Here’s an interview with Peter B, someone working in professional analog video preservation, as well as audio engineering. After watching his video on FFV1, I reached out and hoped he’d discuss his hands-on experience and add some perspective for those of us archiving VHS and other analog media. I really enjoyed the conversation and think any preservationists, or people serious about digitizing analog media will enjoy it. You can watch the YouTube video above, or search any podcast app for “RetroRGB Peter” to listen to an audio-only version. TONS more info after the links:
Peter’s FFV1 Video: https://youtu.be/ybpYlgFBC0w
Peter’s Company: http://www.arkthis.com/
If you’d like some context for everything we discussed, I suggest checking out my videos on scaling home movies, as well as capturing them in 480i, capturing direct to HD…and even the podcast I did with Dan about 480i video. We definitely went into this with the expectation that most people listening would have some video capture knowledge, but if you’re just learning, checking those out along with this will really help bring you up to speed. This stuff is really confusing, so try not to get intimidated by it all – If I can figure it out, you can too! 🙂
After the interview, Peter sent a ton of information over that you all might be interested in. I’m just going to copy and paste it directly from his email, as to not mess up anything he wrote:
# Historical Leftovers
Some “sources to some online now-historical ‘leftovers’ from FFV1 development”:
If you’re curious, here’s an example from 2012-2014, how I published my test-results for development of FFV1.3 to Michael Niedermayer, while he was fine-tuning his development: http://download.das-werkstatt.
So I wrote my own test-automation and report generating code, and ran it on almost every clip of the only publicly accessible testset of videos I could find. Big Thanks to: https://media.xiph.org/video/d
And here’s the famous “MSU lossless video codec comparison” report which put FFV1 on my radar: http://compression.ru/video/co
And here’s a most recent article in the international film-preservation professionals magazine: – written because the US Library of Congress updated FFV1/MKV to “preferred format” in its most recent Recommended Formats Statements:
“Humans behind the code. MKV/FFV1’s Journey from Acceptance to Preferred Format” (2024-10) https://www.calameo.com/fiaf/r
Oh! And here’s “how we got FFV1/MKV in DaVinci”: https://docs.google.com/spread
Almost 100 institutions worldwide. Which is usually about 1-2 per country – so that’s quite a lot of global relevance 😀
# It sparked more than just file-format support…
From the leftover-budget of the PREFORMA project, Dave (CUNY-TV), Jérôme (MediaArea) and I put together a small conference for “anyone interested in FFV1/MKV – and OpenSource for AV preservation” – called “NoTimeToWait” (NTTW): https://mediaarea.net/NoTimeTo
The community has been growing ever since – and sparked and spawned more interest and development – and ever increasingly: funding and resources for common FOSS solutions.
It’s still a bit grass-root-ish, but becoming a worldwide reference for how to open-tech our domain. It also sparks interest in learning more about “computers” – coding and
commandline – and Linux in general. Especially ffmpeg, bash and Python.
The NTTW is more like a professional hack-con for our field. And due to the political story and nature of FFV1/MKV, given that MKV was said not to be supported in professional tools due to its “piracy origin and use”.
So I hope this gives drive and motivation to anyone being told “nah. not possible. go play, kid!” – to persist if they believe in it. Tataaaa! 😛
# DVA-Fidelity
The testvideo I mentioned, I invented to test a firmware-timing issue with a Focus Video ADC: https://www.av-rd.com/products
All the “detectable issues” that show an image, are actual “timing interventions” that 4 different ADCs introduced. Ranging from 1000 to 12000 EUR from low-pro to broadcast-bling gear.
The system allows to detect if /any-and-all/ images (fields/frames) arrive in the right order (time and top/bottom) – throughout any signal chain.
We used this video to proof (around 2010) that Virtualdub + ffdshow +ffv1 is perfectly lossless throughout the whole “questionable FOSS stack”: Harris Velocity editing workstation SDI out -> genlocked -> SDI-IN blackmagic => ffv1/pcm/avi.
We ran several 4h-long tests from different sources: digital, digibeta, VHS – even DV.
The site describes how it works: https://www.av-rd.com/products
I’ve published the code online: https://github.com/ArkThis/DVA
Yeah, it’s “Xubuntu 20.04 (live) distro” – then:
“`
$ git clone …
$ make all
$ (sudo) make install
“`
I’ve had a patch made for a version of ffmpeg, but which never went upstream – so it requires to build ffmpeg manually.
Here’s a special one: https://www.av-rd.com/products
It’s a snel-&-wilcox 12000 EUR ADC, which inserted a new, visibly-interpolating 2 fields from different frames (#19+20).
# Other Software
You probably want this: https://shotcut.org/
And for audio, this: http://ardour.org/
Shotcut hung up on me sometimes, but Dan is improving it daily for >10y now, and it seems proper.
Ardour is awesome and AFAIK top-pro quality. I’ve produced a whole album with only “open stuff”. It got airtime and an article on Austria’s most famous youth radio
channel “FM4”: https://fm4v3.orf.at/stories/1
