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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 --- My best, Ashley Blewer