Contents:
- 1. Tables
- 2. Introduction
- 3. Approach Used
- 4. Definitions Used
- 5. Analogue-Born content problems
- 6. Born-Digital Content Problems
- 6.1 Digital video tapes problems
- 6.2 Other digital carriers problems
- 6.3 Digital video transmission problems
- 6.4 Digital video files problems
- 7. System problems and mitigation procedures
- 7.1 System risks
- 7.2 Mitigation procedures
- 8. Conclusions
- 9. Glossary
This report describes a variety of ways that things that can go wrong with digital audiovisual material managed and accessed in a digital repository. It presents evidence collected on various kinds of damage and describes the impact on the material’s visual and aural properties such damage can have. After an introduction to the DAVID project in section two, section three goes on to describe the approach used for obtaining information related to data damage in the audiovisual domain. Section four presents some definitions for clarity. Section five describes the problems that can be found in digital files that were created from analogue sources. Section six documents problems identified affecting born-digital content. Section seven addresses system-originated problems, and offers some procedures that may mitigate such problems. The conclusion follows in section eight.
This report can be used for a variety of purposes. The definiton section offers a handy classification system describing damage issues, failure modes and types of loss that could be useful for archives trying to structure and maintain a controlled vocabulary list of problems to be recorded. Besides offering a good overview of the development of digital video technology and digital video file problems (in particular inter-operability problems MXF can bring with it), it presents some different conclusions than those previously found in earlier research – for example, that although Bit Rot was acknowledged as a problem, it was considered as much less critical than System-level problems; and that the worst cases of trouble and data loss in the digital domain were actually not caused by the subsystems themselves, but by the assembly within complex systems of a large number of components, e.g. Media Assets Management (MAM) systems. The chapter offering mitigation solutions is particularly welcome. This report is important reading for staff tasked with risk assessment and mitigation.