EN17650 - The New Standard for Digital Preservation of Cinematographic Content

With the cessation of analog film as distribution medium for cinematographic content, its use as a storage medium was also abandoned. This created new challenges in the long-term preservation of cinema movies - now in its digital form. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) drew attention to this in the two reports 'The Digital Dilemma' in 2007 and 2012 and the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) gave feedback in 'The Digital Statement.' While storage capacities have continued to grow and are no longer the biggest problem, the increasing variety and also the rapid obsolescence of digital formats remains a hot topic. For this reason, the new European standard EN17650 has been developed to address this issue. This paper presents the requirements, considerations, and solutions discussed during the standardization project. It explains the system architecture, formats, and elements of a 'preservation package' and the criteria for selecting specific metadata within the new standard.