Hey hey Code4lib!
If you were in Portland a few months ago, you might have caught my
lightning talk on this upcoming software development project. Happy to
announce the MediaArea team has made it to the next round and we will be
developing this open source software over the next two years. Attached is
the press release. ->
* MediaArea awarded PREFORMA prototyping contract for open source
audiovisual preservation software*
PREFORMA <http://preforma-project.eu/> (PREservation FORMAts for culture
information/e-archives) is a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project
co-funded by the European Commission under its FP7-ICT Programme. PREFORMA
aims to address the challenge of implementing good quality standardised
file formats for preserving data content in the long term. The main
objective is to give memory institutions full control of the process of the
conformity tests of files to be ingested into archives. The MediaArea
<https://mediaarea.net/MediaConch> team has worked on several software
tools used in preservation data conformance, including MediaInfo, a tool to
extract metadata from audio and video files, and Bay Area Video Coalition's
QCTools project, a tool that performs quality control checks and analysis
on digitised analog video.
MediaArea is one of three teams that have moved forward from Phase 1
(design) into Phase 2 (software prototyping). This second phase will last
22 months. The research conducted during Phase 1 is available on
PREFORMA’s Open
Source Portal <http://www.preforma-project.eu/mediaconch.html>. In
collaboration with Open Preservation Foundation and Easy Innova, MediaArea
will develop a software framework for checking media files.
In Phase 1, MediaArea was tasked with researching community standards and
developing file conformance checks for FFV1 (a lossless video codec),
Matroska Multimedia Container, and Linear Pulse-Code Modulated Audio (LPCM)
to support efforts of long-term preservation in memory institutions. In
Phase 2, MediaArea will be developing MediaConch, an extensible, open
source software project consisting of an implementation checker, policy
checker, reporter, and fixer that targets preservation-level audiovisual
files. It will provide detailed and batch-level file conformance checking
via an adaptable and flexible application program interface accessible by
the command line, a graphical user interface, or a web-based shell. Our
prototype phase objectives and workplan
<https://github.com/MediaArea/MediaConch/releases/tag/2015.03.14> include
collaborations with partners from Matroska, FFmpeg, and libav. MediaArea
will also work closely with Artefactual Systems
<http://www.artefactual.com/> in order to implement selected results into
their flagship repository system, Archivematica
<https://ww.archivematica.org/>.
In addition to software development, MediaArea is continuing to lead
conversations in developing the official standardization for the Matroska
and FFV1 formats. MediaArea will be reaching out to related, interested
communities for input and feedback on the standard and specifications of
each file format and future of each format for a preservation-standard
conformance checker software. If you work with these formats and are
interested in contributing your requirements, please contact us at
[log in to unmask]
Reference: https://mediaarea.net/en/PREFORMA_Phase2
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My best,
Ashley Blewer
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