A format for digital preservation of images: A study on JPEG 2000 file robustness

D-Lib Magazine

Volumn 14, Issue 7-8, 2008, Pages

  Buonora, Paolo ^a   Liberati, Franco ^b  

^a Archivi di Stato   (Italy)

^b SAPIENZA UNIVERSITY OF ROME   (Italy)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 49449100116     PISSN: None     EISSN: 10829873     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1045/july2008-buonora     Document Type: Review

References (33)

1. Editor's Interview: JPEG 2000. Dr. Daniel Lee, ISO SC29/WG1 (JPEG), in RLG DigiNews, Volume 6, Number 6, December 2002. See 〈http:// digitalarchive.oclc.org/da/ViewObjectMain.jsp?fileid=0000070519: 000006287816&reqid=24150#interview〉. For general trends in digital imaging, see Steven Puglia - Erin Rhodes, Digital Imaging - How Far Have We Come and What Still Needs to be Done?, in RLG DigiNews Volume 11, Number 1, April 15, 2007. See 〈http://digitalarchive.oclc.org/da/ViewObject.jsp? objid=0000068890&reqid=26384〉.
2. Tim Vitale. Digital Image File Formats - TIFF, JPEG, JPEG 2000, RAW, and DNG. July 2007, Version 20. Available at 〈http://aic.stanford.edu/sg/emg/ library/pdf/vitale/2007-07-vitale-digital_image_file_formats.pdf〉. Vitale does not appear to be an enthusiast of JPEG 2000 "JPEG and JPEG 2000 encode the original RGB image data (to the video standard YCbCr), altering the original numerical digital data permanently.... (p. 2), and further: "called Lossless, but uses YCbCr color space (50-67% color space compression); a roundtrip image will appear uncompressed, but RGB numbers are not original due to rounding and wavelet decompression errors" (p. 32).
3. Robert Buckley, JPEG 2000 - a Practical Digital Preservation Standard? Technology Watch Report, Digital Preservation Coalition February 2008. Available at 〈http://www.dpconline.org/docs/reports/dpctw08-01.pdf〉.
4. Betsy Kruger, Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, D-Lib Magazine, January/February 2008, Volume 14 Number 1/2: 〈doi:10.1045/january2008-featured.collection〉.
5. Ronald Jantz, Michael J. Giarlo, Digital Preservation. Architecture and Technology for Trusted Digital Repositories, D-Lib Magazine, June 2005, Volume 11 Number 6, 〈doi:10.1045/june2005-jantz〉.
6. Stephen Abrams, Stephen Chapman et al., Harvard's Perspective on the Archive Ingest and Handling Test, D-Lib Magazine, December 2005, Volume 11 Number 12, 〈doi:10.1045/december2005-abrams〉. See also Justin Littman, A Technical Approach and Distributed Model for Validation of Digital Objects, D-Lib Magazine, May 2006, Volume 12 Number 5, 〈doi:10.1045/may2006-littman〉.
7. Robert Buckley, William Stumbo, and Jim Reid, Xerox Research Center Webster (USA), The Use of JPEG 2000 in the Information Packages of the OAIS Reference Model, in Archiving 2007. Final proceedings of conference held May 21-24, 2007, Arlington, Va. Springfield, Va.: The Society for Imaging Science and Technology.
8. "The promising - but not yet generally accepted - JPEG 2000" says Edwin Klijn, The Current State-of-art in Newspaper Digitization. A Market Perspective, D-Lib Magazine, January/February 2008, Volume 14 Number 1/2: 〈doi:10.1045/january2008-klijn〉.
9. Oya Y. Rieger, Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization. A White Paper, February, 2008 (CLIR pub 141), p. 20, http://www.clir.org/pubs/ abstract/pub141abst.html; Rieger mention after "new archival file formats, such as JPEG 2000 and PDF/A" (p. 33).
10. See again Tim Vitale. Digital Image File Formats, p. 37.
11. Both Photoshop and AcdSEE can manage JPEG 2000 files; Irfanview is free, and can convert any file format, also if they have very large dimension: 〈http://www.irfanview.com〉.
12. See, for example, Lizardtech, 〈http://www.lizardtech.com〉, Luratech 〈http://www.luratech.com〉, and ErMapper 〈http://www. ermapper.com〉.
13. See, for example, Mapping Sciance GeoJP2 Viewer, 〈http://www. lizardtech.com/download/dl_options.php?page=third〉, or Lurawave, 〈http://www.luratech.com/download/jp2〉.
14. There are several excellent and specific expositions concerning the JPEG 2000 algorithm, including 〈http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jpeg_2000〉. We only mention here the following official documents: • ISO/IEC, Information Technology-JPEG 2000 Image Coding System, Final Committee Draft Version 1.0, ISO/IEC JTC l/SC 29/WG 1 N1646R, March 2000. • ISO/IEC 15444-1, The JPEG 2000 Image coding system-Part 1: core coding system, - ISO/IEC/ITU-T, 2000. • Joint Photographic Experts Group, Website 〈http://www.jpeg.org/jpeg2000/index.html〉
15. rd ed.); online exercise and extra 〈http://www.davidsalomon.name/DC3advertis/DComp3Ad.html〉.
16. Ivi, pp. 256-257.
17. Ivi, pp. 262-270; the image in Figure 1 is from 〈http://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Lichtenstein_bitplanes.png〉.
18. Ivi, p. 279.
19. The expression is from Jan Stewart, Nature's Numbers, mentioned in D. Salomon, Data compression, ed. 1998, p. 249.
20. I. Daubechies, The Wavelet Transform, Time-Frequency Localization and Signal Analysis, IEEE Trans. on Inform. Theory, Volume 36, No. 5, pp. 961-1005, September 1990.
21. S. Mallat, A Theory for Multiresolution Signal Decomposition: The Wavelet Representation, IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Volume 11, No. 7, pp. 674-693, July 1989.
22. Some free tools allow previewing JPEG 2000 files on operative system viewers: see 〈http://www.optimidata.com/english/Jpeg 2000sw/ jp2_shell_extension.html〉.
23. Daniel Lee, who worked in the ISO's JPEG group, points out, "JPEG 2000 offers a very comprehensive set of features in a single format and obviates the need to maintain two sets of files for each image. I definitely recommend that cultural heritage institutions use JPEG 2000 as a single preservation and delivery format" instead of keeping master files in a TIFF format and supporting an expensive storage system. See Editor's Interview: JPEG 2000. Dr. Daniel Lee, ISO SC29/WG1 (JPEG), in RLG DigiNews, Volume 6, Number 6,. December 2002. See 〈http://digitalarchive.oclc.org/da/ViewObjectMain.jsp? fileid=0000070519:000006287816&reqid=152144#interview〉.
24. See (in Italian only) F. Lotti, La qualità delle immagini nei progetti di digitalizzazione, in "Digitalia", Dicembre 2006, pp. 22-37, 〈http://digitalia.sbn.it/upload/documenti/digitalia20062_LOTTI. pdf〉.
25. D. Taylor-Pearce, Graphic file formats test page: JPEG-2000, November 2005: 〈http://www.she-philosopher.com/home/technical/ graphicsformats.html〉.
26. D. Nister and C. Christopoulos, "Lossless Region of Interest with Embedded Wavelet Image Coding," Signal Processing, Volume 78, Number. 1, pp. 1-17, 1999.
27. The idea was proposed by Manfred Thaller to the Delos Summer School on Digital Preservation in San Miniato, in June 2006.
28. Judith Rog, Compression and Digital Preservation: Do They Go Together?, in Archiving 2007. Final proceedings of the conference held May 21-24, 2007, Arlington, Va. Springfield, Va: The Society for Imaging Science and Technology. Abstract at: 〈http://www.imaging.org/conferences/archiving2007/details.cfm? pass=20〉. Rog mentions a study, in Dutch only: R. Bourgonjen, M. Holtman, E. Fleurbaay, Digitalisering ontrafeld. Technische aspecten van digitale reproductie van archiefstukken (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, April 2006,): 〈http://stadsarchief.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/over_ons/ projecten_en_jaarverslagen/digitalisering_ontrafeld_web.pdf〉. See also the more recent report R. Gillesse, J. Rog, A. Verheusen, Alternative file formats for storing master images of digitization projects, National Library of the Netherlands, March 2008, 〈http://www.kb.nl/hrd/dd/ dd_links_en_publicaties/links_en_publicaties_intro-en.html〉, and, from the same authors, the paper Life beyond uncompressed TIFF: alternative file formats for the storage of master image files, in Archiving 2008. Final proceedings of conference held June 24-27, 2008, Bern, Switzerland: The Society for Imaging Science and Technology, pp. 41-46.
29. P. Amon, Error resilience for JPEG 2000, in Proc. Picture Coding Symposium, France, April 2003, pp. 243-246.
30. Very recently, tests on image file robustness has been made by Volker Heydegger at Cologne University, introducing errors in the file without excluding the header. Results are, of course, quite different, and more simple and uncompressed files result to be more robust: "complex file formats tend to get into trouble with keeping their data against bit errors" (V. Heydegger, Analyzing the impact of file formats on data integrity, p. 55, in Archiving 2008. Final proceedings of conference held June 24-27, 2008, Bern, Switzerland: The Society for Imaging Science and Technology, pp. 50-55). We will assume that file complexity is not a problem - if you can manage it - i.e. if is possible to balance the risk of concentrating crucial information in the header with tools to backup the header itself, as performed by the Fixit! utility that we discuss forward.
31. Every test can be replicated (original positions of corrupted bytes are stored in an Excel file), and all documentation is available on request.
32. Centro di Fotoriproduzione Legatoria e Restauro, 〈http://www.cflr. beniculturali.it/Progetti/Jpeg2000.php〉.
33. This approach was first exposed in P. Buonora, Long lasting digital charters. Storage, formats, interoperability, International Conference "Digital Diplomatics" 28 February - 3 March 2007, Munich. 〈http://www.geschichte.lmu.de/ghw/DigDipl07〉. A more technical exposition is in F. Liberati, A Study on JPEG 2000 Error Resiliency for Long Time Preservation of Digital Images. 〈http://www.cflr.beniculturali.it/ Progetti/DigitalPreservation〉.