Open Source Quality Checking Workshop 2018

Open Source
Quality Checking
Workshop

Jérôme Martinez
Ashley Blewer

Technoport, Luxembourg, November 2018

Why quality control is important?

If you don’t handle that now, content is definitely partially lost.

Why quality control is important?

Your digital copy provider is available now
- In the future, your content provider may have disappeared, trashed content…
The original tape is still there, but for how long?
- Sometimes your tape becomes no more readable.

Why quality control is important?

Easier to catch quality issues and fix them now than later
- When someone else discovers quality issues, it may be too late.

Why quality control is important?

You are not alone

Example of online support:
AV Artifact Atlas
a resource for identifying errors and anomalies in analog and digital video. AVAA is built for and by a community of professionals in the field of audiovisual archiving but useful for anyone working with av material.

Why quality control is important?

You are not alone

Example of online support:
"No time To Wait"
symposiums are free events focused on open media, open standards, and digital audiovisual preservation. Symposium program is made by archivists, who present how they work and the associated (open source) tools.

Organization of symposiums has a cost.
- Hosting granted by a main sponsor
- Other archives or vendors may provide additional financial support

“No Time To Wait” 2018 was at British Film Institute on October 25-26.
Other sponsors are AV Preservation by reto.ch, Centre national de l’audiovisuel Luxembourg (CNA) and the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAT/IFTA)

Overview of open source

The four freedoms of open source (a.k.a. free software)

The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others

You are no more tied to only one vendor

YOU decide of the new features
If you don’t like anymore what your supplier does, just change, YOU decide
For small project, usually one developer, but YOU can fork if it does not go as you want
For bigger projects, YOU may decide between different competitors for new development or support.

Reusability of existing solutions

Free choice of (local) support/suppliers
No black-box
Common tools/codebase = larger userbase
Less "forced" upgrades

Benefits of paying for open source software

Better support/updates
Pooling resources
Designed for your use-cases
Overall better cost-effectiveness
Public money = public solution?

Support

Open source does not mean lack of professional support:
- Support contracts
- Paid installation/integration
- Hire developers
Non-financial contributions:
- Documentation
- Testing / bug-reports
- Helping others

Benefits of paying for open source software

A real-world example: The lossless video codec FFV1
Austrian National Archive (Mediathek) wanted to do lossless digital video archiving
Not satisfied with existing products (Interoperability issues)
Found FFV1 in FFmpeg: Excellent codec, but we wanted/needed more...
Contacted and hired a FFV1 developer
Other parties involved for advices (pooled resources)
Budget calculated in reference to costs of proprietary alternatives
Now FFV1 version 3: faster and integrity-aware
Important: published our experiences with FFV1
So: other archives using FFV1 now profit from improvements, too!

Quality of tools

Chicken and egg: if everyone waits, nothing happens
We start with needs easy to handle and we create dedicated open source tools
Tools become bigger, step by step, when more people join
YOU can decide about participating in lowering the overall cost for archives.

Funding

Driven by user requests
Most of tools were funded after a need is detected by users
Why paying for something you don't control? (is your current choice future proof?)
Everyone (you included) can develop or sponsor a development
You can fork if you think you have a better idea than others