1. David B. Lowe, Preservation Librarian & Michael J. Bennett, Digital Projects Librarian Michael J. Bennett, Digital Projects Librarian University of Connecticut IS&T Archiving 2009 Conference Arlington, VA May 7 th, 2009

2. Survey goal: Status of JPEG 2000 implementation as a still image format among cultural heritage institutions involved in digitization. Survey Timeframe: August 27, 2008 through October 31, 2008.* Response: totaled 161, with the overwhelming majority coming from academic research libraries.

3. What about the codecs? Perceived by respondents as being inconsistent among vendors. Such inconsistency perceived as translating into possible migration issues. Might these concerns, however, be ameliorated to some extent when put into the larger context of the openness of the standard itself? In turn, might the decoding of valid JPEG 2000 files be viewed as remaining transparent regardless of the encoder used? i.e. developers should always be able to write decoders for JPEG 2000 no matter how the original files were encoded.

4. Visually Lossless, Mathematically Lossless: a sample of opinion “I have some concerns that once we start going down a slope of compromising images what the potential of it being accentuated after multiple migrations possibly with different lossy compression schemes. Considering the relative cost of space I don't think it is a worthwhile risk.” “I have little concern over lossless compression other than prominence and easy migration. It adds another level of encoding which could very well complicate future migrations (especially if one is missed) unless it is common and well documented. Again the availability of good migration software is useful.”

5. Visually Lossless, Mathematically Lossless: a sample of opinion Lastly, one respondent issued the sobering reminder that… “One problem with the widespread acceptance of.jp2 is the fear of future migration. However, I have heard that migration projects of tiff formats haven't gone smoothly either.”

6. Points Toward Standards’ Advantages - JPEG 2000’s support of both true lossless and a wide array of visually lossless (lossy) compression enjoyed broad use at many of the responding institutions. - Scalable storage savings through the standard’s comparative file size economy to TIFF and JPEG 2000’s flexible individual file rendering on the web were focal reason for its favor. Yet…

7. Negatively Affect Adoption Lack of trust in JPEG 2000’s lossless compression as being truly lossless. (actually no bits are lost upon decompression, e.g. Rick Laxman tiff/jp2 validity checking results = zero errors) Such lossless compression does not confer significant file size savings in comparison to uncompressed TIFF. (actually lossless jp2 enjoys an ave. 1:2 size savings vs. tiff) JPEG 2000 does not support higher bit depth images. (actually jp2 includes 48 bit support) JPEG 2000 and JPEG are two lossy-only standards. (not true) JPEG 2000 is proprietary and will always have both a lack of tools and/or only expensive tools available for its use. (jp2 is an open standard with free tools currently available, e.g. IrFanView, djatoka*, other assorted free plugins.

8. In the Context of other Standards and Best Practices Losslessness: From Theory to Practice, via Case Study Book Mass Digitization Archival Benchmarks: DLF: TIFF lossless bitonal vs. IA: JPEG 2000 visually lossless color Need a range of benchmarks by converted media format

9. In the Context of other Standards and Best Practices Survey irony: Among current implementers, JPEG 2000 for access, not archiving ct. JPEG 2000 goal: Scalability Preserve 1 file: SIP=>AIP=>DIP Irony a function of lack of browser and other software support

10. CONTENTdm Popular while Photoshop Leads the Pack CONTENTdm, digital collection management software’s built-in JPEG 2000 converter was a popular choice. In this case the tool’s primary reported use, the ingest and subsequent conversion of pre-created high quality JPEG or TIFF archivals into access JPEG 2000 files, pointed to the fact that much of JPEG 2000’s use at least within this community was as an access format. Adobe Photoshop with its free optional plug-in, however, proved to be the most utilized JPEG 2000 file creation tool among practitioners. Feelings expressed on this score were that the plug-in was easy to use, could be integrated into batch processing, but could also be slow.

11. Sorting out the legal concerns Overt IPR concerns linger, per survey But litigation vulnerability a fact of life, viz. GIF JPEG JPEG 2000 thwarts threat via: Case law precedent JPEG Committee vigilance

12. Going forward 1. Implementation Registry 2. Profiles by format of original media (cf. NDNP) a) Special Collections books: lossless b) General Collections books: lossy c) Photographs d) Maps e) Image files migrated from other raster formats 3. Community standards body vetting and approval 4. Community liaison to software community 5. Advocate to ourselves in cultural heritage community

13. David B. Lowe Preservation Librarian david.lowe@uconn.edu Michael J. Bennett Digital Projects Librarian michael.bennett@uconn.edu University of Connecticut Libraries Storrs, CT