Video Formats

Introduction

Harvard Library collections include video assets in a variety of formats that will be preserved in the Library’s preservation and access repository - the Digital Repository Service (DRS). As a first step towards providing support for this material in the DRS, the Library contracted AVPreserve in early 2014 to assist with the analysis. The goals of the analysis were:

Recommended video formats to accept and prefer for the DRS
Recommended technical metadata schema(s) to use for video file formats
DRS content models for these objects
Recommendations for enhancing Harvard Library’s FITS tool to better support these objects

The driving principles of this work were to:

Provide interoperability with the existing metadata schemas and workflows of the DRS
Provide sufficient metadata for long-term preservation of video objects
Adhere to existing standards where possible
Propose simpler models over more complex ones where possible

Specifically the analysis was conducted in three areas: formats, metadata and tools. The work is ongoing. The deliverables from this analysis are included on this page.

Format Analysis

Document

Description

Authors

Video Format Matrix

This spreadsheet compares Video formats according to preservation criteria (shown in the first column).
The cells are shaded to visually represent the value for the format (green is good, yellow is neutral, red is bad)

Andrea Goethals

David Ackerman

Video Objects

This document outlines the structure of the Video Content Model and related objects for DRS.

Andrea Goethals

David Ackerman

Metadata Analysis

Document	Description	Authors

Tool Analysis and Testing

Document	Description	Authors

Other Resources

Document	Description	Authors