[Dspace-general] Video files

[MacKenzie Smith]

At 10:41 AM 6/26/2006 +0100, John Murtagh wrote:
>Currently, DSpace only "supports" video/mpeg video files but is there a 
>"best" way of compressing files or using a "known" or "unknown" file 
>format on the files we try to upload? Obviously, we want the size reduced 
>without deteriorating the quality of the images.

At the risk of being repetitive, I'd like to follow up on this question to 
remind everyone that what those
support levels mean in the context of DSpace... they're meant to be *your 
institution's* level of commitment
to *preserving* files in those formats. As it currently ships, all those 
levels are set to "known", which is
defined to mean that your institution is familiar with the format but 
doesn't promise to preserve those files
over time... they will just be kept available in their original format (not 
migrated to newer formats, or an
emulator provided, etc.).

If you choose to, you can change the support level for a format from 
"known" to "supported" (meaning
you will preserve it over time) or "unknown" (meaning you've never heard of 
it and have no way of preserving
it in the future).

DSpace by itself does nothing to provide that preservation support for 
files that you've archived,
it just provides the platform for you to capture and manage those files, 
and preserve them if you choose,
according to the strategy you devise to do that.

Video is particularly difficult to store and preserve. It's true that the 
most "preservable" format is the
uncompressed original MPEG files, but that those are impractically large 
and hard to view, so you
also need smaller viewable files (quicktime, readmedia, etc.). The file 
size upload problems are resolvable
but the support and preservation strategies won't be solved as a result...

Thanks for your indulgence,

MacKenzie



MacKenzie Smith
Associate Director for Technology
MIT Libraries