHA-256. However, there are no published empirical estimates for the difference in time-to-generate between MD5 and SHA-256 in archival and repository environments, leading to difficulty in making an informed decision as to which algorithm to implement for preservation monitoring.

This white paper documents a comparative checksum test of the same files under the same conditions, leading to some surprising findings about the actual processing speeds of the two algorithms.

Two Open-Source Tools For Digital Asset Metadata Management

2 June 2014

In today’s world of digital information, previously disparate archival practices are converging around the need to manage collections at the item level. Media collections require a curatorial approach that demand archivists know certain information about every single object in their care for purposes of provenance, quality control, and appraisal. This is a daunting task for archives, as it asks that they retool or redesign migration and accession workflows. It is exactly in gaps such as these that practical technologies become ever useful.

This article offers case studies regarding two freely-available, open-source digital asset metadata tools—BWF MetaEdit and MDQC. The case studies offer on-the-ground examples of how four institutions recognized a need for metadata creation and validation, and how they employed these new tools in their production and accessioning workflows. By Alex Duryee and Bertram Lyons. This article originally appeared in the Practical Technology for Archives Journal, Issue 2, June 2014.

New Paper on Embedded Metadata

9 April 2014

Newly available on our Papers and Presentations page is AVPreserve President Chris Lacinak‘s paper Embedded Metadata in WAVE Files: A Look Inside Issues and Tools. Embedded metadata is crucial to managing digital assets, supporting activities as varied as making it easy to find and listen to music in iTunes, authenticating the source and content of a photograph, and performing quality control on content that has been digitized from analog sources. The key duties of an archive — promoting findability, usability, and persistence of collections — would be nearly impossible without embedded metadata.

[Read more]

Catalyst Case Study #1 – Sudden Loss Of Institutional Knowledge

20 March 2014

What happens to a collection when its sole caretaker suddenly goes away? This case study examines such a situation and how the use of AVP’s Catalyst inventory solution was used to document an audio collection in support of preservation planning. Download the first in a series of case studies about practical, outcomes based approaches to audiovisual collection appraisal and processing.

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