PrestoPRIME is a new (January 2009) European project on digital audiovisual content: how to save it, how to access it. It follows on from PrestoSpace.
FLASH November 2010: PrestoPRIME public workshop 26 November in London
PrestoPRIME Requirements Workshop October 2009 in Vienna
Programme: http://www.prestoprime.org/docs/training/vienna200910.pdf
Presentations: http://www.prestoprime.org/docs/training/2009-10_ViennaOutComes.zip
PrestoPRIME public launch 24 March 2009 in Turin
Now that your audiovisual collection is files on digital storage, rather than tapes on shelves -- how do you prevent this message?
An error message - so now what?
How can collections be efficiently managed, so files:
- don’t get lost (metadata, file and storage management)
- do keep their correct relationships with other files (provenance)
- do maintain their technical (quality), legal (rights) and archival (quality, provenance, rights, metadata) integrity?
How is audiovisual content preserved forever (without going broke almost immediately)?
There is a sense in which digital audiovisual content doesn't exist. You can't point to it, you don't know where it is. Why didn't they warn us? There are ones and zeros on some sort of storage, and there is metadata. Somehow the sound and images are recreated from the storage and the metadata. What we really want to keep forever, the content, sits like a metaphysical sandwich -- between storage and metadata. It's storage and metadata that you really have to be worried about, and how to play-back the bits from storage, and how to encode to access formats, and how to move on to new storage and new access formats when necessary (think: a very few years).
How the project works:
PrestoPRIME will look at storage and metadata (WP2), make new tools for each (WP3 for storage, WP4 for metadata), and bring it all together in a working system in WP5. Then we'll tell the world, in a permanent European networked Competence Centre (WP6), though conferences and training (WP7), and through demonstrations on real data (WP8). Here's a picture:
PrestoPRIME technical work areas and how they fit together
From the project summary:
Audiovisual content collections are undergoing a transformation from archives of analogue materials to very large stores of digital data. As time-based digital media and their related metadata are edited, re-used and re-formatted in a continuously evolving environment, the concept of the unique original loses its meaning and we require dynamic processes that can preserve indefinitely not only the audiovisual signal but also its evolving associations, context and rights.
PrestoPRIME will research and develop practical solutions for the long-term preservation of digital media objects, programmes and collections, and find ways to increase access by integrating the media archives with European on-line digital libraries in a digital preservation framework. This will result in a range of tools and services, delivered through a networked Competence Centre.
The project will deliver a preservation framework, complete with risk management and content quality and corruption control measures, capable of supporting audiovisual signal migration and multivalent preservation methods using federated services for distributing and storing content. It will create a metadata conversion and deployment toolkit, with a novel and efficient process for metadata vocabulary alignment, annotation and services for user-generated content metadata. A rights management system and audiovisual fingerprint registry will make it possible to track and manage content at all stages of its lifecycle, in all contexts of use.
The project will demonstrate and evaluate an integrated prototype of the preservation Framework and software in the networked Competence Centre. The Competence Centre and the European Association for Audiovisual Archives will be established to provide business models, registry and best practice services and training.
The project has four major objectives:
O1 To research and develop means of ensuring the permanence of digital audiovisual content in archives, libraries, museums and other collections. To be achieved by:
- Comparing strategies for audiovisual preservation, including multivalent, emulation and migration approaches, and creating a standard data model for audiovisual content preservation.
- Researching metadata solutions for long-term audiovisual preservation to manage migration between data models, metadata enrichment, the maintenance of correct relationships between audiovisual objects, the integrity of files, and a model of the preservation process itself.
- Modelling storage and processing as a set of services with well-defined interfaces, service level agreements and quality of service metrics appropriate to preservation.
- Producing software tools and a framework for implementing and combining both migration and multivalent preservation strategies optimised for audiovisual content.
- Developing a service oriented storage infrastructure that enables multivalent and migration preservation strategies to be deployed on both local and federated storage and processing.
- Creating a quality assessment and risk management framework for monitoring and optimising the long-term safety and integrity of audiovisual content when using migration/multivalent strategies.
O2 To research and develop means of ensuring the long-term future access to audiovisual content in dynamically changing contexts. To be achieved by:
- Establishing metadata interoperability between audiovisual archives, cultural heritage institutions, the Semantic Web and content portals, with services for metadata conversion and deployment.
- Developing tools and services to enrich archive content with user generated metadata and align it with existing metadata.
- Developing services for tracking audiovisual content, using fingerprinting techniques and documenting the provenance of audiovisual content items.
- Modelling rights associated with audiovisual content and developing standard-compliant services for archive rights management.
O3 To integrate, evaluate and demonstrate tools and processes for audiovisual digital permanence and access. To be achieved by:
- Integrating the software modules and metadata tools in a functioning testbed.
- Validating the preservation actions and tools in the testbed.
- Developing test material and proving the ability of the integrated testbed to carry out the required actions for long-term preservation with very large volumes of audiovisual content
- Integrating the PrestoPRIME software with existing market-leading digital libraries software
O4 To establish a European networked Competence Centre to gather the knowledge created by PrestoPRIME and deliver advanced digital preservation advice and services in conjunction with the European Digital Library Foundation and other projects. To be achieved by:
- Setting up the legal and operational structure of the networked Competence Centre for audiovisual preservation and the European Association of Audiovisual Archives
- Defining and initiating activities for Monitoring and Registering technology and best practice
- Issue guidance on standards relating to audiovisual content and its preservation
- Establishing a communication platform for the Competence Centre, to manage the Centre’s outputs
- Publishing economic guidance and business models for digital media preservation activities
Partners
- P01 Institut National de l'Audiovisuel INA France (coordinators)
- P02 British Broadcasting Corporation BBC UK
- P03 Radiotelevisione Italiana RAI Italy (Laurent Boch of RAI is overall technical manager)
- P04 Joanneum Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH JRS Austria
- P05 Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision - Beeld en Geluid B&G Netherlands
- P06 Oesterreichischer Rundfunk ORF Austria
- P07 Ex Libris Israel
- P08 Eurix Italy
- P09 Doremi Technologies France
- P10 Technicolor Netherlands
- P11 University of Southampton IT Innovation. UK
- P12 University of Liverpool. UK
- P13 Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Netherlands
- P14 Universitaet Innsbruck Austria
- P15 European Digital Library Foundation Netherlands
Major Deliverables of the project (just the highlights!)
- Organisational structure of the Networked Competence Centre
- Audiovisual preservation strategies, data models and value-chains
- Review of semantic process modelling and workflow languages
- Service-oriented models for audiovisual content storage
- Audiovisual preservation toolkit
- Audiovisual fingerprint technology
- Establishing the European Association of Audiovisual Archives (E3A)
- Metadata conversion and deployment, vocabulary alignment, annotation and UGC services
- Audiovisual Digital Preservation Status Report 1-2
- Business models for the economic viability of the Networked Competence Centre
- Service and quality levels, negotiation guidelines, SLA’s for Archives, Service Providers and Experts
- Preservation System integrating outputs from the research work packages
- Launch of the Networked Competence Centre
- Digital Preservation Training workshops
