IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2014 - 44

it leaves many technical details up to the end user, which leads to
many different interpretations and implementations as well as a
proliferation of proprietary and nonstandard formats. These days,
the digital images moviemakers create can be recorded using any
one of a dozen or more file formats and color-encoding schemes.
The result of all that variety is reduced efficiency, increased costs,
and degraded image quality, because everyone in the production
if This siTuaTion sounds ominous, iT is. True, the cost per
chain has to play "guess the format."
bit of digital storage has dropped dramatically over the last three
ACES aims to eliminate the ambiguity of today's file formats. In
decades: A gigabyte of storage 30 years ago might have run you
simple terms, selected raw footage gets converted into the ACES
a couple hundred thousand dollars; these days, it's mere penformat, which renders it clearly interpretable at any later step in
nies. And there's reason to believe that advances in automation
the moviemaking process, including the addition of visual effects,
will lower labor costs, while advances in energy efficiency will
postproduction, and mastering. And it yields a usable archival
reduce power bills.
master in a digital form.
But once you're on the technology treadmill,
ACES is currently being used in many motion
it is impossible to get off. For large collections
pictures, blockbusters and small films alike. It's
of important or valuable digital data-not just
also being adopted in television production, bemotion pictures but news footage, scientific
measurements, governmental records, and
cause it produces higher quality images than do
our own personal collections-today's digital
HDTV standards. Equipment manufacturers and
storage technologies simply do not work to enpostproduction and visual-effects facilities are
also adopting it and participating in the ongosure their survival for future generations. The
uncertain state of digital preservation is such
ing refinement of the system. And the Society
that most major studios continue to archive
of Motion Picture and Television Engineers has
their movies by transferring them to separate,
already published five ACES standards docublack-and-white polyester-based film negatives,
ments, with more on the way.
one each for red, green, and blue. This is the
The academy has also mounted what
case even for those works that are born digital.
we call the Digital Motion Picture Archive
Three years ago, Dominic Case of Australia's
Framework Project. As part of that effort, we
National Film and Sound Archive made the
created in partnership with the Library of
following observation, which still holds true:
Congress an experimental system for manBorn digiTal: The 2011
"Even if we could switch to a low-cost, lowaging a 20-terabyte digital movie, plus 76 TB
feature The Girl with the
maintenance, secure digital solution tomorof
related material. Given that there were no
Dragon Tattoo was produced
commercial products for performing such a
row, we'd still need our film collection to last
entirely in digital format. But
for archiving purposes, such
task, the project team adapted various pieces
for 100 years, because it would take that long
digital works are transferred
of open-source software. We called the resultto transfer everything onto it."
to color-separated, blackThe good news is that there is a lot of work
ing package ACeSS, for Academy Case Study
and-white negative film,
because there's still no other
being done to raise awareness of the risk of
System, which we continue to use and learn
way to preserve such alldigital decay generally and to try to reduce its
from. Among the things we discovered from
digital works.
occurrence. The Library of Congress, active
that exercise is the crucial role of metadata
in this area for many years, is leading these
for maintaining long-term access to digital
efforts through its National Digital Stewardmaterials. That is, the information that gets
stored needs to include a description of its contents, its format,
ship Alliance. The Data Conservancy, headquartered at Johns
what hardware and software were used to create it, how it was
Hopkins University's Sheridan Libraries, is similarly working on
encoded, and other detailed "data about the data." And digital
solutions. And the National Academies' Board on Research Data
data needs to be managed forever, so the organization and its
and Information is studying digital curation as a future career
preservation processes need to be built to last.
opportunity. With these and other groups focused on digital
So what can you do to ensure your own important digital collecpreservation, the movie industry may well come up with some
workable strategies-or at least be able to find people who can.
tions don't disappear? Follow the best practices for data curation:
One promising thrust led by the motion-picture academy is the
Store multiple copies in multiple locations, regularly check the
development of format standards for digital-image files, through
health of your data, and keep your hardware, software, and file
its Academy Color Encoding System, or ACES. Work on ACES
formats up to date. And if you're an engineer or computer scibegan 10 years ago, at a time when there was no clear standard
entist up for a grand challenge, investigate ways to make the
for interchanging digitally mastered motion-picture elements.
problem of digital-information decay itself become obsolete. n
The Digital Picture Exchange or DPX file format (also known as
the SMPTE 268M-2003 standard) was and still is widely used, but
posT your commenTs at http://spectrum.ieee.org/filmarchive0314
44

mar 2014

north american

SPectrUm.ieee.orG

aF archive/alamy

upwards of 90 days. Now, a single feature-length digital motion picture generates upwards of 2 petabytes, the equivalent
of almost half a million DVDs. And worldwide, about 7000 new
feature films are released each year. So it's not hard to see why
data migration alone isn't a long-term solution.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/filmarchive0314 http://SPectrUm.ieee.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2014