Cube-Tec Online News January 2011

Bavarian Broadcasting Installs Digitization Factory

Bavarian Broadcasting (BR) is the public broadcasting company of the German Federal State of Bavaria, with its headquarters located in Munich. After more than ten years of analogue tape digitization according to the strict guideline of aurally validating all sound material in a one-to-one transfer, the decision was made to try out a factory approach in order to dramatically speed up the digitization throughput. Following a three-month test phase, Bavarian Broadcasting decided to install the Quadriga system, employing a remote control for eight Studer A816 tape machines. For special collections the BR will also continue to do one-to-one transfer.

Calibration-Inspector will be utilized to secure and document the error-free playback condition of the Studer tape machines. Quadriga will be employed to digitize the audio tapes. The module automatically flags critical issues for aural supervision. Post processing is handled in Dobbin by virtual machines which perform flexible, metadata-driven workflows in order to optimize sound levels and automatically flag critical issues for aural supervision.

The Cube-Workflow engine ensures that the team members have instant access to all information needed. The whole installation will be fully integrated in the BR IT infrastructure with Cube-Workflow providing all the necessary customization interfaces for this integration.

For aural inspection a supervisor can open the preservation audio files at a Sequoia workstation without having to wait for the calculation of the waveform level file. Quality metadata is also directly accessible to the supervisor, including sample-accurate time codes as Sequoia marker files.

Employing the 'Medienbroker', a meta-search system in use at the BR, journalists can request audio files for on-demand digitization. The 'Medienbroker' then automatically informs the journalist about the current status of their digitization requests. In 2010, up to 10,000 audio files were requested monthly via the 'Medienbroker' for use in broadcast and production.

The BR digitization factory project is now in the implementation phase. Further details regarding the progress of this project will follow after more practical experience in the everyday digitization process has been gathered.

Large-Scale Digitization of Universal Music's Crown Jewels

For years, the probably most outstanding music preservation project was treated like an industry secret. A high level of technical excellence was developed to digitize the unique master tapes of the world's largest music company. In 2009, arvato digital services took over the responsibility for the entire archive of Universal Music Group International. arvato digital services is now offering this preservation service. This preservation technology will become available for other high value content owners as well. With this move, Cube-Tec can now provide an insight view of the Universal Media Asset Archiving System (MAAS).

arvato digital services from Gütersloh / Germany has been entrusted by Universal Music Group International with the creation of a large-scale digital archive for their numerous valuable master tapes.

Cube-Tec's technical director Joerg Houpert spoke with Wolfgang Martens from arvato digital services about recent developments in this archiving project.

Wolfgand Martens said...
»The cooperation between arvato and Cube-Tec started 2002 when the first AudioCube with its advanced mastering- and restoration tools has been installed at Sonopress. Since this time we have a good relationship and we enjoy the short way to the manufacturer and the direct communication to the Cube-Tec support engineers. When we moved the Universal MAAS System from Hanover to Gütersloh we knew that we would obtain the audio ingest system with the most sophisticated quality control. We have a great confidence in that system because of our good long-term experience with Cube-Tec.«

Read how Cube-Tec's products Quadriga, Dobbin and CD-Inspector are integrated in this process and get to know more about the importance and progress of the digitization of Universal Music's virtual crown jewels...

Projects: Universal Virtual Crown Jewels

Audio Preservation in Australia: AIATSIS Case Study

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) is the world's premier institution for information and research about the cultures and lifestyles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, past and present. The Institute undertakes and encourages scholarly, ethical community-based research, holds a priceless collection of films, photographs, video and audio recordings and the world's largest collections of printed and other resource materials for Indigenous Studies, and has its own publishing house.

A staff of 118 people, headed by the Principal, engaged in a range of endeavours of interest to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, scholars and the Australian and international public.
A Library and Audiovisual Archive managing the world's most extensive collections of printed, audio and visual materials on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, history and societies.

AIATSIS Audiovisual Archive holds the world's premier collection of moving image, recorded sound and photographic materials relating to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and histories. The majority of the items held in the Audiovisual Archive represent the primary results of field research funded by the AIATSIS Research Grants Program as well as historical and contemporary items which have been deposited by individuals, families or organisations for safe-keeping and appropriate access. The material is unique and irreplaceable and provides an invaluable link between past, present and future generations of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

There are currently over 45,000 hours of sound recordings held in the AIATSIS Audiovisual Archive. Most of the collection is made up of unique and unpublished field recordings documenting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, ceremonies, music, oral history, cultural narratives, site descriptions, research seminars and important events. A smaller part of the collection is made up of copies of significant historical recordings held in overseas and interstate collections, selected published recordings and broadcast materials.

Projects: AIATSIS - Case Study
AIATSIS - Case Study (PDF - 2,1 MB)

New DOBBIN Modules Available

The FileSplitter FPU is the analogon to the FileMerger FPU. It uses an edit decision list describing which parts of an input audio file should be separated in stand-alone files, including pre-defined cross-fades and overlappings. The edit decision list can be compiled by QUADRIGA while doing the preservation transfer, or can be externally delivered.

The cryptographic Hash Generator and Hash Checker manage file-based integrity checksums with MD5 and the whole Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) family (from SHA-1 and SHA-2 up to SHA-512 with a message digest of 512-bits).

WavPack upgrades the media packing tools for another lossless packer. One big advantage of WavPack compared to the as well supported FLAC is, that metadata chunks in BWF archive files remain untouched by the WavPack method.

The Complex Filename Processor allows rule-based re-naming of output files.

A new Media Essence Analyzer looks into a media container and extracts metadata, describing the containing essences individually for every media container to process. The extracted metadata can be directly used to define processing rules in the Decider at runtime, allowing format-dependent workflow steps.

Supported container formats include: MXF, GXF, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, AVI, QuickTime, Flash Video, RealMedia, DV...

DOBBIN goes Video

In the current delivery step, Dobbin focuses on audio-for-video applications. A broad range of MXF and MPEG video container formats are supported for video multiplexing and de-multiplexing. File-based workflows in TV broadcasting and archive environments will now benefit from the outstanding audio enhancement capacities available within Dobbin.

Trusted Playback - Certification of Mass-Digitization Services

Cube-Tec International has developed a new online quality certification service for the surveillance of analog playback devices: Trusted Playback. By analyzing quality metadata generated by Calibration-Inspector, Trusted Playback documents the current condition of the analog playback devices used by a digitization service provider. Through this, a content owner is able to define and validate the technical specifications of the playback devices employed in an outsourced digitization project. The Trusted Playback online platform offers different levels of access to these quality data - from visual overviews of long term data to detailed views in any granularity. Since the condition and quality of the playback devices are the most critical components for defining the audio quality of the final archive file, Trusted Playback is a quantum leap in the professionalization of service levels in mass digitization projects.

Web Platform Trusted-Playback.org

Product Releases for Windows 7

Cube-Tec has updated its preservation and restoration suites. QUADRIGA, Dobbin, Calibration-Inspector, AudioCube and the Virtual Precision Instruments are now available for the use in Windows 7 environments.

Updated Virtual Precision Instuments (VPI) for Windows 7

Cube-Tec VPIs - best known for their use in AudioCube systems - are employed by some of the top facilities in the world. These include Bernie Grundman Mastering, Capitol Records, CBS Television, Fox Television, Library of Congress, Gateway Mastering & DVD, Skywalker Sound, Sterling Sound and The Smithsonian, to name but a few.

On-demand Digitization Studio for the German Music Archive of the German National Library

The German Music Archive at Berlin (Deutsches Musikarchiv, DMA) is a federal agency which was founded in 1970 in order to collect all music published in the country. It not only houses the central collection of recorded music, but can also be regarded as the music-bibliographic information center of Germany. In their new building at Leipzig, the German Music Archive is setting up an on-demand digitization studio based on QUADRIGA, Cube-Workflow and Dobbin. This project is realized together with Salzbrenner Stagetec Mediagroup.

Austrian Mediathek Automates Sound File Restoration

The Austrian Mediathek (Österreichische Mediathek) in Vienna expands their DOBBIN system in order to facilitate automatic sound file restoration. The current focus lies on the creation of pre-listen proxies and research derivates from shellacs collections.

For the full automatic sound enhancement the modules PlaybackEQ, DeClipper, DeNoiser, DeClicker, DeScratcher and DeCrackler are in use.

Join the Conference: Screening the Future 2011
New Strategies and Challenges in Audiovisual Archiving

Venue: the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision (Media Park).
Hilversum, Netherlands
Monday, March 14, 2011 & Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Participants in Screening the Future will help to set the agenda for AV preservation in Europe, and benefit from interacting with leading institutions, funders, vendors, and policymakers. Participants include managers from broadcast archives, film archives, audio archives, government archives, corporate archives, libraries, museums, universities, and commercial organisations, as well as funders, educators, technologists, and film makers.

Screening the Future

ARSC 2010 Conference Report

The annual ARSC Conference in 2010 took place in New Orleans and was hosted by The Historic New Orleans Collection, the Louisiana State Museum, and the Tulane University's Hogan Jazz Archive.

Rob Poretti, Cube-Tec's North American sales engineer presented a paper entitled 'DOBBIN CASE STUDIES: PROCESSING WORKFLOWS IN AUDIO ARCHIVING'. The paper presented Cube-Tec's range of applications that cover parallel ingest, automated quality control, automated derivative generation, metadata focused workflows, and complete end-to-end archive solutions.

Activities related to the creation and management of digital audio files for any archive can be demanding. A wide range of possibilities may be encountered, each with its own set of challenges: ingest, metadata workflows, quality control, multi-derivative generation, security, reporting, etc. Dobbin provides the widest set of applications currently available, all focused on the workflow requirements for audio archivists. This presentation examines the Dobbin infrastructure and how it connects to both Cube-Tec products and other information technologies. It examines approaches to leverage automated workflows in order to alleviate repetitive tasks during ingest and post-processing activities - with the goal of maximizing efficiencies and minimizing human error. Workflow processes from numerous Cube-Tec clients are explored in detail, discussing solutions to their own workflow challenges.

Joint Technical Symposium 2010 Report

In Oslo, Cube-Tec's Technical Director Joerg Houpert has given an oral presentation entitled:

Supervision of the Analogue Signal Paths in Legacy Media Migration Processes using Digital Signal Processing

The final transfer of physical carriers to file formats for preservation should be done without quality loss. Usually the quality level of the signal retrieval from the original carrier determines the overall signal quality of the preservation process. In a mass migration process the technical quality of the used playback devices and the carefulness utilized in the transfer process is hard to estimate by inspecting the resulting files. Particularly by using an external service provider, spot checks and comparisons with in-house digitization will be a time consuming and still fragmentary approach to judge the quality of service.

Three methods have be presented, to close that 'analogue security gap'.

Single-ended error detection based on transfer error models
Full automatic reference-based error analysis using calibration media
Automatic signal verification using multiple ingests of the same physical media

The three methods were compared and advantages, as well as limits of each method were demonstrated by using results from real-world mass migration projects. The three methods have been combined to complement each other.

The presented methods will enable a precise specification of the required signal transfer quality and will continuously document the technical quality of the used playback devices and analog to digital converter. The in-house quality management will benefit from this and the new parameter can become part of the description of the level of service.

A service provider will be able to provide certified parameter of the technical transfer quality, as an online service to his client. For this the parameter can be visualized in easy understandable graphics within an Internet browser window. The presentation is focused on the supervision of audio signal paths. An outlook on corresponding technology for motion pictures will be provided.

Joerg's slide show for download (PDF - 2,0 MB)

Contact Info

For further information please visit us at www.Cube-Tec.com


Cube-Tec International GmbH Attn: Tom Lorenz / Joerg Houpert Anne-Conway-Strasse 1 28359 Bremen, Germany eMail: info@Cube-Tec.com phone: +49 (0)421 20 1440	Cube-Tec North America LLC Attn: Rob Poretti 192 Edgewood Road Asheville, NC 28804-3342 eMail: r.poretti@Cube-Tec.com phone: +1 866-985-4488