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

[RICHARD WIGGINS]

You are brave to be a pioneer. This is tough stuff. Keep a journal!  Report
your results over time! A few thoughts (mostly questions) interspersed
below...

Is the thesis truly all digital?  What about the words?  Surely you have a
printed text you'll have printed out and bound according to all the
traditional rules? What will I find if I visit the SFU library and try to find
the thesis on the shelves?  Not just a URL?!  Will the digital content be in
the back of the bound volume?

For Web distribution, will the content be marked up in HTML?  XML?  SGML? What
standard?

> What formats do other univeristy libraries recommend for video and audio
> clips that are part of electronic theses? Medium-term access (5-10 years)
> is our immediate goal -- we admit that we will very likely have to migrate
> material to newer formats as time passes. These theses will be distributed
> over the web and not tied to any specific file storage medium.

It's easy to say the content won't be tied to a particular medium, but the
best format for Web distribution is likely to be VERY different than the best
format for archival purposes.  For Web distribution, people will expect
formats that are popular and that don't assume local access speeds or
unpopular readers -- e.g. PDF and Real.  

So I claim your choices of distribution vs. archival formats are COMPLETELY
different questions.  I sure wouldn't want to read a thesis over the Web that
was recorded one page at a time as high-res TIFFs.  I'd want PDF. I wouldn't
want to download high-res MPEG2 files over the Web; I'd want Real or QuickTime
or WMP.  But for archival purposes, you want to preserve the digital content
at full resolution.

RE: "we admit that we will very likely have to migrate material to newer
formats as time passes" -- The experts do suggest migration, both to deal with
format obsolecence and media obsolesence (two very different things) -- but
this is a time bomb for your successors.  "We" may be retired or working
elsewhere when migration day comes. 

Have you considered archiving source materials in their original form, as well
as asking for the content in whatever format was used for authoring?  E.g.
preserve the video in the format used for mastering in addition to your choice
of archive and Web formats?

In any event, you want an archival format that 1) preserves the content at a
resolution good enough to convey all the information and 2) is likely to have
readers/viewers readily available later when you migrate.  For instance, Real
might be best for Web distribution, but if the video is mastered in DV, you
might want to keep the DV source for future generations.

A lot of experts give an unqualified assertion that you must use
non-proprietary formats in all cases. But a new, superior, but obscure,
non-proprietary format may disappear entirely.  I suspect players for MP3 and
Real and PDF will be here in the 5 year time frame you describe. Whether they
preserve at necessary resolution is another matter.
 
> I've looked at the EDT 2001 Conference website and some of the resources
> linked there, looked at the Web4Lib Reference Center, and probed the web
> in a number of other places, not finding much by way of recommendations
> that parallel the standard advice of storing images in 600 dpi TIFFs.
> >From what I've gathered so far, some form of MPEG for video and possibly
> MP3 for audio would be my best bets because they are based on an open
> standard (MPEG is part of ISO). However, I haven't spent enough time nor
> am I enough of an expert to recommed what MPEG specifications we should
> adhere to in accepting multimedia as part of electronic theses.
> 
> I'd love to hear from some others who've already tackled this problem.

I bet very few folks have seriously tackled this problem in a way that
preserves the digital content for posterity without leaving time bombs for
future readers or librarians.

When everything was on paper, university libraries had very specific standards
for font size, layout, margins, even paper quality.  This assured a uniform
product for all generations -- with no maintenance required!  For a
born-digital multimedia thesis, it is very hard to imagine coming up with
standards that support Web distribution, archiving at the right resolution,
and lasting throughout generations.  Good luck!!  You may be making a bunch of
conference presentations and journal articles to describe how you made your
choices...

/rich
 

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