IASA 2019 Annual Conference

The US Federal Agency Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI), in conjunction with AVP, is developing a new open source tool for format validation and batch embedding and correcting metadata within DPX file headers. Named "embARC" for "Metadata Embedded for Archival Content," the software application has flexible functionality to follow both required SMPTE metadata rules as well as those defined by FADGI in the document "Guidelines for Embedded Metadata within DPX File Headers for Digitized Motion Picture Film," including tracking the digitization workflow. The DPX format is a raster image format often used for the image only data for scanned motion picture film with each frame of film translating to a separate file. Because there are many thousands of frames for each title, there are typically many thousands of DPX files to manage. FADGI’s research into DPX implementations discovered that there are often inconsistencies within the file’s structure and header information.These scope and scale issues make file management a challenge. The embARC tool enables users to audit and correct internal metadata of both individual files or an entire DPX sequence while not impacting the image data. embARC will be released as a beta version early in 2019 with a first official release in summer 2019.