Association of Moving Image Archivists & Digital Library Federation Hack Day 2014

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>>> When, Where, What time?

  • Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2014
  • Time: ~9am-5pm (with option of continued work projects throughout the conference in our Developer Lounge TBA location)
  • Location: Hyatt Regency Savannah, Savannah, GA
  • hashtag: #AVhack14
  • IRC: #curatecamp_avpres_1 If using an IRC client the server is chat.freenode.net, or you can use your browser and connect to webchat.freenode.net. If you are unfamiliar with IRC, take a look at this ☞ brief introduction.

How can I participate?

Sign up! As this will be a highly participatory event, registration is limited to those willing to get their hands dirty, so no onlookers please.

If you are unsure whether you can or want to participate in the hack day itself, you can still see the results by attending the AMIA closing plenary, where hack day projects will be presented, and the audience will have an opportunity to vote on their favorites.

What will be the format of the event?

In advance of the hack day, project ideas and edit-a-thon topics will be collected through the registration form and the event wiki. In advance of the event, participants will review and discuss submitted project ideas. We’ll then break into groups consisting of technologists and practitioners, and Wikipedia editors, selecting an idea or topic(s) to work on together for the day and (if desired) throughout the duration of the AMIA conference in the developers lounge.

The day itself will be structured something like this. Breakfast, coffee/tea, and snacks will be provided. Lunch is on your own.

9am – Welcome, introductions, and breakfast

9:30 - noon - Hacking & Wikipedia editing. Snacks and coffee to be served.

Noon-1pm – Lunch on your own.

1 - 4:30 - Hacking & Wikipedia editing. Snacks and coffee will be served.

4:30 - 5 - Wrap up.

Closing plenary & prizes

Projects will be presented towards the end of the conference. Projects will be judged by a panel as well as by conference attendees.

Summary

In association with the annual conference, the Association of Moving Image Archivists will host its 2nd annual hack day on October 8, 2014 in Savannah, GA. The event will be a unique opportunity for practitioners and managers of digital audiovisual collections to join with developers and engineers for an intense day of collaboration to develop solutions for digital audiovisual preservation and access. This year, we will be holding a concurrent Wikipedia Edit-a-thon[1] for those interested in adding to knowledge pool about audiovisual preservation and access. It will be fun and practical.

AMIA is again partnering with the Digital Library Federation in organizing the hack day. A robust and diverse community of practitioners who advance research, teaching and learning through the application of digital library research, technology and services, DLF brings years of experience creating and hosting events designed to foster collaboration and develop shared solutions for common challenges.

What if I’m not a developer?

Content managers and preservation practitioners are as central to the success of the event as having keen developers. YOU will be responsible for setting the agenda and the outcomes. The goal is to foster collaboration between audiovisual preservation specialists and technologists, to solve problems together and share expertise.

The day will also include a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. So even if you're not a developer, nor feel compelled to lend your digital preservation ideas to software and code development, you can contribute to creating new or updated content on Wikipedia for the benefit of our community! You can read all about Wikipedia edit-a-thon events here.

Background

What is a hack day?

A hack day or hackathon is an event that brings together computer technologists and practitioners for an intense period of problem solving through computer programming. Within digital preservation and curation communities, hack days provide an opportunity for archivists, collection managers, and others to work together with technologists to develop software solutions for digital collections management needs. Hack days have been held independently by groups such as the Open Planets Foundation, as well as in association with preservation and access oriented conferences including Open Repositories and Museums and the Web.

The manifesto of a recent event at the Open Repositories conference framed the benefits this way: “Transparent, fun, open collaboration in diversely constituted teams...The creation of new professional networks over the ossification of old ones. Effective engagement of non-developers (researchers, repository managers) in development...Work done at the conference over presentation of something prepared earlier.”

Our Manifesto

Manifesto:

  • Transparent, fun, open collaboration in diversely constituted teams over individual brilliance and/or groups of like individuals in cut-throat competition.
  • The creation of new professional networks over the ossification of old ones.
  • Effective engagement of non-developers (researchers, repository managers) in development over purely developer driven projects.
  • Work done at the conference over presentation of something prepared earlier.

Hack Day Project proposals

Below are loose ideas for projects to hack on! If you're interested in one of the project stubs below, sign up for a wiki login and add your thoughtful comments or possible starting points to the proposal, or contact the proposer via twitter or email. As the Hack Day approaches, we'll brainstorm further and consolidate like-minded projects.

Hacking on video capture via ffmpeg + qctools + decklink sdk

  •  @dericed
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas

PBCore XML Record Generator (data submitted via a form, which spits out PBCore XML)? Updated PBCore Record Validator?

  • casey_davis [at] wgbh [dawt] org @CaseyEDavis1
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas


Development of a UUID (universally unique identifier - String or Number) system for moving image physical/digital elements

There will be a UUID registrar. The registrar server would hold the UUID and pointer to metadata/item information. This would allow a wide range of possible usages from access information to relational trees. Because we do not want to limit this assignment for elements where there is no internet access there will be a system similar to MAC addresses/UPCs where a registered archivist/lab/individual could be given a UUID blocks for assignment offline and then register later online without collision. The UUID could be made into a 1D or 2D bar code or human readable marking on the element for instant access through the server pointer to metadata on the content and physical item.

  • tommy [at!] videofilmsolutions [dawt] com @VideoFilmSol
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas


Video characterization tool analyzer

I would like to continue working on a project I began at the 2014 Open Repositories conference, a video characterization tool analyzer. The tool runs multiple command line video characterization applications on a given file/set of files and outputs the results in a format that is easy for comparative analysis. The aim of the tool is to identify differences in the outputs of these common applications, with the goal of submitting reports to their developers and eventually improving them. Read about the work started at OR2014

  • @kvanmalssen
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas


Broadcast Wave header support/testing

  • Further investigation of software support for Broadcast Wave header information (Audacity customization?) – justinkovar [at] utexas [dawt] edu @KovarSound
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas


Video thumbnail summaries as metadata

I've been interested in using video preview thumbnails as a way to provide summarized access to digitized video that will unlikely get further description. You can read more about what I've done here: http://ronallo.com/blog/a-plugin-for-mediaelement-js-for-preview-thumbnails-on-hover-over-the-time-rail/ I could use help improving that JavaScript plugin or in turning the production of video thumbnails and the metadata track file into a service of some sort. I'm also happy to help as a developer on another project.

  • jronallo [at] gmail [dawt] com / @ronallo
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas


Disk usage pie chart

Disk usage pie chart! I've been looking for a software tool that would allow us to calculate which projects are using the most server disk space in our collections, how old files are, and when they were last accessed, and then throws all of that data into visual form – like charts, graphs, and especially pie charts! I developed a web tool that just shows individual project sizes and how data is added or deleted from day to day, but it only shows a list of projects and their sizes. To convince my supervisors that certain projects are taking up too much room (and are never accessed), I have to create visuals using excel or other programs, which takes me hours but could easily be automated.

  • martinn [at] hrw [dawt] org
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas


Video metadata wrangler

I would love to see a simple tool for writing metadata to video files. Most of the people I work with are not highly proficient in technology, so they work predominately with Adobe products. I would love something like- creating a form where users can type in their information to set fields, and then using Exiftool to write to the files, and/or create side-car XML files (if the file cannot be written to). I envision supporting dublin core? and being able to create various XML schemas (we use XMP). That way, collection managers would not need to have Adobe products (Premiere, Bridge is mostly what we use) to be able to manage metadata for their files as a part of their collections processing. they could use this free easy tool..!

  • @cristalyze
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas


SMIL playlists

I will soon be commencing with a project at Harvard Library to develop migration workflows for three obsolete file formats, one of which is SMIL playlists. SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) is a W3C-recommended XML structure for containing structural/technical metadata, time-tagging/excerpting, and relationships between multimedia files, also facilitating access to media files across servers. Though still in use predominately in web applications, the format is in need of migration to keep up with developments in the W3C community and to respond to similar proliferating formats such as AES-60. The goal of the day could be an assessment of existing multimedia markup languages to determine which format is most sustainable, drafting a crosswalk or data-mapping from SMIL to another format such as AES-60, or an experiment to see what happens to SMIL metadata when specific media types are transcoded and how to ensure that these formats can still speak to one another.

  • joeygheinen.jh [at] gmail [dawt] com

improving the SMIL application that adds timecode to TEI-encoded transcripts. Right now, you can edit the timecode but not the actual text. See attachment. It'd be great to be able to edit the text as you go. As it is now, you have to export the xml file, make the change in an XML editor and then re-import it into the SMIL tool again. It's not very fluid.

  • [twitter.com/kcariani @kcarani]
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas


Technical characteristics of tape format chart

  • When digitizing video tapes, it is important to preserve technical characteristics of the tape formats. I was thinking that it might be useful to have a resource (like a chart) that lists different tape formats and their important specifications (e.g. 8-bit or 10-bit, PAR, subsampling scheme...) so that one selects the right options when digitizing. – @ng_yvonne
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas


ArchivesSpace plugins for audio / visual materials

e.g., PBCore import / export; embed HTML5 video player for mp4 files.

  •  brianjhoffman [at] gmail [dawt] com
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas


File format monitors/QA

  • My proposal is for building a File Format Obsolescence Analysis Engine. The purpose of the engine would be to provide information about--and options for--migrating and transcoding obsolete media file formats through simple and intuitive user interactions. The user provides the engine with an arbitrary file, which the engine then analyzes using any number of metadata forensics and validation tools (MediaInfo, JHOVE and DROID to name a few). The engine then decides whether the file needs to be migrated, or whether the current format can be considered "preservation ready". For the purpose of this proposal, "preservation ready" means that the file meets a list of minimum requirements, such as being stable and being supported by certain playback systems. However, determining a comprehensive list of these criteria is outside of the scope of this project. The output of the engine is two-fold: First it will generate a report about the input file. This report will contain the most salient aspects of the file and it's technical metadata in a format that is human readable, but can be easily parsed by a computer in order to facilitate scripting and automation. Second, the engine will move the input file to user-designated output folders according to its state (needs migration or preservation ready). These folders can be used simply to organize the files, or they may function as watch folders for transcoding engines or any other automation systems (which are out of the scope of this proposal). The two most important features of this engine are as follows: 1) The input and output should be as simple and intuitive as possible. The idea is to disseminate the engine as a general tool for the preservation community at large. Due to the wide range in technical skills available to potential users in this community it is critical that the tool be seen as "easy to use". 2) The engine needs to be built in a way that is extensible and easily updated. Due to the time constraints of this event, building a comprehensive analysis engine is out of the scope of this proposal. However, the engine's utility would be greatly enhanced if the framework is built in such a way that members of the community can easily update and add support for various file formats without compromising the previously mentioned usability. Thus, the idea would be to build a baseline that the community could then expand upon in the future.
  • @av_morgan
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas
  • Plato is an open-source tool for instituting a preservation planning process for digital objects and integrating services for content characterisation, preservation action and automatic object comparison. Harvard Library is investigating use of this tool to help develop policies for file format migration. Ideally Plato would integrate along with a file format identification/characterization tool (FITS, DROID) and perhaps also to a designated migration tool if the requirements match (e.g. ImageMagick) and a QA tool that may also communicate back to Plato so as to conform to the overall policy. At this stage we are merely investigating the functionality of this tool and are open to other ideas as to how Plato could be instituted into a broader preservation plan (though ideally with migration in mind).
  • joeygheinen.jh [at] gmail [dawt] com
  • Interested? Your name + any comments/initial ideas


FFmpeg guides n' GUIs

Layperson-understandable documentation for ffmpeg! The up-to-date information out there is mostly targeted at developers; there's not a ton out there that's both up-to-date and designed for a user community.

I would love to see a good GUI for FFMPEG. Super is nice but it doesn't have all the formats and codecs that FFMPEG has and I think a program that transcodes into any format and does more than one format at the same time would be a great benefit to small budget archives. • srdbx [at] netvision [dawt] net [dawt] il

Wikipedia Edit-a-thon topic proposals

  • Interested?
    • Kathryn Gronsbell
    • another name
  • Topic:

[link to existing Wikipedia page goes here, or new topic]

  • Sign up to edit this topic (OK to sign up for multiple topics):