Review of The Future of Memory

The Future of Memory represents an important contribution to the history of the preservation of moving images during the transition from analogue to digital, and its subtitle summarizes its main purpose well: A History of Lossless Format Standards in the Moving Image Archive.¹ The book – which consists of an introduction and four chapters, each with its own conclusion – originates from the respective PhD theses of the two authors, Jimi Jones and Marek Jancovic, and is based on interviews with 32 specialists (disclaimer: this reviewer is one of them). One point of criticism I would like to make at the outset is that from the first interview conducted on 18 August 2017, to the last conducted on 19 April 2023, almost 6 years have lapsed: nothing short of an eternity in the audio-visual world! Unfortunately, this can sometimes lead to current and outdated information being mixed without the reader always being made aware of the fact.

So Many Standards, So Little Time: The People and Politics Behind Archival Video Formats

The introduction recounts a story beginning in 2009, when Hermann Lewetz (then at the Österreichische Mediathek) started a digitization project using the XMF media container and the JPEG 2000 video codec in a lossless flavour. This solution was subsequently adopted by some broadcasting companies and film archives in Europe and North America, but Lewetz was not satisfied with it. Together with his then-colleague Peter Bubestinger-Steindl, he discovered FFV1 as an alternative, tested it, incorporated it into the workflow, and began using it for his preservation work. Lewetz decided to present a paper on his positive experience with FFV1 at the joint AMIA and IASA conference in Philadelphia, PA, in 2010,² but the audience reaction was almost exclusively negative. In particular, criticism was levelled against the FFV1 codec for the fact that it was neither standardized nor maintained by an official organization such as ISO or SMPTE.

Jones and Jancovic interviewed archivists, standards developers, and preservation experts in order to present and discuss the different approaches taken by MXF/JPEG 2000 on the one hand, and the Matroska media container (“.mkv” files) and the FFV1 video codec on the other. They also highlight the gap between an ideal theoretical standard and an actual existing file format. The case of Matroska/FFV1 is special, because it marks the first time that archivists proactively developed their own file format standards for archiving. The book examines not only the players, but also the politics and power that govern moving image file format standards. Today, both MXF/JPEG 2000 and Matroska/FFV1 have found their place in audio-visual archiving and are no longer forced to compete against each other.

In conducting their investigation, Jones and Jancovic also had to define a methodology for the study of format standards, as their project broke new ground.

“Lossless”: The Materiality of Archival Video Format Standards

The first chapter opens with a very brief cultural history of losslessness. Lossless compression requires less storage space but is also considered less resistant to errors than uncompressed formats, although error-correcting techniques can be used to counter this problem. Lossy compression, meanwhile, is not considered suitable for long-term preservation by the archive community, even if the acceptance of ProRes 422 and 4444 by several archives contradicts this.

The discussion is not limited to file formats but also covers digital storage media and media readers. Today, audio-visual archives rely often on LTO cartridges and decks, and sometimes also on LTO robots. Such technology is, of course, far from a best-case-scenario and is subject to its own pitfalls and problems that need to be understood and, where necessary, compensated for.

Standards with a Capital S: The Making and Meaning of JPEG 2000 and MXF

The second chapter documents the development and adoption of the MXF media container and the JPEG 2000 video codec standards. These standards were developed by the broadcast, film, and computer industries, primarily within SMPTE, which allowed the major players to find compromises, particularly with regard to interoperability in technically heterogeneous environments.

MXF was developed by American television broadcasters in the 1990s, coinciding with the early stages of the transition from magnetic tape-based production to digital asset management infrastructures. However, MXF was ratified as a SMPTE standard only in 2004. The Library of Congress played a major role in getting audio-visual archives to adopt this container also for cinema productions, thanks notably to its AS-07 application specification. The JPEG 2000 codec, meanwhile, originated within ISO and was standardized at the end of the year… 2000. In the early 2000s, SMPTE began working on a Digital Cinema standard to enable Hollywood to transition from distributing analogue film prints to digital files. And they chose MXF and JPEG 2000.

Wild Formats: The History and Standardisation of FFV1 and Matroska

The third chapter traces the development and adoption history of the Matroska media container and the FFV1 video codec standards. It also compares the development of MXF/JPEG 2000 and Matroska/FFV1. Here, Jones and Jancovic discuss the different attitudes towards open-source solutions between European, which tend to be more amenable, and North American institutions, which tend to be more sceptical.

FFV1 was introduced in 2003 by Michael Niedermayer as part of the free and open-source project FFmpeg. It enjoyed only a niche existence until 2013 when version 3 was released, which includes many features specifically designed for file preservation. FFV1 version 4 is currently a work in progress. Personally, this reviewer would have liked it if the book had also devoted some space to the relationship between HuffYUV and FFV1. Indeed, HuffYUV was already used for lossless compressed video recording when FFV1 was being developed, and it could have been another possible choice as a preservation codec. In the opinion of this reviewer FFV1 can even be considered a distant relative of HuffYUV, perhaps a nephew – but that’s another story.³

Matroska was introduced by Steve Lhomme in 2002, and not only does it have an open specification, but it is also codec-agnostic. The widespread use of Matroska for piracy is almost certainly one reason for its slow adoption by the broadcast and film industries. However, it became the obvious media container of choice for FFV1 in several archives because it is relatively simple and easy to use.

Matroska and FFV1 – as well as EBML and the FLAC audio codec – are standardized within the CELLAR working group of IETF, the Internet Engineering Task Force. Jones and Jancovic discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this unconventional choice. They compare the different approaches of AS-07 and CELLAR, and present the format decisions taken by various archives and the implementations made in various pieces of software.

Standards at Work: For-Profit, Nonprofit, and the Global and Social Technopolitics of Standardisation

The fourth and final chapter illustrates how both MXF/JPEG 2000 and Matroska/FFV1 have evolved outside their respective designers’ initial intentions and have been used in ways their developers had not anticipated. Jones and Jancovic consider also global and social dimensions, such as the under-representation of women and the over-representation of Europeans and North Americans in the field of technical standardization. As a closing remark: Regardless of which of the solutions analysed in the book one chooses, the promise is to enable future generations to store digital items without loss. Sometimes open-source technologies work better than solutions offered by the media industry. In addition, since many colleagues in the field of audio-visual preservation are closely involved with FFmpeg and the open-source world, expertise for Matroska and FFV1 might be more readily available and easier to access than for MXF and JPEG 2000. Ultimately, it all comes down to mutual trust, cooperation, and collaboration.

Reto Kromer ⁴

Notes

1

Jimi Jones and Marek Jancovic, The Future of Memory: A History of Lossless Format Standards in the Moving Image Archive. Urbana (Illinois): University of Illinois Press, 2025. 218 pp. 12 b&w illus. 4 tables. ISBN: 978-0-252-04665-0 (cloth-bound), 978-0-252-08875-9 (paperback), 978-0-252-04796-1 (e-book).

2

The brochure of the joint AMIA and IASA conference.

The program entry of Hermann Lewetz’s paper.

3

I told my personal love and hate story with the FFV1 video codec in a footnote seven years ago.

4

The author became involved in audio-visual conservation and restoration thirty-nine years ago. His work has seen him honoured with one of the inaugural Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) Awards and a SMPTE James A. Lindner Archival Technology Medal.

I wish to acknowledge the help provided by Oliver Hanley and Clare Healy.

A little shorter version of this review has been published in Journal of Film Preservation, n. 113 (October 2025), FIAF, Brussels, Belgium, p. 140–142 (a free online access is offered).

2025-10-30