Characterization of MXF files

[Robert Gillesse]

Hi all,

We are having some problems with our MXF video files in the sense that they are not characterized (tech metadata extraction) during ingest. Neither FFprobe or Mediainfo seem to do the trick. Anyone has any suggestions how we could solve this - maybe with another tool?

Thanks!

Robert Gillesse

Digital Archivist

international institute of social history

[Ashley Blewer]

Hi Robert,

Can you confirm that these files are getting identified as MXF when they go through the File Identification step, by either Siegfried or FIDO? When I run a test MXF through a vanilla Archivematica installation, Siegfried fails to identify the file. This is the case when I run it outside of Archivematica, too. When I test with FIDO, it identifies the file as MXF. If this is the case for you, it could be that the files are not getting to the point where they can be characterized and metadata extracted.

But even if that's not the problem, when I looked at the Characterize Rules in the FPR (Preservation Planning tab), I noticed there are no characterization rules for Material Exchange Format. You will have to manually add that you would like Archivematica to extract metadata from MXF by adding a new rule. You can add MediaInfo, FFprobe, or both. Both of these tools run successfully on MXF files.

Ashley

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Ashley Blewer

AV Preservation Specialist

Artefactual Systems, Inc.

https://www.artefactual.com/

@archivematica & @accesstomemory

she/her

[Robert Gillesse]

Hi Ashley,

Thanks! Our MXF files are being identified (in our case by the file extension I believe) but not characterized. I also saw later that indeed there is no rule for the characterisation of MXF files in the FPR. So maybe we can add that. Next question then would be if Mediainfo or ffprobe can actually do the chacacterisation. On the Mediainfo I do not see MXF being mentioned so I expect ffprobe be the more likely candidate. Worth giving a try. 

Thanks again!

Robert

Op donderdag 11 juni 2020 17:07:52 UTC+2 schreef Ashley Blewer:

Hi Robert,

Can you confirm that these files are getting identified as MXF when they go through the File Identification step, by either Siegfried or FIDO? When I run a test MXF through a vanilla Archivematica installation, Siegfried fails to identify the file. This is the case when I run it outside of Archivematica, too. When I test with FIDO, it identifies the file as MXF. If this is the case for you, it could be that the files are not getting to the point where they can be characterized and metadata extracted.

But even if that's not the problem, when I looked at the Characterize Rules in the FPR (Preservation Planning tab), I noticed there are no characterization rules for Material Exchange Format. You will have to manually add that you would like Archivematica to extract metadata from MXF by adding a new rule. You can add MediaInfo, FFprobe, or both. Both of these tools run successfully on MXF files.

Ashley

On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 10:37 AM Robert Gillesse <robert....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

We are having some problems with our MXF video files in the sense that they are not characterized (tech metadata extraction) during ingest. Neither FFprobe or Mediainfo seem to do the trick. Anyone has any suggestions how we could solve this - maybe with another tool?

Thanks!

Robert Gillesse

Digital Archivist

international institute of social history

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[Ashley Blewer]

Hi Robert,

I tested with both, and both produce descriptive technical characteristics for the file. I find the MediaInfo report to be a lot easier to read and more descriptive than the FFprobe one. You could always add both. It depends on what kind of details you are most interested in extracting and what you want to do with the metadata afterwards?

The MediaInfo report is going to break down each MXF stream and provide descriptions of the General, Video, Audio and Timecode channels and is a bit easier to parse out programmatically. FFprobe is going to have this information too, be more succinct. I did a talk last year on how to read FFmpeg logs that will help decipher that information. To me, MediaInfo just makes it a little more clear. If you are using MediaConch, they are part of the same family so it might be easier to learn how to read the extracted metadata from one family of open source tools rather than try to learn MediaArea tools and FFmpeg tools.

Not to turn this into a self-hyping train but if you want more information about what the MediaInfo parameters mean, I have a series of 8 blog posts about that, too.

tl;dr it's up to you!

Ashley

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[Robert Gillesse]

Thanks Ahsley! Very helpful info! 

Robert

Op vr 12 jun. 2020 om 16:05 schreef Ashley Blewer <abl...@artefactual.com>

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