FIAT/IFTA

World

Conference

2016 - Warsaw

Digital preservation infrastructure: providing new opportunities for preservation, access and beyond…

Charles Fairall

Head of Conservation

British Film Institute

Unlocking Film Heritage

Digital Past

Over a decade of digital workflow at the BFI National Archive

• Audio came first

• Digital Operations team created

• Arriscan film scanner

• For-A LTO-5 recorders

• LTO tapes stored on vault shelves

Digital Present

In-house, end-to-end capability for digitisation of BFI National Archive collections

Film scanner

• High volume, high fidelity scanning (2k)

• Safe handling of delicate film

• Continuous motion (not single frame)

• Inherent image stabilisation

• Compliments the Archive’s existing digitisation tools

Digital

Capability

Film image

Digital

Capability

Sound

Soundtrack scanner

ProTools

• Capture high quality digital image of the soundtrack

• Uses image processing and software to remove defects –dust, scratches

• Generate digital audio file

• Digitise sound directly from positive and negative film

• ProTools for editing and restoration

Digital

Capability

Post-production

Grading, editing and finishing workstations

• Grading software with grain management

• Precision panel provides intuitive user interface

• Reference picture monitor guarantees image fidelity

• Clipster creates files for Digital Cinema distribution, BFI Player and range of file types

Digital

Preservation

Infrastructure

New technology to

digitise, ingest, preserve and provide access to BFI National Archive digital collections

How did we do it?

• Peer review

• Consultation with colleagues and partners

• Requirements Document

• Competitive Dialogue Procurement

Digital

Preservation

Infrastructure

Digital

Preservation

Infrastructure

Environment

Data centre

• Secure access control

• Gas fire suppression

• Cooling and aircon

• Uninterruptible power supply (UPS)

• 10Gb fibre connectivity

Digital

Preservation

Infrastructure

Access storage

Instant access storage for viewing copies, and work-in-progress

• Instant playback of viewing copies in web browser

• Safe storage of work-in-progress for digital operations

• Hugely scaleable (700TB now, but scales to 20PB)

• High performance and speed (200 GB per second)

Digital

Preservation

Infrastructure

Long-term

archive data

storage

• Two copies of preservation files, geographically separated

• Open and enterprise tape types to achieve both archival resilience and performance

• Eliminates manual handling

• High capacity, low cost-per-GB

• Fast, durable, robust

• Self-migrating to successive tape formats in roadmap

Digital

Preservation

Infrastructure

Ingest + access

Media Asset Management (MAM)

• Give access to viewing copies in web browser to BFI staff

• Integrate with CID

• Ingest from DPI workstations

• Automatically create viewing copies and thumbnails

• Permissions based access to master preservation files

Transforming

the Archive

Charles Fairall

Head of Conservation

BFI National Archive

Unlocking Film Heritage