Audiovisual Mega-PreservationStatus and Prospects of the Audiovisual

Heritage

Richard Wright, Technology Manager, BBC Information & Archives, London… and JISC/NSF Spoken Word … and JISC audiovisual digitisation initiatives

JISC CNI Fifth International Conference Brighton 8-9 July 2004

Summary

• Status of BBC Archives… and European Broadcast Archives

… and even North American audio

• Saving audio and video: the case for a Preservation Factory

• Film: the only medium that will last… but not in television

• Preservation and Access… and Creative Commons and Creative Archive

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%

Preservation of the BBC Archive

• The BBC has made provision for a ten year preservation programme 2000-2010

• Budget provision of €90M - €100m

• Approved spend of €30M over 1st three years

• Approved spend of €22M over 2nd three years

• Method: Transfer to the most economical and appropriate format

BBC TV Holdings: 1,500,000 items representing 600,000 hours of content

Standard Film 30%

D3 16%Digibeta 1%

Betacam 11%

VHS 14%

Umatic 4.5%

1” C Format 12%

2” Quad 1%

Ektachrome Reversal 12%

TV Archive: Work Completed• 2” transfers completed November 1999• 46,000 videotapes have been transferred to D3 and

Digibeta (BBC digital formats) -- and VHS• Project began in 1994• Overall cost was £6.7 million• 2” was 1st videotape fomat used by the BBC --

from early 1960’s to c.1980• Programmes include Dr Who, Dad’s Army,

Steptoe & Son, Forsythe Saga, Fawlty Towers, Secret Army

TV Archive: Work in Progress (1)

• 1” transfers begun in 1999• Over 80,000 videotapes identified for transfer• Cost over the three years: £6 million to transfer 35,000

videotapes• Transferred to D3, Digibeta, VHS and a digitised

compressed browse version on CD Rom (MPEG-1)• C Format used from late 1970’s to early 1990’s• Programmes include: Yes Minister, Eastenders,

Angels, Wogan, All Our Working Lives

TV Archive: Work Completed

• The film soundtrack transfer began in 1998• 88,000 soundtracks on acetate vulnerable to

vinegar syndrome• Estimated spend over three years: £5.8 million to

preserve 63,000 items• Transferred to polyester-based stock and CD• Acetate stock in use from the 1940’s to the early

1970’s• Programmes on this format include Man Alive,

1984, Ascent of Man, British Empire, Omnibus

TV Archive: Work in Progress (2)

• Umatic (¾ inch cassette) transfer began 1999

• Over 60,000 Umatic cassettes identified for transfer

• Cost to preserve 30,000 cassettes over three years is £1.6 million

• The Umatics are transferred to DVCPRO (Digital videotape) and DVD-Rom (MPEG II, 20 MHz)

• Umatic used by BBC News between 1982 and the early 1990’s

• News stories include Lockerbie, General Elections in 1983 & 1987, the Gulf War

TV Archive : Work in Progress (3)• News colour film (Ektachrome reversal) – 2001 • 72,000 items selected for preservation• 43,000 transferred over 3 years: cost of £1.8M• Masters are cleaned, compiled into day reels and

transferred to Digibeta, VHS and MPEG-1• Used by BBC for News from 1967-1982.• Stories include the Vietnam War, Yom Kippur

war, all major domestic stories• Also used for many current affairs programmes

Radio Archive• Radio holdings: 750,000 recordings; 300,000 hours

• Fewer technical problems with Radio; more obsolescence

CD Sound effects

LP Sound effects

DAT1/4” News

CassetteCD compilation

1/4” complete programmes

1/4” film unit tapes

DAT

1/4” tapes in regions

1/4” tapes in London

LP & 78RPM Programme Extract,

Radio Archive: Work Completed

• Transfer has begun on the rock/pop music sessions• BBC recording from the 1960’s to present. Most

made for Radio One• There are 40,000 tapes containing 14,000 hours of

unique recordings• Cost over two years to preserve all of this Radio

One Archive is £2.6 million• Transferred to audio CD and files on DVD-Rom• Artists include Rolling Stones, Beatles, Who, Jimi

Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Fall

Radio Archive: Work Completed

• Also transferred DAT and cassette material – News sequences

• Transferred all 78 and LP BBC recordings– Material from 20’s to 60’s

• Finishing transfer of LP sound effects

• Transferring from ¼” tape, for Radio 7 (classic spoken-word radio) – 60k items/yr

State of European Broadcast Archives A 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” no longer accepted in BBC radio production

and playout systems

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

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

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

Reducing cost per use

• Reduce cost

• Increase use

So- access is vital, and not just for BBC’s charter renewal.

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.

Access to the BBC archives

Already a BBC charter obligationReduces cost per useOpens a resource that has been funded by UK

license-fee payersCreative Archive: 2000 3-minute clips, this

AutumnFor download and re-useUnder a Creative Commons licence

Access to all European Audiovisual Heritage: EC ProjectPresto-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

Thank you

Presto-Space:

prestospace.org

Richard Wright richard.wright@bbc.co.uk