© 2019 Jimi Jones SO MANY STANDARDS, SO LITTLE TIME: A HISTORY AND ANALYSIS OF FOUR DIGITAL VIDEO STANDARDS BY JIMI JONES DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Library and Information Science in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2019 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Jerome McDonough, Chair Associate Professor Lori Kendall Assistant Professor Peter Darch Professor Howard Besser, New York University ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on standards for digital video - the social aspects of their design and the sociotechnical forces that drive their development and adoption. This work is a history and analysis of how the MXF, JPEG 2000, FFV1 and Matroska standards have been adopted and/or adapted by libraries and archives of different sizes. Well-funded institutions often have the resources to develop tailor-made specifications for the digitization of their analog video objects. Digital video standards and specifications of this kind are often derived from the needs of the cinema production and television broadcast realms in the United States and may be unsuitable for smaller memory institutions that are resource-poor and/or lack staff with the knowledge to implement these technologies. This research seeks to provide insight into how moving image preservation professionals work with - and sometimes against - broadcast and film production industries in order to produce and/or implement standards governing video formats and encodings. This dissertation describes the transition of four digital video standards from niches to widespread use in libraries and archives. It also examines the effects these standards produce on cultural heritage video preservation by interviewing people who implement the standards as well as people who develop them. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (which will, for me, remain the Graduate School of Library and Information Science) for supporting my research for the past five years. I would also like to thank Linda Smith for her indefatigable aid in finding funding for my research-related travel and for taking a chance on me as an Adjunct Instructor for the School nearly a decade ago. I have been fortunate to have a life full of professional and academic mentors. Mark Somers and Holli Hanley, I thank you both for giving me my start in film production. Kevin Hanson, I thank you for fostering in me both a love of filmmaking and the understanding that the most important piece of filmmaking equipment is the box of donuts for the crew. Kevin Hamilton, thank you for being a friend, confidante and a model for the kind of compassionate and inquisitive person I aspire to be. I give a wealth of gratitude to Madelyn Garrett, Greg Thompson, Victoria Hindley, Snowden Becker, Roy Webb, Jennifer Hain Teper and Tawnya Keller for your mentorship as I started my career in libraries and archives. Jack Brighton, I am thankful for your support as a colleague and a friend. Thank you Kate McDowell and Ben Grosser for the conversations that have helped to inform this work. Bill Brand, you have my thanks for collaborating with me on the most innovative and compelling class I have ever had the pleasure to teach. I would also like to thank Martha Anderson, Beth Dulabahn, Carl Fleischhauer, Genita Coger and my NDIIPP and FADGI colleagues for their support during my time at the Library of Congress. iii I also extend my thanks to the people who helped me conceive of and steward this dissertation. First, I must thank Jerome McDonough, my advisor and research director. I have enjoyed our talks about this work, but I have found even more enjoyment in getting to know you as a person and a friend. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee: Lori Kendall, Peter Darch and Howard Besser. Your input has been indispensable. I also thank Jody Waitzman and Melissa Huang for their invaluable help in transcoding my interviews. I am also very thankful for all of the people who contributed their time and effort as interviewees for this research. I should give a special thanks to one interviewee - Dave Rice - for planting the seed for this research nearly a decade ago when you asked, in a FADGI meeting, “why isn’t the LOC using Matroska instead of MXF?” Finally, I thank my family and friends for their support and their faith in me. Thank you to my parents Karen and Harry Carson for your belief in me through the years. Thank you to Piotr Adamczyk for your invaluable input into my research and your friendship. Thank you to my dear friend Arsheeya Mashaw for calling me “Dr. Jones” for all these decades. Perhaps you planted this seed years ago? And, most importantly, I give thanks to my spouse and my best friend Karin Hodgin Jones. Without you no success has any meaning for me. You have been by my side for decades and you have given me the inspiration to keep trying to be my best self. I am so thankful to share this journey with you. iv For Karin v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION............................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................................. 10 CHAPTER 3: METHODS .................................................................................................. 25 CHAPTER 4: HISTORY ..................................................................................................... 44 CHAPTER 5: INTERVIEW DATA ....................................................................................... 66 CHAPTER 6: THE FOUR STANDARDS AS BOUNDARY OBJECTS ...................................... 147 CHAPTER 7: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE FOUR STANDARDS .......................... 178 CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION ........................................................................................... 209 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 218 APPENDIX A: INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD APPROVAL ........................................... 232 APPENDIX B: PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM ............................................................... 233 APPENDIX C: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STANDARDS DEVELOPERS ......................... 236 APPENDIX D: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STANDARDS IMPLEMENTERS .................... 239 vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 INTRODUCTION There are no universally agreed-upon evergreen target video standards for high-quality video digitization. Professionals in memory institutions often have difficulty deciding which digital format(s) will best serve to capture the information encoded on their decaying analog video materials. This dissertation explores the development cultures for digital video standards and their adoption in libraries and archives. This work contributes to larger conversations about how the video digitization and preservation realm develops, adopts and adapts encoding and file container standards. Understanding how and why digital video standards are developed and adopted can help to fill a gap in audiovisual preservation research and will be an important part of the race to digitize analog video materials that are susceptible to loss because of the physical degradation of their carriers and the obsolescence of their playback technology. This dissertation focuses on standards for digital moving image encodings and containers - the social aspects of their design, the technical choices that drive their development and the decision-making processes of large and small cultural heritage repositories when picking an encoding/container combination for digitizing their legacy video materials. It is a history, but it is also an analysis of the sociotechnical factors that allowed for the movement of four digital video standards from niches in television broadcast, cinema production and online piracy into widespread adoption in libraries and archives. This research contributes to our understanding of how audiovisual standards are developed, how they work and how they are implemented in the library/archives world. My work also contributes to a growing body of work related to video 1 digitization in the world of cultural heritage. My work makes these contributions by providing a history of four twenty-first century video standards in the words of the people who developed and/or are using them. The differences in design and adoption between open-source and proprietary moving image encodings and multimedia containers offer rich grounds for exploration and inquiry. This dissertation seeks to provide insight into how moving image preservation professionals work with - and sometimes against - broadcast and film production paradigms in order to produce standards governing video digitization in the memory realm. This work is also an examination of some of the effects of the standards they produce on cultural heritage video preservation. This dissertation comes at a time when there is a seismic shift in video digitization and preservation. This shift is characterized by a growing preference among preservation professionals for open-source tools and standards that do not come directly from the broadcast and cinema realms. When I worked for the Library of Congress from early 2010 to late 2012, the Library was at the forefront of development of video digitization best practices, using