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"Certainly the Danube sometimes is blue..."
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The International Federation of Television Archives
World Conference in Vienna 2000
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| This article was originally published in the spring 2001 issue of the
Svenska Arkivsamfundets Tidskrift (Journal of the Swedish Archivist Society).
This version for the FIAT/IFTA Newsletter has since been slightly updated
by the author and all illustrations added. |
When an event is taking place in Vienna of all places, there are more
than  one
allusion to well known pieces of music that comes across you trying to
create some local color. But when the International Federation of Television
Archives now actually held of its annual World Conferences, October 15-18
2000, there the sun was shining all days from an absolutely clear blue
sky, reflecting itself in the usually mud brown Danube. Maybe there is "Wien,
Wien nur Du allein", that welcomes its guests in such a magnificent way
with a mellow late summer weather after weeks of rain and cold and an overall "gloomy" political
climate (the discussion on the Austrian Ultra Right Wing taking seat in
the government). And of course the conference started smoothly the night
before the official opening, as it should being the Capital of Music, with
a musical reception in one of the ballrooms of the magnificent palace of
Schžnbrunn! |
 The
actual conference venue was no less imperial, but the Park Hotel Schžnbrunn,
conveniently within walking distance of the Palace. This hotel is said
to have been built by the Emperor Franz Josef at the turning of the 20th
Century to house those of his guests who could not be accommodated at the
Palace. Because of that, all rooms of public access are decorated with
portraits of the Imperial couple Frans Josef and Elisabeth from different
times of their reign, not the least the Grand Ballroom, which was the main
venue of the conference. Local host this time was the Austrian public service
broadcaster ORF.
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"Content is King, Metadata is Queen and Archiving reigns over all"
 The
main theme of the conference this time was "Media Asset Management for
the 21st Century" . The sub theme - "Content is King, Metadata is Queen
and Archiving reigns over all - was actually more serious than only an
allusion to the physical surroundings the conference happened to acquire.
The theme is applicable to Television, as well as the Internet and Database
Hosts, WAP-services on the GSM-net, not to forget the new generation‚s
mobile network. If you can‚t offer a wide range of information and other
services you are out of the competition. "Content is King"quite simply
and for the foreseeable future. In the light of this, techniques and philosophies
to handle, store and communicate content will be extremely interesting
and that is very much what this conference also was about: "Metadata is
Queen and Archiving reigns over all ". |
 An
attempt to describe the almost overwhelming concentration on the competence
of a working field that is at hand for a short period of time and presented
is of course not easily done. It has been the liberty of mine to put the
spotlight on some items in the programme that I feel are representative.
Again I want to emphasize, that items and speakers left out is nothing
else but my subjective selection.
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The International Television Archive Wards goes to Chile
A very obvious expression for "Content is King" part is the FIAT/IFTA
Television Archive Award that is handed out at the world conferences. It
is awarded to the one production in the world, that on the most excellent
way has made use of archive material in a new production transmitted for
the first time the year before. The Award for year 2000 - no less than
10.000 DM, part from the honor and valuable publicity - was this time awarded
to a Chilean production, "Nuestro Siglo" (Our Century) by Maria Elena Woods,
who in eight one hour long thematic parts gives us unique insights of the
history of a people many of us have been sharing for decades now - the
one of the Chileans. |
 It
was also the very part on Chile under the suppression of 20 year‚s fascist
military dictatorship that was chosen to represent the whole series. Especially
interesting as it was made with the ambition to let both the profiteers
of the dictatorship and the victims have a voice. Certainly a programme
that may function as a very important element in a process to heal deep
wounds in a society that has been subject to such grim experiences, to
rehabilitate a people och create a starting point for national reconciliation.
What impressed the jury was of course both the uniqueness
of the archive material in connection with the mastership of how it was
inserted to the new filmed sequences to give light to a very complex historical
process. Seldom the importance of audiovisual archives has been emphasized
as strong as in this series. |
| The Television Archive Award actually are two, because since two years
back the pre-jury who makes the short listing for the final award also
selects the winner of a special prize - "The Innovation Award". The reasons
for this award is to especially give attention to innovative use of audiovisual
archive material in a new production. The award was this time given to
a young producer of the Norwegian NRK, Einar Gjaerevold, for his production "´ra
vare vƒdret" (Honour to the Weather). It is illustrated mainly with archive
material, giving us a vivid picture of the Norwegian people‚s special relation
to their weather. I‚m sure most us should feel acquainted with it. At the
same time he succeeds to deliver a great amount of knowledge to his audience
about weather on the whole as well as a lot of cultural history. |
Keynote speech - Do we have a future as Archivists?
 The
keynote speech was this time delivered by the manager of the BBC
Media Data group, Carol Owens, under the slightly provoking heading "The
future for Archives and Archivists - positive or gloomy?". She
started out presenting a classical "SWOT analysis" (Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) on what the situation might
be today and what kind of future we are facing, i.e. if we are
working within the audiovisual archiving sector |
| In the square of our Strengths she especially pointed out that
we represent decades the profound knowledge in information science, that
we also dispose of a deep rooted and well defined terminology and are able
to always present an unbeatable effective search result. Add to that a
unique knowledge about the collections we handle. But this also, at the
same time, requires specialists competence and you may only be able to
cover a small part of constantly growing collections. |
 In
the "Threats" square you could of course find as the overlapping
subject various "Media Management Systems". Visible already now is the
development towards systems for automated logging of pictures, as well
as automated searches with the help of image recognition down to the level
of persons and objects. There are also systems for automated transfer of
sound-to-text. We can see systems where metadata is produced already in
the production phase. That goes especially for media production as television
and the web. But above all, a growing part of the systems development for
metadata handling goes on outside the traditional archival organizations. |
Among our opportunities there are "the entire hungry world out there" of
broad band, 24 hour television, WAP and all the on-line services. All the
media crying for content.
She firmly believes that we are the ones who has got
the opportunities to take care of the digital heritage. And we are
the ones with the overview of the Media Asset Management-process, from
research and editorial work to reuse of archive material and distribution
of content to different kind of consumers. She returned several times to
that in this process "Archiving is the hub"!
Sure there are weaknesses in the future scenario of ours, as hostile
attitudes toward technique, lack of continuing standardization and integration,
expensive specialization and generally a passive attitude towards changes.
Will the Sun shine on us in the future or will it rain?
According to Carol Owens it depends on if we understand that the role of
the Archives is steadily changing within the media organizations, if we
are ready when the opportunities turn up, if we control the technique or
will be controlled by it. For the future Ms Owens definitely believes in
the "Sun alternative". |
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EBU-projects - Metadata
 With
such spectacular views for the future it was only to start to dig into
the very rich programme, especially on the area of Metadata. A number
of presentations and lectures focused on this, for example the number
of projects within the EBU cooperation framework and where several FIAT/IFTA-members
participate in their double capacities. Especially in the project "P/META:
Metadata".
Carol Owens again, sketched in her seemingly
simple pedagogically way, the map on the area of Metadata. What information
do we agree we speak about? What standard terms do we need to define?
She made comparisons with the English language as increasingly dominating
standard language of conferences. Is it possible to create a similar "lingua
franca" of Metadata? What do we need for the exchange and communication
of Metadata?
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Andreas Ebner of the German research institute IRT dwelled very much
at the latter problems. On how to design Metadata for the transfer of for
example digital video in different layouts.
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EBU-project P/FTA - Future Television Archives
 Still
another of the extensive EBU-projects presented was the "P/FTA
- Future Television Archives". How shall we manage to transfer
the audiovisual heritage from one format to the other at the same
time as the collections increase at a never Ending pace? The project
aims at finding guidelines for how to automatize this process,
where the "last stage" should be a format independent digital storage.
One of the speakers (technician), Ed Zvaneweld of the Canadian
National Film Board wanted especially to emphasize the process
approach in this. It is of greatest importance the users, in this
case the archive people, define the functional demands of the technique
based on their needs. Otherwise they will be subject to technical
solutions dictated by the technicians. We have to establish a process
where communication is the most important element.
I became rather delighted by his condensed description
of the development the archival work has passed: Traditionally archivists
has always been appreciated for their good memory, fast fingers browsing
a card catalogue, speedy feet and high resistance to dust. When the computers
arrived the archivist‚s memory was turned into databases, the research
started to be performed by data software and delivery of the result was
made through networks. This way brain power, hands and feet have been set
free for new assignments - planning, decisionmaking and handling of the
survival of the content of archives. And for the development of work processes
for research, retrieval and publication of content on different media! |
J€rgen Heitmann of German AV Media Technology, that also participates
in this very ambitious project, tried to define the most important technical
elements of a future audiovisual archive:
- digital video recordings or data registering to avoid
loss of information
- computerization and automatization of both content
and carriers
- networks, to make functions as catalogues, archives
and user access independent of place.
But he actually started with underlining the importance
of making the content of archives accessible in the meaning reused - "turn
the archives into libraries"! Another fundamental idea in his lecture was
to make it perfectly clear that it is the content of the archive, the actual
information, that has to be preserved, not the carrier. That leads to statement
that a carrier is never to leave the archive, only the information. Understanding
that a carrier always has a limited life span depending on a number of
known and unknown factors. Ironically he remarked, that if we carved on
stone, we would be much better off in this sense. But today there is no
manufacturer who would guarantee a certain life span of their carriers.
And that goes for hardware and software as well.
With the help of an arithmetical problem he guided us
to his conclusion. If an archive say comprises of 250.000 videotapes the
current knowledge of preservation demands us to run the tapes at least
every fifth year. That makes 1000 tapes/week and 200 tapes/day to be carried
and lifted and mounted into some equipment, part from this equipment has
to be maintained and quality checked. Add a steady increase of new material.
That is impossible manually. The solution is "Migration Management", where
you systematically and continuously monitor parallel transfer of content
and hardware and software technology.
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What are the needs of archive customers?
Even if "Metadata" was the buzzword of this conference, there were also
many interesting items on the use of archives, for example the panel of
producers, whos‚s programmes were short listed for the Archive Award. The
discussion had the very apt heading "Producer‚s needs in a digital environment",
also following the call of the technicians earlier at the conference to
the archivists to take lead and power over the archives of the future.
The programme makers were very anxious to say how much they needed the
dialogue with the archive people. And that despite of how sophisticated
solutions we may offer in the future and how much routine research we can
relieve them of. Can we ask for more appreciation as archivists!
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EU-projects
 Several
sophisticated solutions were presented as reports on a number of EU projects
going on and where many broadcasters also are involved:
- PRESTO, Preservation Technology for Broadcast Archives,
aiming at developing new and more effective preservation technology in
a situation whit soaring costs and collection volumes. Main contributors
are BBC (UK), INA (France) and RAI (Italy) with a competent usergroup of
broadcasters backing. In all projects of this type also technique developers
are important elements, since these projects hopefully shall arrive at
exploitable systems and products for a market.
- AMICITIA - aiming at developing automated digitizing
of content and multilingual access.
- PRIMAVERA - advanced analyses of content. Intended
to be linked with the results of AMICITIA.
- ECHO, European Chronicles On-line - makes the content
of large archives accessible via Internet and coordinates the information
especially on historic documentaries (also in the form of automatically
produced summaries on video). The coordination will be based on elements
as common agreed metadata, automated indexing and multilingual indexing.
Technical solutions of earlier EU projects as Euromedia will be used.
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Television Archives of the World
 The
massive representation of EU and EBU projects may easily hide the
fact that FIAT/IFTA is a worldwide federation. But the latter was
anyway well reflected in the vivid activity of workshops parallel
to the plenary sessions. A hardworking Spanish-speaking regional
work group for the Latin American archives within FIAT/IFTA was
following up the result of last year‚s world conference in Santiago
de Chile. The cornerstone of a second Latin American regional conference
in the history of FIAT/IFTA was laid. It is scheduled to take place
in Mexico City in November 2001.
The president of FIAT/IFTA Peter Dusek had before this
year‚s conference taken the initiative to a project called "Endangered
Archives". It is aiming at creating a basis for preserving these archives.
A considerable part of the sponsor‚s contributions to the conference will
make possible a transfer of know-how, for example participating in conferences
like this one.
But these efforts also is about finding material that
rightfully should be included in the collections of these archives, material
on the history that today only are in the possession of the archives of
the former colonial powers. A couple of workshops was about this kind of
material, for example "African Newsreels in Belgium" and "Kenya Newsreels
produced in Vienna". Also to note, soon there will be the very first FIAT/IFTA
training seminar in Africa.
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TV-Archives in the 24-hour news production
There was of course also a number of more down-to-earth
workshops on the programme, as "Ways and ideas to use archives in 24-hour
news production projects". 24-hour news today are not only the business
of CNN. How if affects the operations of TV-Archives, the Head of the
Czech TV Archives Vit Charous told us about. There were also contributions
on the topic by Sue Malden of BBC, Birgitte Rathsach of Danmarks Radio
and Alicia Conesa of TV Catalonia in Barcelona.
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The vital role of TV-Archives
That the archives if the media organizations of today
are having a increasingly vital role shows for example the contributions
by Santiago Martinez Nušez from the commercial Spanish broadcaster Telecinco, "Telecinco,
the real convergence of technologies" and the Portuguese counterpart
SIC, "From production to 'paperless' and 'tapeless' audiovisual archiving:
system's compatibility"by Ana Franqueira. SIC is the first commercial
station in Portugal, broadcasting in five channels: SIC International
that is the cable and satellite channel for Portuguese abroad, one channel
based entirely on archive material, one sports channel, one web channel
and one 24-hour news. It may be noticed that these two Iberian projects
still are at the project stage. |
| Brian Lynch and Brid Dooley of the RT¡ in Dublin gave a vivid overview
on their "RTE Archive Project 1996-2002. Stages in Transforming a Legacy
Archive". It was interesting hearing about a project taking a total hold
of the complete archiving scene: documents, radio and television. Very
ambitious - and costly, but also revealing the fact that investments in
archiving pays off positively in everything from new programming and reruns
to commercial exploitation. For a relatively young nation like the Irish
Republic the preservation of the national heritage on all levels plays
an important role for funding. |
 It
was not without pride I was sitting down to listen to my colleagues Eva-Lis
Green and Johan Svƒrd of the Tevearkivet at SVT. They could show an all
digitized archiving solution for the 24-hour news channel SVT24. Not less
interesting since it to a extent is based on standardized platforms and
systems available on the market, through the whole process. It is worth
mentioning, in comparison with other systems presented at the conference,
that SVT at this stage is world unique in having a complete and functioning
system in daily production since some time!
The process is built around the AVID mediaserver, containing
up to 48 hours of high resolution video and an IBM tape robot system. Using
BRS as catalogue system there is an easily accessible html user interface.
Video compression standard is DVC-Pro 25, the server platform is Unix and
the network standard TCP-IP/Ethernet.
Via searching the SVT-catalogue you can play the retrieved
scene directly on your desktop PC. Of course you can download the item
in whatever resolution you want, for insertion and editing in a new news
item. And this is possible from any part of the SVT network all over Sweden.
What differs the SVT solution on the system level is
above all the decision in the handling of Metadata. Many systems presented
at the conference - and still not operative in all aspects - are built
on Metadata embedded in the file, while SVT instead has chosen to link
this kind of information. One of advantages with that is a greater level
of platform independency.
From the user‚s point of view this may seem to be a matter of "splitting
hair", since they don‚t ask for how the system work but that it works according
to their needs. It has attracted a lot of interested from our colleagues
around the World and the visits to the TV-building in Stockholm are frequent.
Within the SVT the system is sofar used by the SVT24 and the regional news
programmes. The real ordeal will be when the main newsroom and the Sports
starts to use it later this year.
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Scholarly access to audiovisual archives
If the organization of FIAT/IFTA is covering the whole
World, that also goes for the wide variety of working fields within audiovisual
archiving. One of the latest working bodies of the FIAT family is "the
Television Studies Work group", TSW. The aim is to develop the cooperation
with a group of users often "fenced off" from broadcast archives, the
academic scholars. Both groups, broadcast archives and scholars, has
got a lot to benefit from cooperation.
On the conference the TSW chair Steve Bryant (BFI, UK)
presented a proposal for a kind of "code of conduct", a signed contract
between archives and scholars for a certain formalized relationship. Through
respecting the special character and role of the broadcast archives (that
definitely is very much different from a public archive) the scholar will
be admitted, equipped with a personal "FIAT/IFTA academic scholar research
pass". Hopefully more academic research of the broadcast archives also
will result in a future cooperation on new programming.
In this context I would like especially to highlight
two workshop contributions made by Andris Kesteris of the National Archives
of Canada: "The Multicultural Television Context" and Mike Mashon from
Library of Congress in Washington: "Whose Broadcasting History?". Kesteris
discussed the question of who is taking the responsibility for retaining
a certain broadcast material on the whole. Mashon emphasized with his own
example that access for scholarly research definitely not is a matter of
coarse.
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Stills
 Are
still a matter of a conference on audiovisual archives, dominated
by broadcast television? Definitively and especially in a context
where the technical development implicate that handling of images
and media of all kinds tend to converge towards common systems
for all media and that organizations to a growing extent creates
multimedia archives. One interesting solution is the SVT Bild-concept
presented by Tove Kleiven. SVT has got a collection of approximately
5 million world unique historical press photos to digitize. Their
solution makes it possible to retrieve the stills via a html interface
and then download it in whatever resolution you wish, from the
low resolution-use at the web to the requirements of quality printing.
Distribution is made through communication available, modem or
broadband. |
Opportunities of the future Did the conference start with a discussion
on the future of archives, that was also the closing-of-the-conference-theme.
The head of BBC Information & Archives, Paul Fiander, stated that archives
and archivist risks to be passed by the technical development if the don‚t
actively choose to include it. We also have to be aware of that the soaring
costs for traditional archiving are a real threat. He also put the traditional
role of archives with preservation and care of the collections, cataloguing
and the function as the intermediary between content and user in contradiction
to a necessary new role. It is dictated by shrinking resources for the
traditional role, digitizing of entire production processes within media,
new technique, a greater extent of user‚s "self-service" and an even intensified
cost-consiousness. As a simple illustration he showed the influx of news
at the BBC. 1993/94 it was approximately 5.000 hours, 1999/00 it was 51.000
hours!
Where is the solution? Catch the opportunities the new
technique represent, "Media Asset Management" is the future! New work processes
will be dominating. Basic skills for the future archivist are information
and content management. Reuse will be the dominating driving force for
investments in the archiving area. The alternative is being museum and
only passively witness what is happening, according to Paul Fiander.
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Lasse Nilsson Project manager, SVT Production & IT/Archives
lasse.nilsson@svt.se
About the Author:
 Working
with the Sveriges Television AB since 1976 as Archivist, Manager
of the Television Archives Documentation & Research Dept.,
today Project manager and Producer of Archive
Programming.
Has been working actively for FIAT/IFTA since
1990 in the capacities as Chair Programming & Production Commissionj,
Member of the Executive Council and Secretaqry General. Today member
of the Television Studies Work group.
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Dictionary of some words and abbreviations used in the article:
BRS - database and retrieval software
DVC Pro - digital video format developed by Panasonic
EBU - European Broadcasting
Union Ethernet - Network protocol
and standard for network communication.
Information carrier - in
this article film, different formats
of magnetic tape, CD-discs, computer
hard discs etc.
HTML - Hypertext Markup Language,
standard for structuring information
on web pages,
Hardware - computers, video
players etc.
Media Asset Management - systematized
handling and realization of media assets.
Differs from organization to organization,
here it should be understood as programme
content such as moving images, sound,
stills, texts and intermediary form
of these, and rights.
Metadata - data on data, or
information that describes data as
content, form, technical and editorial
units of information that are created,
used, edited and distributed in a network.
In TV-programme it could consist of
data file names, a technical analysis
of the structure, picture description
and indexing, description of rights.
To read on this topic: Annemieke de Jong: Metadata in
the audiovisual production environment, FIAT/IFTA och Nederlands Audiovisuel
Archief, 2000.
Software - computer programmes
TCP/IP - standard for data communication on the Internet
UNIX - operative system for
computers characterized by its open
structure. Mostly used by computer
programmers.
WAP - Wireless Application Protocol,
standard for information transfer on
the GSM-net
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EDITORS: Tedd Johansen, FIAT/IFTA c/o NRK NO-0340 Oslo, Norway
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