DRAFT – VIVA Multimedia Technical Work Group
VIVA Technical Issues Task Force on Multimedia Collections
Briefing Paper, January 9, 2006
Prepared by Ralph Alberico, James Madison University
This document outlines assumptions, potential action items and key questions to be considered by the VIVA Technical Issues Task Force on Multimedia Collections.
VIVA Multimedia Collections Project Goal
Provide secure, reliable online access to VIVA multimedia collections for VIVA member institutions by July 1, 2006.
Task Force Charge
· Serve as a forum for exchanging information about technical issues related to multimedia collections
· Develop expertise among VIVA members about the technologies, non-textual information content, evolving markets and distribution channels for multimedia collections.
· Develop recommendations on technical specifications and technical support for multimedia content licensed by VIVA
· Develop recommendations on distribution models and access control for VIVA multimedia collections
· Identify human resources, technology investments and organizational structures within VIVA institutions that will be needed to support streaming media
· Develop recommendations for user support including minimum technical requirements, training and documentation
· Consider service integration issues; develop recommendations on how to integrate multimedia content from VIVA with existing library services and with campus learning environments
Background from VIVA Steering Committee Retreat – July 14, 2005
VIVA has licensed a collection of titles from PBS and we will use that collection as a test case to resolve collection development, technical support, user support and content distribution issues. The consensus opinion of the VIVA Steering Committee is that it is too soon to establish collection development policies or guidelines – that will come later and be handled through the RUC. I have been asked to chair a technical issues task force. I have asked each VIVA director to appoint someone to a group that will handle most of its communications electronically. We will need to establish a listserv for that group. A subset of the group will need to meet in person and we should identify those people up front. We’ll also need a venue for meetings. In the future, we may also need to breakout into subgroups to handle specific issues. There is a possibility that we will need to arrange a meeting with key IT people from across the state.
Issues to Address
We have not yet approved the final draft of a formal charge to the group. Right now I think we need to look at making specific recommendations in the following areas:
Project Timetable
· The task force is projected to disband at some time in the future; we will need to establish a sunset provision which could be a specific date or which could be tied to completion of some milestone(s). We will also need to establish a timetable for initiating streaming service?
· Key Questions: Do we need to establish a single timetable for all institutions or is it acceptable for timetables to vary? Do we wait until we are ready to serve all PBS titles before starting the service or is it OK to phase in the service incrementally?
Encoding Preferences
· We will need to specify a preferred encoding scheme (using PBS as our starting point will make this easier since the content would come pre-encoded in MP4 format but we will want to review all options, including Flash before settling on a Codec) and if necessary possible VIVA workflow and infrastructure needed to encode multimedia content.
· Key Questions: What is the preferred encoding scheme for VIVA? Do we factor that scheme and other technical recommendations from the task force into future license negotiations? For collections that require encoding, how might we manage that effort to maximize efficiency?
User requirements
· The task force should identify minimum desktop specifications, browser recommendations, and media player recommendations.
· Key Questions: How much flexibility do we want to provide in terms of specifying which browsers and media players students and faculty need to use? Do we want to limit the number of players or browsers we support? How do we support multiple browsers and players?
Distribution of DVD Masters
· DVD masters from PBS are being shipped to JMU. How do we handle distribution to VIVA libraries? FTP? Duplication on media? Some other approach? A single approach or multiple options? Additional encoding to support the player(s)/Codec(s) we recommend will be required and may be easier to do centrally at JMU.
Distribution of Video Content
· We will need to make recommendations about how we distribute streamed content, especially for purchased, VIVA hosted digital multimedia titles. Distribution issues cover both distribution of physical media containing digital masters and/or encoded files and distribution of streamed and/or downloadable content on the Internet.
· Key Questions: Does each school get a digital master of each title? Do we ask each school to serve content to its own users? Do we attempt to serve content from a subset of our schools or from a single school to all schools? What support and other considerations should VIVA offer to schools that are able to serve content to other schools?
Access control/authentication
· If we cannot use IP authentication as we currently do for most VIVA resources, this could be a can of worms; the task force will need to make recommendations on how authentication should be handled. We may need to consider proxy server or VPN client issues as well. Alternatively, we could leave each institution to its own devices on this.
· Key Questions: Is it feasible to centralize online distribution of video content licensed by VIVA? If so, what might the distribution channel(s) look like and how might we ensure that access to those channels is restricted to authorized people? If centralized distribution is not feasible what kinds of recommendations and technical support is VIVA able to offer to our members?
Cataloging, database management and resource discovery
· The task force will need to make recommendations about file structure, data structure and the resource discovery framework for media files. We should also make recommendations about how our libraries describe media content. And we should recommend strategies for importing, exporting and sharing metadata and cataloging information in order to avoid duplication of effort in VIVA libraries.
· Key Questions: Does VIVA maintain a single searchable catalog of all licensed media titles? If so, where does that list live? Does the task force make recommendations about integrating this content with OPACS or library managed databases and, if so, how specific do those recommendations need to be?
Assumptions
Not everyone will be able to stream content on their individual campuses, at least not initially; some institutions will not have the resources to handle that.
We may need a system of distributed servers and/or a central server. The VIVA model emphasizes online services and that should be our priority. However we may want to investigate whether we need to ensure that some libraries get physical copies in order to achieve access parity.
We should allow simultaneous streams and support both high and low-end bandwidth streams. With some vendors we will need to determine how/whether to allow downloading.
Access based on IP address will probably not be possible for a significant portion of multimedia content that VIVA may license. We will need to make recommendations on access control.
It is likely that we will need to authenticate users before opening multimedia streams; initially each campus will need to authenticate its own users, eventually we may be able to pass information to trusted users across institution boundaries but that would be a much larger project. For the short term it will be useful to understand how our various campuses and libraries are handling access to restricted resources, especially with regard to directory services and identity management.
We need to make a good faith effort to prevent users from capturing streams when download is restricted by contract.
We need to work with IT/network services departments on each campus to ensure that bandwidth is adequate to support streaming services from VIVA and that streams from VIVA media server(s) are not blocked by Packeteer or other network traffic control applications.
We may also need to work with IT departments on security and authentication issues; we really need to start planning for the day when access based on IP address is no longer the norm; we need to consider how to respond/prepare for this especially with regard to contracts that allow walk-up access.
MPEG4 will be our default encoding scheme, at least for the first project, but we need to consider all of our options, keeping in mind the convenience to our users, availability of media players and efficiency of serving up different types of streams. Eventually we may need to decide whether we will need to support more than one encoding format.
We should attempt to capture usage data and we will need to define the data that we want to capture and consider mechanisms for capturing those data.
Scenarios
The scenarios below describe a number of different possible outcomes related to VIVA multimedia collections. I would like for both the task force and the steering committee to be mindful of these scenarios as we explore options for acquiring and providing access to media collections.
Viva licenses, vendor hosts
After a few years of startup experience with VIVA-hosted content, the majority of multimedia titles licensed by VIVA on behalf of non-profit higher education in Virginia will be hosted on vendor computers. VIVA will continue to support titles it has purchased by serving that content from computers at member schools.
VIVA purchases and centrally hosts its own content
VIVA develops a centralized multimedia distribution service, along with a database of descriptive metadata about VIVA titles; metadata are also made available for import by members who wish to integrate with their own web site or ILS. Whenever possible, VIVA opts to purchase rather than license multimedia content. This is the model currently in place at OhioLink.
VIVA out sources hosting to our members
VIVA contracts with one or more of its members to provide multimedia distribution and file management services for the portion of multimedia titles that are not hosted by vendors. VIVA develops a distributed system for providing access to multimedia content. A few of the member schools provide services which insure that no member is without access. Members also share responsibility for cataloging.
Each school hosts on its own; VIVA provides technical support and training
VIVA develops multimedia specifications and provides training and a support network to all of its members. VIVA also promulgates information about best practices perhaps including detailed specifications on hardware, software and authentication mechanisms needed to support a streaming service. Each school is responsible for hosting, cataloging and managing its own VIVA audio, video and image collections.
Draft Discussion Document RA – 7/2005 1