As presented by Tom Lorenz (Cube-Tec) at the 2019 FIAT/IFTA World Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

1. Building an integrated digital media archive and legal deposit –
planning and innovations for the preservation of assets like
cinematographic works and ancillary data
Vladimir Torov
C.E.O. / Undersecretary
iMM rešitve d.o.o.
Ministry of Justice
Tom Lorenz
Managing Partner
Cube-Tec International
FIAT/IFTA Conference October 23rd 2019 Dubrovnik

2. Short Introduction

3. Introduction
■ With my presentations I usually try to give you insights into exciting projects in which
Cube-Tec is involved.
■ Cube-Tec has realized different projects in the region where the current FIAT/IFTA
world conference takes place, it is an obvious idea and a special pleasure to include
an experienced project architect as my co-presenter.
■ For this I have asked Vladimir Torov, Vladimir works for the Ministry of Justice in
Slovenia and as a consultant for media archives.
■ Unfortunately he can not be here today due to an unforeseeable business meeting at
his ministry. However, he sent me his input and I will present a summary of his paper.
■ With his presentation he will provide the point of view from an archive client
explaining the requirements in public national archiving organizations.
■ And my role will be to show how Cube-Tec solves such requirements with
highlighting some new and innovative details.
■ In this talk we will have a special focus on requirements and solutions for digital
media archive and legal deposit especially for the preservation of assets like
cinematographic works and ancillary data.

4. About Cube-Tec

5. About Cube-Tec
■ 1990 Founding of the engineering offices
Houpert Digital Audio (HDA), in the
Innovation & Technology Center
Bremen, Germany
■ 2005 Founding of Cube-Tec International with
headquarters in Bremen, Germany
■ 2010 Founding of Cube-Tec North America LLC
in Asheville, North Carolina
Cube-Tec International headquarter
Technology Park Bremen, Germany

6. Cube-Tec Company Background
■25 year company background in in digital signal processing and audio and audiovisual
media preservation
■Starting in the mid 90 pioneering large-scale audio migration strategies with a strong
emphasis on quality-control
■Inventor of the first dedicated “migration workstation”
■In 1995 the IRT (broadcast research institute for the German speaking public
broadcaster) has analyzed the requirements for the mass digitization of analog audio
tapes in the broadcast archive. We developed a product to fulfill the demand. IRT
invented the name QUADRIGA. The acronym QUADRIGA stands for “Quality from
Analogue to Digital Rigorously Analysed“
■Leading and participation in different European Research projects, like:
■PrestoSpace - Preservation towards storage and access. Standardised Practices for
Audiovisual Contents Archiving in Europe
■DAVID - Digital AV Media Damage Prevention and Repair
■VideoStar, CineXPRES, AVEROS, EDFIRE

7. A Small Selection From the Cube-Tec Media Archive Client List
All India Radio

8. System Requirements
(V. Torov)

9. Summary of Vladimir Torov‘s presentation part
Challange in most analogue film archives is how to transform from analog to digital
• Analysis of current system
• Choosing standards and good practices around the EU
• Checking material and how to work with it
• Creating workflows and identify bottlenecks
• Identify hardware and software solutions
• Creating tender and preparing legislation changes
• Choosing right solution and partner
■ Vladimir Torov – expert in AV digital archives - procedures, legislation and system tender creator and project manager
of establishing digital film archive (former employee of Slovenia Archives, still their advisor/ project manager as iMM
rešitve d.o.o. )

10. Summary of Vladimir Torov‘s presentation part
Most common problems are:
• current procedures are only for analogue archives
• make decisions how far the transformation should go
• lack of skilled and technical employee and
• not enough technical knowledge or support from (analogue) archivists
• mindset is not prepared for transition to digital

11. Summary of Vladimir Torov‘s presentation part
Request of solutions:
Hardware (based on standardized high-end server technology)
• system and network – 10 Gbit/s network, optical fiber backbone, storage
• digitisation device (film scanner must support 8, 9.5, 16, 35 mm film formats incl. the
different sound track formats)
Software (based on customized out-of-the-box software)
• MAM system for archivists
• Workflow system with high flexibility (create and change workflows)
• DCDM Checking (Digital Cinema Distribution Master)
• DCP Creation (Digital Cinema Package)
• User rights and role management
• Integration via xml, REST

12. Summary of Vladimir Torov‘s presentation part
MAM and Workflow Solution
• solution must be compatible with existing archive database and fully integrated
with support of all workflows.
• database for metadata fields definition according to FIAF recommendation
• support different AV formats and document formats
• transcoding AV formats into uncompressed archive format and preview format
• support for cinematographic works in DCDM and DCP format
• QC for data and AV material - analysis and creating reports
• advanced web based media player
• proxy generator with watermark (logo insertion)
• system need to be fully localized for Slovenian language
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE AND HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON ! Contact on Vladimir.torov@gov.si or info@immresitve.com

13. Solutions (T.Lorenz)

14. Legal deposit for film and video files
High demand because of:
■ Long-term availability of preserved assets
■ Standards conformity of the assets and metadata
■ Verifiability of a preservation procedure (conform to OAIS Reference Model)
■ Very large preservation files (> 1 TB per single deposit)
This requires special procedures to assure:
1. Correctness of media assets
2. Correctness and completeness of metadata
3. Correctness of the preservation process

15. 1. Correctness of media assets
2. Correctness of metadata
3. Correctness of the preservation process

16. 1. Correctness of media assets
2. Correctness of metadata
3. Correctness of the preservation process
extraction and preserving of
technical metadata
incl.

17. Verification and QC
■Verification and documentation of data that have been delivered
■Verification of defined preservation file structure (SIP) (checking conformity for
mandatory and optional files)
■Importing delivered metadata and allow to add missing metadata
■Automatic logging and protocolling of all processing step
■Hand-over OAIS conform SIP structure for long-term preservation

18. Verification and QC of Essence files
Preservation Master Files
■dpx or tiff sequences
■DCDM (Digital Cinema Distribution Master)
■Lossless compressed files like mkv/ffv1
■JPEG 2000 (mathematically lossless)
■Uncompressed MXF
Access Copies (mezzanine & proxy files)
■ProRes
■MP4
Ancillary data files (reports, film poster)
■PDF/A
■JPEG
■TIFF
■...
■ Format Characterization (incl.)
■ format identification,
■ format validation
■ feature extraction and
■ policy-based assessment
■ including commercial and open
source tools
■ QUADRIGA QC View
■ Fraunhofer DCP Validator
■ JHOVE
■ ffprobe...

19. Verification and QC
■ Validation of SIP structure

20. Verification and QC
■ DCP Validation Report
__

21. Verification and QC
■ complete integration of sub-system for inspection of Digital Cinema Packages
(Fraunhofer easyDCP)

22. Verification and QC
In different countries DCDM is required as format for the legal deposits for
cinematographic works
■DCDM Validation Report
■Checking image sequence
■reporting discontinuity in the image sequence
■Image naming issues
■Image size abnormalities
■Image metadata check
■file format issues
Lenght of Image Sequence: 24.567 frames
Start Frame Counter: _0000001
Name of first frame: EVTRQBOW_0000001.dpx
Name of last frame: EVTRQBOW_0024567.dpx

23. Verification and QC
■ Report on Audio and Video file analysis

24. 1.Correctness of media assets
2. Completeness of descriptive metadata
3. Correctness of the preservation process

25. Metadata – conform to European Standard EN 15744
EN 15744 Film identification — set of metadata for describing cinematographic works

26. Legal deposit for film and video files
■Provide viewing copies for users with different access rights
■Role and rights management
■Web-based Media Player

27. Access – role management
■Overview of all defined roles

28. Access - Define groups of users with different rights
■Create or edit a role

29. Access – role management
■Overview of all users

30. Access - Define groups of users with different rights
■Create or edit a user

31. User Access – web-based media player
Media Player - web-browser based
■ subtitle support with preferred language selection
■ playback speed control 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x
■ random access
■ frame by frame view
■ jog mode
■ scrubbing mode,
■ play from timecode
■ set cue points, export cue points (xml)
■ metadata viewer
■ single frame extraction
■ sound playback channel selection
■ watermarked view
All function usable depending on user rights.

32. Access – web-based media player
■Editor – adding descriptive metadata (e.g. title in different languages)

33. Access – web-based player
■SIP Editor – checking correctness of assets (Format Analysis)

34. Database Import and Export functions
■Legal deposit has to be integrated into an existing environment
■System has to be communicate with existing systems as well as with system that are
developed and changed during the project phase
■Those systems need to exchange data, interfaces have to be provided

35. Database Import and Export functions

36. 1.Correctness of media assets
2.Correctness of metadata
3.Correctness of the preservation process

37. Workflow
■The system has to be flexible, changing requirements during and after the project
phase need to be adaptable without programming skills.
■Easy implementation of new workflows and modify existing workflows

38. Workflow – Transcoding workflow
■Cube Workflow is using BPMN 2.0 to design and execute workflows.
BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation)

39. Workflow – Transcoding workflow
■Create Sub workflows

40. Workflow – SIP import workflow
■Complex workflows with activity status

41. Workflow
■Error handling in complex workflows

42. Conclusion

43. Conclusion
■Archives have very special requirements for their MAM systems
■Different structure of material (multiple film reels, several versions, negative & prints)
■Very large preservation files (uncompressed high-resolution scans)
■Most MAM systems on the market offered are designed and optimized for TV
production requirements
■Cube-Tec as a system manufacturer with many years experience in archive projects
can offer flexible solution that can fit into special requirements from archives with
respect to their cultural and historical background.

44. Tom.Lorenz@cube-tec.com
www.Cube-Tec.com
Vladimir.Torov@gov.si
Thank you !