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Forbes
2 days ago
- Science
- Forbes
Standards For Data Provenance And Digital Preservation
securing data provenance Long term digital preservation of data and other digital content faces several challenges. The first is degradation of the recorded information due to physical damage over time or to thermally driven erasure of the data. The second hurdle is obsolescence of the technology (hardware and software) needed to read back the recorded information. The third hurdle is the widespread destruction or alteration of information (intentional or not), which has occurred several times in human history, and which is likely to occur again. The first and second challenges are generally met by making multiple copies of data, ideally in multiple places, or migrating the data to new media when the old media is close to becoming obsolete or close to losing data. The last obstacle requires new methodologies around determining data provenance and whether that data has been altered. Organizations such as the IEEE and the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers, or SMPTE are starting efforts to develop methodologies and standards on digital data provenance. SMPTE just announced that it is creating a Content Provenance and Authenticity, CPA, in Media Study Group. This effort will assess how current content provenance and authenticity technologies affect media production and distribution. An important element of this will be about the carriage of content provenance information in MXF files, due to an urgent industry need. MXF stands for Material Exchange Format. It is a container format primarily used in professional broadcasting and video production for exchanging audio-video materials. MXF files can contain video, audio and metadata and they support various compression schemes and data types. MXF is an open standard designed to simplify file-based media workflows and interoperability between different systems. The scope of the project will be to identify content provenance and authenticity technologies, areas of work and activities in other professional media organizations, and make recommendations where SMPTE can update existing or create new standards to support the flow of content provenance and authenticity information. The group will also gather use cases and requirements, and summarize those findings and recommendations in one or more study group reports. The group includes representatives of the SMPTE Standards Community from Ross Video, SONY, Adobe, The European Broadcasting Union, and Metaglue. The IEEE standards association is also engaged in initial efforts in creating a study group around the creation of potential standards on Global Data Veracity as well. I am hoping that all the groups working on methods for data provenance can work together to make compatible standards and best practices. There are both immediate and long-term needs for modern methods for digital data provenance. History has shown that knowledge has been and can be intentionally suppressed or otherwise made hard to find and that many older books and other types of historical documents simply have been lost over time. In addition, today digital data can be subject to tampering and modification for criminal, religious or political reasons. We need approaches to preserve digital data in its original form over long periods of time and to make that data available to future generations as well as to preserve the integrity of current media workflows. SMPTE announced that it has created a Content Provenance and Authenticity in Media Study Group. The provenance of digital content needs standards and best practices to preserve workflow integrity and enable long term digital data preservation.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Ultimate Goal Is to Make More Movies,' Says CTO of Stability AI, the Tech Company for Which James Cameron Serves as a Board Member
Hanno Basse — chief tecnology officer of AI tech developer Stability AI, whose board members include James Cameron — discussed his company's work and the evolution of generative AI in filmmaking during this week's HPA Tech Retreat, saying, 'The ultimate goal is to make more movies.' Pointing to the years it can take to make a Hollywood movie such as Cameron's blockbuster 'Avatar' films, he said, 'We heard this from a number of other filmmakers as well: 'We wanted to make more films in the past, and the time it takes for us, that's the problem.'' During his talk at the annual Palm Springs event, where AI took center stage, Basse weighed in on subjects such as data provenance and budgets, and spoke about progress being made in filmmaking, predicting that in 'probably two years, we're going to have very high performing open source foundation models.' More from Variety AI Is a Potential 'Goldmine' and a 'Ticking Time Bomb,' Says SMPTE Chief at HPA Tech Retreat James Cameron Joins Palestinian-Israeli Doc 'There Is Another Way' as Exec Producer (EXCLUSIVE) Josh Gad Says He Was Denied a Role in 'Avatar' Because He Looked Like a 'Tall Overweight Smurf' As a Na'vi Stability AI develops generative AI models for image, video, 3D, audio and language, including its flagship model, Stable Diffusion. 'Our guiding principles, basically, are that generative AI needs to be part of the production process and not replace it,' Basse said, noting that Stability AI supports an 'artist centric' approach and also a 'task centric' approach, with some of its latest developments being 3D tools and a prototype for aspect ratio conversion. Stability AI also involves some notable leaders from the Hollywood community. In addition to Cameron — who Basse said is 'really actively involved' — Stability AI's board chairman is entrepreneur and Napster co-founder Sean Parker, and the company's CEO is Prem Akkaraju, the former CEO of VFX company Weta. Basse himself served as CTO at Fox (prior to Disney's acquisition of the studio) and at VFX studio Digital Domain. Basse shared his perspectives on several notable AI subjects during his talk. 'I don't know anything that's impossible in the industry today, especially with the advancements of visual effects. So I don't think [AI] is about the impossible,' he said. 'It is really about making things faster and cheaper. If you look at your budgets today, whether it's TV or film, 87-90% of that budget is human labor. And I'm not talking about putting people out of work, but there's a lot of that labor is not as fun to do.' At the retreat, there was also a lot of attention on text to video, which Basse suggested is a 'fad' because filmmakers need the 'highest level' of control. 'When it actually comes to producing a two-hour movie with high production value that a lot of people will want to go and see, I think we're very far from that in terms of generative AI being able to do that,' he asserted. Basse also weighted in on data provenance. 'I actually think that, going forward, the provenance issue is going to be less of a problem than we all think it is now,' he said, noting that production will require 'very specific' data. 'We're not going to get that data from scraping YouTube or whatever. We're going to get that data only from people like [Hollywood professionals], and we're already negotiating training data deals with people. And there's term sheets; there's very clear conditions as to what this data can be used for.' He added, 'We are here to play ball, and to play by the rules of the industry.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Grammy Predictions, From Beyoncé to Kendrick Lamar: Who Will Win? Who Should Win? What's Coming to Netflix in February 2025
