When Vendors Say No!

Implementing FFV1

IFI Irish Film Archive

Kieran O'Leary - IFI Irish Film Archive / @kieranjol

About the Irish Film Institute

  • Not just an archive
  • 3 commercial cinemas
  • Cinema Education Department
  • Restaurant/Bar/Cafe/Bookshop
  • Irish Film Programming Department
  • IFI International - Sending Irish film prints & DCPs around the world

The IFI Irish Film Archive

  • Library
  • Paper and Artefact collection
  • Amateur and Professional Film Collections
  • Variety of Analog and Digital Tape Formats
  • Born Digital Broadcast and Cinema Deliveries
  • 25% of funding from Irish Government/Arts Council
  • >Everything else generated from commercial activites
  • In 2014, 7 full time Moving Image Archivists (now we are 11)

Columb Gilna

Anja Mahler

    Metadata & Workflow Research

Why FFV1?

  • Lossless, reversible compression
  • Cost/storage savings
  • Open Format
  • Strong, supportive community
  • Fast encoding
  • Potential for one format for tape and film scans

Unnamed Proprietary Vendor Software

Watch (drop) networked folders

Generated watermarked access copies

Generated (heavily transformed) mediainfo xml

Added md5 checksum to mediainfo xml

Moved file to another watch folder and written to LTO

Vendor engagement

Q. Can you add support for FFV1 & MKV?

A. no

Q. Ok! Is there any chance of you adding it soon?

A. Not for the forseeable future

...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

FFV1 off the agenda

We needed an automated method of FFV1 creation

No Command line proficiency

No software design/scripting skills

Other formats pursued

JPEG2000/HUFFYUV

Progress

  • Vendor software had command line node
  • FFV1 now supported through our simple workaround
If it was that simple for us, why didn't they try to support it?

Framemd5 - Lossless verification

  • FFmpeg tool
  • Generates textfile with md5 values for every decoded frame
  • Verify Losslessness
  • Shows which frames have checksum mismatch
  • How to automate?

Bash and Python scripting

  • Automated command line use
  • Studied Dave Rice's mediamicroservices scripts
  • Quickly generated an FFV1/framemd5 script
  • Quickly replicated all the features of vendor software
  • Unnamed vendor software irrelevant
  • Embrace of open source formats and software

You don't HAVE to code...

...but it helps

Lots of FFV1/ access/preservation scripts available

You don't have to reinvent the wheel

Negotiate with your vendor

If your vendors say no...

You have options :)