Video in digital collections

Tentative launch date: July 2022

Initial tasks:

• research video viewers

• research process for converting mp4 files into HLS upon ingest into digital collections

• digitize more VHS tapes of varying lengths (at least one 1hr+ in length, multi-file objects?) for testing

• gather more examples of digital archives video repositories in the wild

Users should be able to:

• stream video files in their browser

• download mp4 video files

• view descriptive metadata about the content of the file and technical metadata about the file itself

• search for video content the same way they search for all other digital collections content (limit searches to video, include video in all relevant faceted searches, etc.)

Intended use-case boundaries/restrictions

• We are focusing on digitized VHS (fairly low-resolution source material)

• It’s okay to use “public derivatives” – where it’s on public S3 buckets where even if our app isn’t pointing at it, if someone knew the URL they could download it directly, for instance even if it’s not “published”. (the URLs are non-obvious though). Everything in this phase is intended to be public available, if it’s unpublished it’s just in process.

Live examples:

Hagley Museum and Library
The Story of Creative Capital | Hagley Digital Archives

• All hagley videos: Search Results | Hagley Digital Archives

• A 30-minute example (they may not have longer videos?) Interview with John Raymond "Rex" Kaiser, 2004 June 22 [video] (part 2). | Hagley Digital Archives

• like the basic design (just video at the top, metadata at the bottom)

• Hagley has a field for information about the digitized file (“digitization note”); we should have somewhere to put this metadata

Institutions with video content on YouTube/Vimeo

University of Westminster ArchivesUniversity of Westminster Archives

• decision made mostly so they can reach a wider audience, copyright not a factor (but will be for an upcoming project, for which they may move way from YouTube)

London Screen Archive LondonsScreenArchive

Current VHS digitization workflow:

VHS digitized in real time into preservation and access copies

• preservation files: ffv1 codec, AVI wrapper.

  • Stored on the M:\ drive for now.

  • Eventually all VHS tapes will go through this process.

  • File size estimate: 25.4 GB for approx 25 min of video

• access files: h.264 codec, mp4 wrapper.

  • Stored on M:\ drive for now in “access” folder.

  • mp4s created in house as part of digitization process if requested via R&R or intended for digital collections.

  • File size estimate: 164MB for approx 25 min of video

Questions

• thumbnail generation?

• file size limits

• re: file size limits, if over a certain size, break file into multiples?

• ongoing discussion about costs for storage, conversion to HLS, access/streaming at point of access, fixity checks

• reminder that we’ll need to tweak/add to some of the metadata drop downs (genre, mostly)