[WEB4LIB] Re: [Formats for audio/video in electronic theses]

[Grace Agnew]

Leo and Mark,

Quicktime is the native file format for the Mac, just as AVI is for
Windows, but can also be created on a Windows PC.  Media Cleaner Pro is a
commonly-used software package for creating QuickTime files on either the
PC or the Mac.  You are right, though--whichever platform you create on,
you will need to use the same platform for any editing, such as the use of
Premiere.

QuickTime was selected as the base "wrapper" for MPEG4, the latest standard
from MPEG, which is slowly emerging among commercial vendors.  MPEG4 in its
full form will provide some terrific features, including simultaneous text
and metadata tracks, as well as object encoding and editing capabilities.
It's most immediate usefulness will be to provide low-bandwidth streaming
for web access to videos.

In the meantime, I would make two suggestions for the thesis files,
depending on size.  I would digitize using a decent M-JPEG card, in either
uncompressed QuickTime (if you are using a Mac) or uncompressed AVI, if you
are using a PC.  I would store the master uncompressed files on a server,
if at all possible.  We use an older server for this purpose at Tech.  Our
"digital masters" are too large for a CD-ROM.  We tried DVD-R but found it
an unstable medium on a PC, which makes me nervous about storing the files
created on the Mac.  

I like M-JPEG for the master file right now because compression, if used,
is intra-frame and thus recoverable.   Depending on the length of the
video, the Miro DC50 card will produce an acceptable "digital master."
Alternatively, I would buy a well-reviewed MPEG card, that creates
"editable MPEG"--e.g. I-frames only.  In some ways, this might be
preferable because MPEG is an international standard, while every encoder's
M-JPEG is somewhat proprietary.  Still, the same is true for
TIFF--currently used to create digital masters for images--which is also
not an international standard.

Once you create a digital master, the use copy is really up to you.
RealServer supports RealVideo, MPEG1 and, I believe, will also stream
QuickTime.  I believe the Darwin server also supports MPEG.  If you are
going to store the entire thesis on a CD-ROM as backup, I'd probably use
either Real or QuickTime.  If you create QuickTime, get the Sorenson
Professional plug-in for Media Cleaner Pro.  I think QuickTime videos are
considerably better quality on a campus LAN, at any rate, when created with
Media Cleaner Pro/Sorenson plug-in.  Whether or not QuickTime is truly
compatible with MPEG4 is not yet known, but there is more of a chance than
with RealVideo files, I suspect.  You might want to provide both a high end
and a low end option, in which case I would opt for MPEG1 along with either
QuickTime or real.  MPEG1 can also be downloaded, whereas I believe Real is
strictly a streaming format.  Media Cleaner Pro provides the Heuris engine
for creating MPEG files.  Media Cleaner Pro is not expensive software and,
along with Adobe Premiere, are worthwhile investments if you are doing any
video creation.

OTOH, we have found that RealVideo does a better job of handling
unpredictable bandwidth across the web.  The best quality would probably be
QuickTime's quick start download, which will also mean that you don't need
a streaming server to serve up the video.  Again, it depends on the size of
the file, but I would lean town downloaded QuickTime, based on what little
I know about your files.  (unless files are more than 5-7 minutes, in which
case the download might be too slow).

If you can save an uncompressed (or slightly compressed, using intraframe
compression) video as a master file, then the use file could be whatever
you choose.  MPEG4, when it finally arrives, will resolve a lot of these
issues.  There are some MPEG4 codecs floating around, mainly because MPEG4
is fairly robust in the codecs it supports.  Minerva is offering an "MPEG4"
encoding/streaming solution that is actually H.263--one of the codecs
supported by MPEG4.  It isn't the full MPEG4 specification with text tracks
and object planes.

I would consider using an editor such as Adobe Premiere to add a watermark
or copyright slide to the video.  We currently add title and copyright
slides to our videos, although we are creating a standard watermark in
Photoshop for our images and we might therefore add the watermark to video
files as well, using Premiere.  

Our digital library initiative web page has a white paper that I wrote
(somewhat old but the first half is still a useful introduction to digital
video), as well as our specs for adding title, copyright and credit slides
to videos.  We use Powerpoint to create a JPEG file and cross-dissolve to
add title, copyright and sometimes credit JPEGs to videos.


It is important to distinguish between "open source" and a '"standard."
The Motion Picture Experts Group is a standards-issuing body, like IETF and
w3c.  They follow standard practices for issuing standards for review,
revising standards and issuing detailed specifications for vendors to
follow.  Technology developed as part of standards creation by a member of
the working group is intended to be made available at a reasonable price,
even though the developer may own the patent.  There is some controversy
surrounding MPEG4--much of the technology is claimed by patent, but I
expect it will get worked through.  However, if a vendor claims to support
a standard, they will have to conform to the standard and support any files
created by the standard.  RealServer, for example, claims to support MPEG1
and I have found that regardless of the card used or the software codec,
Real can stream it.  The benefit of a published standard is that vendors
have a standard to test against and once they claim to support the
standard, they can be held accountable to the standard, provided the
encoding card also supports the standard.  I don't remember the Linux-based
open source audio product mentioned in a previous email but to my knowledge
it is not a standard so much as an open-source product.  In the digital
video and audio world, which is still very much in the development stages,
you are safer going with a standard to insure compatibility across
platforms, built-in codecs on computers, servers, etc., at least for the
time being.

Our digital library initiative web page, under "Digital File
Creation-->Video"  has a link to a white paper that I wrote (somewhat old
but the first half is still a useful introduction to digital video), as
well as our specs for adding title, copyright and credit slides to videos.
We use Powerpoint to create a JPEG file and cross-dissolve to add title,
copyright and sometimes credit JPEGs to videos.  We have found that most
audio files--at least speech files-- can use some editing, and we use
SoundForge to edit the sound files. Our specs for editing sound files using
Sound Forge are available under "Digital File Creation-->Audio.' We also
use the MP3 plug-in to create "standards-based" audio files.

Hope this helps!

Grace Agnew

P.S.  You might be interested in the "Managing Digital Video Content"
workshop, co-sponsored by ViDe, CNI, SURA and Internet2.  It's being held
on the Georgia Tech Campus in Atlanta August 14-15.  We will be looking at
another interesting standard emerging from MPEG--MPEG7 (multimedia content
description), among other topics.  This conference is geared toward asset
management, not file creation, however.  Conference details can be found
at:  http://www.vide.net/conferences/index.html




At 02:59 PM 06/18/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>Hi Leo,
>
>You wrote:
>
>> You might want to think about storing the video in Quicktime using the
>> Animation codec set at little or no compression. You can then burn this
>> to a CD-ROM. This is a common enough solution for people in the multimedia
>> biz and it might work for you as well.
>
>As far as I know, QuickTime is a proprietary format so adopting it for
>theses material would force the use of Apple software to access or
>manipulate the material in the future. Since the multimedia biz is heavily
>Apple-centric, this may not be a problem for people in that business. Or
>does Apple make the specification for QuickTime open to anyone, as Adobe
>does for PDF?
>
>Defacto standards like PDF and QuickTime are good for display and
>delivery, but they change frequently and at the whim of the company that
>controls them. It's the mid-to-long term storage of the files that I'm
>more worried about.
>
>Mark
>
>
>Mark Jordan
>Librarian / Analyst, Systems Division
>W.A.C. Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University
>Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada
>Phone (604) 291 5753 / Fax (604) 291 3023
>mjordan at sfu.ca / http://www.sfu.ca/~mjordan/
>