FFV1 and Archives:
A short history about almost everything
by Peter B.
(pb@av-rd.com)
FFV1/MKV Symposium - Berlin (July 2016)
There are many legends, rumours and mysteries about the origins and history of FFV1:
Initial release was in 2003 - what happened since then?
What led to its use in the archives?
Why does it matter that it's Open Source?
This talk will cover FFV1's history - as well as a look at its current state and properties for preservation.
FFV1 Timeline
2003: Created in Open Source project "FFmpeg"
2006: Bitstream frozen (version 1)
2009: Picked up for preservation
2010: Funding improvements
2012: Added 14bit RGB, Multithreading, SliceCRC
2013: Official release of "FFV1.3"
2014: PREFORMA Project
2016: Standardization in progress
- Derived from from questions that came up about FFV1 over the years
January 2010
Started with the idea to use image file formats instead of codec+container
Started development of workflow-system "DVA-Profession" for ingest
February 2010
Dropped idea of image files, due to performance and video property-support issues
Returned to lossless codecs + container: HuffYUV
March 2010
Found FFV1 and Lagarith in MSU test results
Dropped it at first, because marked experimental
Reconsidered FFV1, due to its excellent properties: technical, speed, size, open-source license and FFmpeg-support
NOTE: Lagarith website warned against using FFV1 ;)
(http://web.archive.org/web/20100411074247/http://lags.leetcode.net/reasons.html)
April 2010
Detailed evaluation of FFV1 suitability for long-term preservation
Contacted FFmpeg-devel mailing list, requesting official status of FFV1
Found out it was stable since April 2006
FFV1 back as #1 candidate
April 2010
Ran tests with SD-PAL 4:2:2 (=our main use case)
Final consent to use FFV1 as preservation format at Mediathek
Hermann Lewetz presented our findings at IASA-AMIA 2010
Ran tests as future option for "HD-and-beyond"
July 2010
Mediathek hired Niedermayer for multi-threading implementation = FFV1.2 development started
FFV1 mentioned in paper
"Bewaring en Ontsluiting van Multimediale Data in Vlaanderen "
(ISBN 9789020989441, LannooCampus)
Continued testing of improvements + providing feedback, during whole development phase
Videogebaseerde encoding (Motion JPEG2000 en FFV1) is
gemiddeld 20% beter qua benodigde opslag dan bestandsgebaseerde
compressie (7-zip). Motion JPEG2000 en FFV1 hebben bijna dezelfde
compressie factor, maar alleen JPEG2000 kan 8 en 10 bits formaten
opslaan.
March 2011
End of workflow/ingest testing phase: start of official "real" archive material ingest
April 2011
I contacted Dave Rice
(with a DV question ;))
August 2011
DVA-Profession v1.0 released
April 2012
Dave brought in idea for CRCs in bitstream (on @ffmpeg-devel) = FFV1.3 development started.
FFV1.2 superseeded and dropped.
"Dave Rice once mentioned the idea of embedding per-frame checksums
within FFV1's stream. Sounds like what you're mentioning as an option
here, right?"
August 2012
Georg Lippitsch added >8 bpc for RGB
(Request by Austrian Film Archive)
Unspecific month(s) 2012:
More talks, discussions with other institutions - and continued presentations about practical usefulness of FFV1
Additional co-funding of FFV1 improvements: NOA, Austrian Film Archive
September 2012
FFV1.3 test results quite satisfactory, yet testing was not finished.
October 2012
FFV1.3 support merged in LibAV
(Big thanks to Luca Barbato!)
August 2013
Bitstream frozen and official release of FFV1.3 as "production stable"
February
Meeting Emanuel Lorrain and Bert Lemmens from PACKED
Hearing that PREFORMA is considering FFV1 as option
April
Dave, Jérôme and PREFORMA
May 2015
Tessa Fallon opened FFV1/MKV discussion thread on IETF dispatch@ list.
First release of MediaConch
FIAT/IFTA CfP: "Is FFV1 the new JPEG2000? "
January 2016
First mention of FFV1.4 plans
Start of discussion on cellar@ietf.org about features of FFV1.4
March
Reto Kromer mentions FFV1 in keynote speech at JTS (Singapore)
July 2016
FFV1/MKV Symposium in Berlin ;)
It was quite a journey...
From:
I'd love to see a free codec being promoted as the format for long
term video archives. Currently, it's chaos in the archive world,
because there is no standard or best-practice at the moment.
Peter B. (April 22nd, 2010)
To:
All I can say now is "It just works". We really had no problems at all. We
have digitized (mostly from U-matic) in uncompressed YUV 4:2:2 10 bits
and PCM 24 bits, 48 KHz and then converted to FFV1/MKV.
Etienne Desautels (July 13th, 2016)
License and Credits
This presentation is available under a Copyleft License:
Creative Commons "Attribution-ShareAlike"
(CC-BY-SA )
Peter Bubestinger-Steindl:
p.bubestinger@das-werkstatt.com
pb@av-rd.com