All posts by Alex Marsh

The Other Man in Black

Looking through Duke Libraries’ AdViews collection of television commercials, I recently came across the following commercial for Beech-Nut chewing tobacco, circa 1970:

Obviously this was before tobacco advertising was banned from the television airwaves, which took effect on January 2, 1971, as part of the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, signed by President Richard Nixon. At first listen, the commercial’s country-tinged jingle, and voice-over narration sound like “The Man in Black,” the legendary Johnny Cash. This would not be unusual, as Cash had previously done radio and television promos sponsored by Beech-Nut, and can be seen in other 1970’s television commercials, shilling for such clients as Lionel Trains, Amoco and STP. Obviously, Johnny was low on funds at this point in his career, as his music seemed old-fashioned to the younger generation of record-buyers, and his popularity had waned. Appearing in television commercials may have been necessary to balance his checkbook.

However, the Beech-Nut commercial above is mysterious. It sounds like Johnny Cash, but the pitch is slightly off. It’s also odd that Johnny doesn’t visually appear in the ad, like he does in the LionelAmoco and STP commercials. Showing his face would have likely yielded higher pay. This raises the question of whether it is in fact Johnny Cash in the Beech-Nut commercial, or someone imitating Johnny’s baritone singing voice and folksy speaking style. Who would be capable of such close imitation? Well, it could be Johnny’s brother, Tommy Cash. Most fans know about Johnny’s older brother, Jack, who died in a tragic accident when Johnny was a child (ironically, the accident was in a sawmill), but Johnny had six siblings, including younger brother Tommy.

Tommy Cash carved out a recording career of his own, and had several hit singles in the late 60’s and early 70’s, by conveniently co-opting Johnny’s sound and image. One of his biggest hits was “Six White Horses,” in 1969, a commentary on the deaths of JFK, RFK and MLK. Other hits included “One Song Away,” and “Rise and Shine.” Johnny and Tommy can be seen performing together in this performance, singing about their father. It turns out Tommy allowed his voice to be used on television commercials for Pepsi, Burger King, and Beech-Nut. So, it’s likely the Beech-Nut commercial is the work of Tommy Cash, rather than his more famous brother. Tommy, now in his 70’s, has continued to record as recently as 2008. Tommy’s also a real estate agent, and handled the sale of Johnny Cash’s home in Tennessee, after the deaths of Johnny and wife June Carter Cash in 2003.

Color Bars & Test Patterns

In the Digital Production Center, many of the videotapes we digitize have “bars and tone” at the beginning of the tape. These are officially called “SMPTE color bars.” SMPTE stands for The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, the organization that established the color bars as the North American video standard, beginning in the 1970s. In addition to the color bars presented visually, there is an audio tone that is emitted from the videotape at the same time, thus the phrase “bars and tone.”

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SMPTE color bars

The purpose of bars and tone is to serve as a reference or target for the calibration of color and audio levels coming from the videotape during transmission. The color bars are presented at 75% intensity. The audio tone is a 1kHz sine wave. In the DPC, we can make adjustments to the incoming signal, in order to bring the target values into specification. This is done by monitoring the vectorscope output, and the audio levels. Below, you can see the color bars are in proper alignment on the DPC’s vectorscope readout, after initial adjustment.

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Color bars in proper alignment with the Digital Production Center’s vectorscope readout. Each letter stands for a color: red, magenta, blue, cyan, green and yellow.

We use Blackmagic Design’s SmartView monitors to check the vectorscope, as well as waveform and audio levels. The SmartView is an updated, more compact and lightweight version of the older, analog equipment traditionally used in television studios. The Smartview monitors are integrated into our video rack system, along with other video digitization equipment, and numerous videotape decks.

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The Digital Production Center’s videotape digitization system.

If you are old enough to have grown up in the black and white television era, you may recognize this old TV test pattern, commonly referred to as the “Indian-head test pattern.” This often appeared just before a TV station began broadcasting in the morning, and again right after the station signed off at night. The design was introduced in 1939 by RCA. The “Indian-head” image was integrated into a pattern of lines and shapes that television engineers used to calibrate broadcast equipment. Because the illustration of the Native American chief contained identifiable shades of gray, and had fine detail in the feathers of the headdress, it was ideal for adjusting brightness and contrast.

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The Indian-head test pattern was introduced by RCA in 1939.

When color television debuted in the 1960’s, the “Indian-head test pattern” was replaced with a test card showing color bars, a precursor to the SMPTE color bars. Today, the “Indian-head test pattern” is remembered nostalgically, as a symbol of the advent of television, and as a unique piece of Americana. The master art for the test pattern was discovered in an RCA dumpster in 1970, and has since been sold to a private collector.  In 2009, when all U.S. television stations were required to end their analog signal transmission, many of the stations used the Indian-head test pattern as their final analog broadcast image.

The Attics of Your Life

If you happen to be rummaging through your parents’ or grandparents’ attic, basement or garage, and stumble upon some old reel-to-reel audiotape, or perhaps some dust-covered videotape reels that seem absurdly large & clunky, they are most likely worthless, except for perhaps sentimental value. Even if these artifacts did, at one time, have some unique historic content, you may never know, because there’s a strong chance that decades of temperature extremes have made the media unplayable. The machines that were once used to play the media are often no longer manufactured, hard to find, and only a handful of retired engineers know how to repair them. That is, if they can find the right spare parts, which no one sells anymore.

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Quarterback Bart Starr led the Green Bay Packers to a 35-10 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 1.
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Martin Haupt likely recorded Super Bowl 1 using an RCA Quadruplex 2″ color videotape recorder, common at television studios in the late 1960s.

However, once in a while, something that is one of a kind miraculously survives. That was the case for Troy Haupt, a resident of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, who discovered that his father, Martin Haupt, had recorded the very first Super Bowl onto 2” Quadruplex color videotape directly from the 1967 live television broadcast. After Martin passed away, the tapes ended up in Troy’s mother’s attic, yet somehow survived the elements.

What makes this so unique is that, in 1967, videotape was very expensive and archiving at television networks was not a priority. So the networks that aired the first Super Bowl, CBS and NBC, did not save any of the broadcast.

But Martin Haupt happened to work for a company that repaired professional videotape recorders, which were, in 1967, cutting edge technology. Taping television broadcasts was part of Martin’s job, a way to test the machines he was rebuilding. Fortunately, Martin went to work the day Super Bowl 1 aired live. The two Quadruplex videotapes that Martin Haupt used to record Super Bowl 1 cost $200 each in 1967. In today’s dollars, that’s almost $3000 total for the two tapes. Buying a “VCR” at your local department store was unfathomable then, and would not be possible for at least another decade. Somehow, Martin missed recording halftime, and part of the third quarter, but it turns out that Martin’s son Troy now owns the most complete known video recording of Super Bowl 1, in which the quarterback Bart Starr led the Green Bay Packers to a 35-10 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.

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Betty Cantor-Jackson recorded many of the Grateful Dead’s landmark concerts using a Nagra IV-S Reel to Reel audiotape recorder. The Dead’s magnum opus, “Dark Star” could easily fill an entire reel.

For music fans, another treasure was uncovered in a storage locker in Marin County, CA, in 1986. Betty Cantor-Jackson worked for The Grateful Dead’s road crew, and made professional multi-track recordings of many of their best concerts, between 1971-1980, on reel-to-reel audiotape. The Dead were known for marathon concerts in which some extended songs, like “Dark Star” could easily fill an entire audio reel. The band gave Betty permission to record, but she purchased her own gear and blank tape, tapping into the band’s mixing console to capture high-quality, soundboard recordings of the band’s epic concerts during their prime era. Betty held onto her tapes until she fell on hard times in the 1980’s, lost her home, and had to move the tapes to a storage locker. She couldn’t pay the storage fees, so the locker contents went up for auction.

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Betty Cantor-Jackson recorded the Grateful Dead’s show at Barton Hall in 1977, considered by many fans to be one of their best concerts.

Some 1000 audio reels ended up in the hands of three different buyers, none of whom knew what the tapes contained. Once the music was discovered, copies of the recordings began to leak to hardcore tape-traders within the Deadhead community, and they became affectionately referred to as “The Betty Boards.” It turns out the tapes include some legendary performances, such as the 1971 Capitol Theatre run, and the May 1977 tour, including “Barton Hall, May 8, 1977,” considered by many Deadheads as one of the best Grateful Dead concerts of all time.

You would think the current owners of Super Bowl 1 and Barton Hall, May 8, 1977 would be sitting on gold. But, that’s where the lawyers come in. Legally, the people who possess these tapes own the physical tapes, but not the content on those tapes. So, Troy Haupt owns the 2” inch quadriplex reels of Super Bowl 1, but the NFL owns what you can see on those reels. The NFL owns the copyright of the broadcast. Likewise, The Grateful Dead owns the music on the audio reels, regardless of who owns the physical tape that contains the music. Unfortunately, for NFL fans and Deadheads, this makes the content somewhat inaccessable for now. Troy Haupt has offered to sell his videotapes to the NFL, but they have mostly ignored him. If Troy tries to sell the tapes to a third party instead, the NFL says they will sue him, for unauthorized distribution of their content. The owners of the Grateful Dead tapes face a similar dilema. The band’s management isn’t willing to pay money for the physical tapes, but if the owners, or any third party the owners sell the tapes to, try to distribute the music, they will get sued. However, if it weren’t for Martin Haupt and Betty Cantor-Jackson, who had the foresight to record these events in the first place, the content would not exist at all.

Star Wars: The Fans Strike Back

At the recent Association of Moving Image Archivists conference in Portland, Oregon, I saw a lot of great presentations related to film and video preservation. As a Star Wars fan, I found one session particularly interesting. It was presented by Jimi Jones, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is the result of his research into the world of fan edits.

This is a fairly modern phenomenon, whereby fans of a particular film, music recording or television show, often frustrated by the unavailability of that work on modern media, take it upon themselves to make it available, irrespective of copyright and/or the original creator’s wishes. Some fan edits appropriate the work, and alter it significantly, to make their own unique version. Neither Jimi Jones nor AMIA is advocating for fan edits, but merely exploring the sociological and technological implications they may have in the world of film and video digitization and preservation.

An example is the original 1977 theatrical release of “Star Wars” (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope), a movie I spent my entire 1977 summer allowance on as a child, because I was so awestruck that I went back to my local theater to see it again and again. The version that I saw then, free of more recently superimposed CGI elements like Jabba The Hut, and the version in which Han Solo shoots Greedo in the Mos Eisley Cantina, before Greedo can shoot Solo, is not commercially available today via any modern high definition media such as Blu-Ray DVD or HD streaming.

The last time most fans saw the original, unaltered Star Wars Trilogy, it was likely on VHS tape (as shown above). George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, insists that his more recent “Special Editions” of the Star Wars Trilogy, with the added CGI and the more politically-correct, less trigger-happy Han Solo, are the “definitive” versions. Thus Lucas has refused to allow any other version to be legally distributed for at least the past decade. Many Star Wars fans, however, find this unacceptable, and they are striking back.

Armed with sophisticated video digitization and editing software, a network of Star Wars fans have collaborated to create “Star Wars: Despecialized Edition,” a composite of assorted pre-existing elements that accurately presents the 1977-1983 theatrical versions of the original Star Wars Trilogy in high definition for the first time. The project is led by an English teacher in Czechoslovakia, who goes by the name of “Harmy” online and is referred to as a “guerilla restorationist.” Using BitTorrent, and other peer-to-peer networks, fans can now download “Despecialized,” burn it to Blu-Ray, print out high-quality cover art, and watch it on their modern widescreen TV sets in high definition.

The fans, rightly or wrongly, claim these are the versions of the films they grew up with, and they have a right to see them, regardless of what George Lucas thinks. Personally, I never liked the changes Lucas later made to the original trilogy, and I agree that “Han Shot First,” or to paraphrase Johnny Cash, “I shot a man named Greedo, just to watch him die.” We all know Greedo was a scumbag who was about to kill Solo anyway, so Han’s preemptive shot in the original Star Wars makes perfect sense. I’m not endorsing piracy, but, as a fan, I certainly understand the pent-up demand for “Star Wars: Despecialized Edition.”

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The psychology of nostalgia is interesting,  particularly when fans desire something so intensely, they will go to great lengths, technologically, and otherwise, to satiate that need. Absence makes the heart, or fan, grow stronger. This is not unique to Star Wars. For instance, Neil Young, one of the best songwriters of his generation, released a major-label record in 1973 called “Time Fades Away,” which, to this day, has never been released on compact disc.

The album, recorded on tour while his biggest hit single, “Heart of Gold,” was topping the charts, is an abrupt shift in mood and approach, and the beginning of a darker, more desolate string of albums that fans refer to as “The Ditch Trilogy.” Regarding this period, Neil said: “Heart of Gold put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.” Many fans, myself included, regard the three records that comprise the ditch trilogy as his greatest achievement, due to their brutal honesty, and Neil’s absolute refusal to play it safe by coasting on his recent mainstream success. But for Neil, Time Fades Away brings up so many bad memories, particularly regarding the death of his guitarist, Danny Whitten, that he has long refused to release it on CD.

In 2005, Neil Young fans began gathering at least 14,000 petition signatures to get the album released on compact disc, but that yielded no results. So many took it upon themselves, using modern technology, to meticulously transfer mint-condition vinyl copies of “Time Fades Away” from their turntable to desktop computer using widely available professional audio software, and then burn the album to CD. Fans also scanned the original cover art from the vinyl record, and made compact disc covers and labels that closely approximate what it would look like if the CD had been officially released.

Other fans, using peer-to-peer networks, were able to locate a digital “test pressing” of the audio for a future CD release that was nixed by Neil before it went into production. Combining that test pressing audio, free of vinyl static, with professional artwork, the fans were essentially able to produce what Neil refused to allow, a pristine-sounding, and professionally-looking version of Time Fades Away on compact disc. Perhaps in response, Neil, has, just in the last year, allowed Time Fades Away to be released in digital form via his high-resolution 192.0kHz/24bit music service, Pono Music.

It’s clear that the main intent of the fans of Star Wars, Time Fades Away and other works of art is not to profit off their hybrid creations, or to anger the original creators. It’s merely to finally have access to what they are so nostalgic about. Ironically, if it wasn’t for the unavailability of these works, a lot of this community, creativity, software mastery and “guerrilla restoration” would not be taking place. There’s something about the fact that certain works are missing from the marketplace, that makes fans hunger for them, talk about them, obsess about them, and then find creative ways of acquiring or reproducing them.

This is the same impulse that fuels the fire of toy collectors, book collectors, garage-sale hunters and eBay bidders. It’s this feeling that you had something, or experienced something magical when you were younger, and no one has the right to alter it, or take access to it away from you, not even the person who created it. If you can just find it again, watch it, listen to it and hold it in your hands, you can recapture that youthful feeling, share it with others, and protect the work from oblivion. It seems like just yesterday that I was watching Han Solo shoot Greedo first on the big screen, but that was almost 40 years ago. “’Cause you know how time fades away.”

Lichens, Bryophytes and Climate Change

As 2015 winds down, the Digital Production Center is wrapping up a four-year collaboration with the Duke Herbarium to digitize their lichen and bryophyte specimens. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation, and the ultimate goal is to digitize over 2 million specimens from more than 60 collections across the nation. Lichens and bryophytes (mosses and their relatives) are important indicators of climate change. After the images from the participating institutions are uploaded to one central portal, called iDigBio, large-scale distribution mapping will be used to identify regions where environmental changes are taking place, allowing scientists to study the patterns and effects of these changes.

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The specimens are first transported from the Duke Herbarium to Perkins Library on a scheduled timeline. Then, we photograph the specimen labels using our Phase One overhead camera. Some of the specimens are very bulky, but our camera’s depth of field is broad enough to keep them in focus. To be clear, what the project is utilizing is not photos of the actual plant specimens themselves, but rather images of the typed and hand-written scientific metadata adorning the envelopes which house the specimens. After we photograph them, the images are uploaded to the national database, where they are available for online research, along with other specimen labels uploaded from universities across the United States. Optical character recognition is used to digest and organize the scientific metadata in the images.

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Over the past four years, the Digital Production Center has digitized approximately 100,000 lichen and bryophyte specimens. Many are from the Duke Herbarium, but some other institutions have also asked us to digitize some of their specimens, such as UNC-Chapel Hill, SUNY-Binghamton, Towson University and the University of Richmond. The Duke Herbarium is the second-largest herbarium of all U.S. private universities, next to Harvard. It was started in 1921, and it contains more than 800,000 specimens of vascular plants, bryophytes, algae, lichens, and fungi, some of which were collected as far back as the 1800s. Several specimens have unintentionally humorous names, like the following, which wants to be funky, but isn’t fooling anyone. Ok, maybe only I find that funny.

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The project has been extensive, but enjoyable, thanks to the leadership of Duke Herbarium Data Manager Blanka Shaw. Dr. Shaw has personally collected bryophytes on many continents, and has brought a wealth of knowledge, energy and good humor to the collaboration with the Digital Production Center. The Duke Herbarium is open for visitors, and citizen scientists are also needed to volunteer for transcription and georeferencing of the extensive metadata collected in the national database.

The Beauty of Auto Crop

One of the most tedious and time-consuming tasks we do in the Digital Production Center is cropping and straightening still image files. Hired students spend hours sitting at our computers, meticulously straightening and cropping extraneous background space out of hundreds of thousands of photographed images, using Adobe Photoshop. This process is neccessary in order to present a clean, concise image for our digital collections, but it causes delays in the completion of our projects, and requires a lot of student labor. Auto cropping software has long been sought after in digital imaging, but few developers have been able to make it work efficiently, for all materials. The Digital Production Center’s Zeutschel overhead scanner utilizes auto cropping software, but the scanner can only be used with completely flat media, due to its limited depth of field. Thicker and more fragile materials must be photographed using our Phase One digital camera system, shown above.

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Capture One’s Cultural Heritage software includes the auto crop feature.

Recently, Digital Transitions, who is the supplier of Phase One and it’s accompanying Capture One software, announced an update to the software which includes an auto crop and straightening feature. The new software is called Capture One Cultural Heritage, and is specifically designed for use in libraries and archival institutions. The auto crop feature, previously unavailable in Capture One, is a real breakthrough, and there are several options for how to use it.

First of all, the user can choose to auto crop “On Capture” or “On Crop.” That is, the software can auto crop instantly, right after a photograph has been taken (On Capture), or it can be applied to the image, or batch of images, at a later time (On Crop). You can also choose between auto cropping at a fixed size, or by the edge of the material. For instance, if you are photographing a collection of posters that are all sized 18” x 24,” you would choose “Fixed Size” and set the primary crop to “18 x 24,” or slightly larger if you want your images to have an outer border. The software recognizes the rectangular shape, and applies the crop. If you are photographing a collection of materials that are a variety of different sizes, you would choose “Generic,” which tells the software to crop wherever it sees a difference between the edge of the material and the background. “Padding” can be used to give those images a border.

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The Digital Production Center’s Phase One camera system.

Because Capture One utilizes raw files, the auto crops are non-destructive edits. One benefit of this is that if your background color is close to the color of your material, you can temporarily adjust the contrast of the photograph in order to darken the edges of the object, thus enhancing the delineation between object and background.  Next apply the auto crop, which will be more successful due to it’s ability to recognize the newly-defined edges of the material. After the crops are applied, you can reverse the contrast adjustment, thus returning the images to their original state, while still keeping the newly-generated crops.

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Temporarily increasing the contrast of your images can help the auto crop feature find the edges of the object.

Like a lot of technological advances, reliable auto cropping seemed like a fantasy just a few years ago, but is now a reality. It doesn’t work perfectly every time, and quality control is still necessary to uncover errors, but it’s a big step forward. The only thing disconcerting is the larger question facing our society. How long will it be before our work is completely automated, and humans are left behind?

Indiana Jones and The Greek Manuscripts

One of my favorite movies as a youngster was Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” It’s non-stop action as the adventurous Indiana Jones criss-crosses the globe in an exciting yet dangerous race against the Nazis for possession of the Ark of the Covenant. According to the Book of Exodus, the Ark is a golden chest which contains the original stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments are inscribed, the moral foundation for both Judiasm and Christianity. The Ark is so powerful that it single-handedly destroys the Nazis and then turns Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford into billionaires. Countless sequels, TV shows, theme-park rides and merchandise follow.

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Greek manuscript 94, binding consists of heavily decorated repoussé silver over leather.

Fast-forward several decades, and I am asked to digitize Duke Libraries’ Kenneth Willis Clark Collection of Greek Manuscripts. Although not quite as old as the Ten Commandments, this is an amazing collection of biblical texts dating all the way back to the 9th century. These are weighty volumes, hand-written using ancient inks, often on animal-skin parchment. The bindings are characterized as Byzantine, and often covered in leathers like goatskin, sometimes with additional metal ornamentation. Although I have not had to run from giant boulders, or navigate a pit of snakes, I do feel a bit like Indiana Jones when holding one of these rare, ancient texts in my hands. I’m sure one of these books must house a secret code that can bestow fame and fortune, in addition to the obvious eternal salvation.

Before digitization, Senior Conservator Erin Hammeke evaluates the condition of each Greek manuscript, and rules out any that are deemed too fragile to digitize. Some are considered sturdy enough, but still need repairs, so Erin makes the necessary fixes. Once a manuscript is given the green light for digitization, I carefully place it in our book cradle so that it cannot be opened beyond a 90-degree angle. This helps protect our fragile bound materials from unnecessary stress on the binding. Next, the aperture, exposure, and focus are carefully adjusted on our Phase One P65+ digital camera so that the numerical values of our X-rite color calibration target, placed on top of the manuscript, match the numerical readings shown on our calibrated monitors.

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Greek manuscript 101, with X-Rite color calibration target, secured in book cradle.

As the photography begins, each page of the manuscript is carefully turned by hand, so that a new image can be made of the following page. This is a tedious process, but requires careful concentration so the pages are consistently captured throughout each volume. Right-hand (recto) pages are captured first, in succession. Then the volume is turned over, so that the left-hand (verso) pages can be captured. I can’t read Greek, but it’s fascinating to see the beauty of the calligraphy, and view the occasional illustrations that appear on some pages. Sometimes, I discover that moths, beetles or termites have bored through the pages over time. It’s interesting to speculate as to which century this invasive destruction may have occurred. Perhaps the Nazis from the Indiana Jones movies traveled back in time, and placed the insects there?

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Greek manuscript 101, showing insect damage.

Once the photography is complete, the recto and verso images are processed and then interleaved to recreate the left-right page order of the original manuscript. Next, the images go through a quality-control process in which any extraneous background area is cropped out, and each page is checked for clarity and consistent color and illumination. After that, another round of quality control insures that no pages are missing, or out of order. Finally, the images are converted to Pyramid TIFF files, which allow our web site users to zoom out and see all the pages at once, or zoom in to see maximum detail of any selected page. 38 Greek manuscripts are ready for online viewing now, and many more are coming soon. Stay tuned for the exciting sequel: “Indiana Jones and Even More Greek Manuscripts.”

Midnight in the Garden of Film and Video

A few weeks ago, archivists, engineers, students and vendors from across the globe arrived in the historic city of Savannah, GA for AMIA 2014. The annual conference for The Association of Moving Image Archivists is a gathering of professionals who deal with the challenge of preserving motion picture film and videotape content for future generations. Since today is Halloween, I must also point out that Savannah is a really funky city that is haunted! The downtown area is filled with weeping willow trees, well-preserved 19th century architecture and creepy cemeteries dating back to the U.S. Civil and Revolutionary wars. Savannah is almost as scary as a library budget meeting.

The bad moon rises over Savannah City Hall.
The bad moon rises over Savannah City Hall.

Since many different cultural heritage institutions are digitizing their collections for preservation and online access, it’s beneficial to develop universal file standards and best practices. For example, organizations like NARA and FADGI have contributed to the universal adoption of the 8-bit uncompressed TIFF file format for (non-transmissive) still image preservation. Likewise, for audio digitization, 24-bit uncompressed WAV has been universally adopted as the preservation standard. In other words, when it comes to still image and audio digitization, everyone is driving down the same highway. However, at AMIA 2014, it was apparent there are still many different roads being taken in regards to moving image preservation, with some potential traffic jams ahead. Are you frightened yet? You should be!

The smallest known film gauge: 3mm. Was it designed by ancient druids?
The smallest known film gauge: 3mm. Was it built by ancient druids?

Up until now, two file formats have been competing for dominance for moving image preservation: 10-bit uncompressed (.mov or .avi wrapper) vs. Motion JPEG2000 (MXF wrapper). The disadvantage of uncompressed has always been its enormous file size. Motion JPEG2000 incorporates lossless compression, which can reduce file sizes by 50%, but it’s expensive to implement, and has limited interoperability with most video software and players. At AMIA 2014, some were championing the use of a newer format, FFV1, a lossless codec that has compression ratios similar to JPEG2000, but is open source, and thus more widely adoptable. It is part of the FFmpeg software project. Adoption of FFV1 is growing, but many institutions are still heavily invested in 10-bit uncompressed or Motion JPEG2000. Which format will become the preservation standard, and which will become ghosts that haunt us forever?!?

Another emerging need is for content management systems that can store and provide public access to digitized video. The Hydra repository solution is being adopted by many institutions for managing preservation video files. In conjunction with Hydra, many are also adopting Avalon to provide public access for online viewing of video content. Like FFmpeg, both Hydra and Avalon are open source, which is part of their appeal. Others are building their own systems, catered specifically to their own needs, like The Museum of Modern Art. There are also competing metadata standards. For example, PBCore has been adopted by many public television stations, but is generally disliked by libraries. In fact, they find it really creepy!

A new print of Peter Pan was shown at AMIA 2014
A new print of Peter Pan was shown at AMIA 2014. That movie gave me nightmares as a child.

Finally, there is the thorny issue of copyright. Once file formats are chosen and delivery systems are in place, methods must be implemented to control access by only those intended, to protect copyright and hinder piracy. The Avalon Media System enables rights and access control to video content via guest passwords. The Library of Congress works around some of these these issues another way, by setting up remote viewing rooms in Washington, DC, which are connected via fiber-optic cable to their Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va. Others, with more limited budgets, like Dino Everett at USC Cinematic Arts, watermark their video, upload it to sites like Vimeo, and implement temporary password protection, canceling the passwords manually after a few weeks. I mean, is there anything more frightening than a copyright lawsuit? Happy Halloween!

Digitization Details: Thunderbolts, Waveforms & Black Magic

The technology for digitizing analog videotape is continually evolving. Thanks to increases in data transfer-rates and hard drive write-speeds, as well as the availability of more powerful computer processors at cheaper price-points, the Digital Production Center recently decided to upgrade its video digitization system. Funding for the improved technology was procured by Winston Atkins, Duke Libraries Preservation Officer. Of all the materials we work with in the Digital Production Center, analog videotape has one of the shortest lifespans. Thus, it is high on the list of the Library’s priorities for long-term digital preservation. Thanks, Winston!

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Thunderbolt is leaving USB in the dust.

Due to innovative design, ease of use, and dominance within the video and filmmaking communities, we decided to go with a combination of products designed by Apple Inc., and Blackmagic Design. A new computer hardware interface recently adopted by Apple and Blackmagic, called Thunderbolt, allows the the two companies’ products to work seamlessly together at an unprecedented data-transfer speed of 10 Gigabits per second, per channel. This is much faster than previously available interfaces such as Firewire and USB. Because video content incorporates an enormous amount of data, the improved data-transfer speed allows the computer to capture the video signal in real time, without interruption or dropped frames.

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Blackmagic design converts the analog video signal to SDI (serial digital interface).

Our new data stream works as follows. Once a tape is playing on an analog videotape deck, the output signal travels through an Analog to SDI (serial digital interface) converter. This converts the content from analog to digital. Next, the digital signal travels via SDI cable through a Blackmagic SmartScope monitor, which allows for monitoring via waveform and vectorscope readouts. A veteran television engineer I know will talk to you for days regarding the physics of this, but, in layperson terms, these readouts let you verify the integrity of the color signal, and make sure your video levels are not too high (blown-out highlights) or too low (crushed shadows). If there is a problem, adjustments can be made via analog video signal processor or time-base corrector to bring the video signal within acceptable limits.

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Blackmagic’s SmartScope allows for monitoring of the video’s waveform. The signal must stay between 0 and 700 (left side) or clipping will occur, which means you need to get that videotape to the emergency room, STAT!

Next, the video content travels via SDI cable to a Blackmagic Ultrastudio interface, which converts the signal from SDI to Thunderbolt, so it can now be recognized by a computer. The content then travels via Thunderbolt cable to a 27″ Apple iMac utilizing a 3.5 GHz Quad-core processor and NVIDIA GeForce graphics processor. Blackmagic’s Media Express software writes the data, via Thunderbolt cable, to a G-Drive Pro external storage system as a 10-bit, uncompressed preservation master file. After capture, editing can be done using Apple’s Final Cut Pro or QuickTime Pro. Compressed Mp4 access derivatives are then batch-processed using Apple’s Compressor software, or other utilities such as MPEG-Streamclip. Finally, the preservation master files are uploaded to Duke’s servers for long-term storage. Unless there are copyright restrictions, the access derivatives will be published online.

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Video digitization happens in real time. A one-hour tape is digitized in, well, one hour, which is more than enough Bob Hope jokes for anyone.

Digitization Details: Bringing Duke Living History Into Your Future

Recently, I digitized 123 videotapes from the Duke University Living History Program. Beginning in the early 1970’s, Duke University faculty members conducted interviews with prominent world leaders, politicians and activists. The first interviews were videotaped in Perkins Library at a time when video was groundbreaking technology, almost a decade before consumer-grade VCRs starting showing up in people’s living rooms. Some of the interviews begin with a visionary introduction by Jay Rutherfurd, who championed the program:

“At the W. R. Perkins library, in Duke University, we now commit this exciting experiment in electronic journalism into your future. May it illuminate well, educate wisely, and relate meaningfully, for future generations.”

Clearly, the “future” that Mr. Rutherfurd envisioned has arrived. Thanks to modern technology, we can now create digital surrogates of these videotaped interviews for long-term preservation and access. The subjects featured in this collection span a variety of generations, nationalities, occupations and political leanings. Interviewees include Les Aspin, Ellsworth Bunker, Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook, Joseph Banks Rhine, Jesse Jackson, Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, King Mihai of Romania, Terry Sanford, Judy Woodruff, Angier Biddle Duke and many more. The collection also includes videotapes of speeches given on the Duke campus by Ronald Reagan, Abbie Hoffman, Bob Dole, Julian Bond and Elie Wiesel.

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Residue wiped off the head of a U-matic playback deck, the result of sticky-shed syndrome.

Many of the interviews were recorded on 3/4″ videotape, also called “U-matic.” Invented by Sony in 1969, the U-matic format was the first videotape to be housed inside a plastic cassette for portability, and would soon replace film as the primary television news-gathering format. Unfortunately, most U-matic tapes have not aged well. After decades in storage, many of the videotapes in our collection now have sticky-shed syndrome, a condition in which the oxide that holds the visual content is literally flaking off the polyester tape base, and is gummy in texture. When a videotape has sticky-shed, not only will it not play correctly, the residue can also clog up the tape heads in the U-matic playback deck, then transfer the contaminant to other tapes played afterwards in the same deck. A U-matic videotape player in good working order is now an obsolete collector’s item, and our tapes are fragile, so we came up with a solution: throw those tapes in the oven!

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After baking, the cookies (I mean U-matic videotapes) are ready for digitization!

At first that may sound reckless, but baking audio and videotapes at relatively low temperatures for an extended period of time is a well-tested method for minimizing the effects of sticky-shed syndrome. The Digital Production Center recently acquired a scientific oven, and after initial testing, we baked each Duke Living History U-matic videotape at 52 celsius (125 fahrenheit) for about 10 hours. Baking the videotapes temporarily removed the moisture that had accumulated in the binder, and made them playable for digitization. About 90% of our U-matic tapes played well after baking. Many of them were unplayable beforehand.

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The Digital Production Center’s video rack and routing system.

After giving the videotapes time to cool down, we digitize each tape, in real time, as an uncompressed  file (.mov) for long-term preservation. Afterwards, we make a smaller, compressed version (.mp4) of the same recording, which is our access copy. Our U-matic decks are housed in an efficiently-designed rack system, which also includes other obsolete videotape formats like VHS, Betacam and Hi8. Centralized audio and video routers allow us to quickly switch between formats while ensuring a clean, balanced and accurate conversion from analog to digital. Combining the art of analog tape baking with modern video digitization, the Digital Production Center is able to rescue the content from the videotapes, before the magnetic tape ages and degrades any further. While the U-matic tapes are nearing the end of their life-span, the digital surrogates will potentially last for centuries to come. We are able to benefit from Mr. Rutherfurd’s exciting experiment into our future, and carry it forward… into your future. May it illuminate well, educate wisely, and relate meaningfully, for future generations.

 

Post contributed by Alex Marsh