CCOP helps NFB put streaming movie service CinéRoute online to Canadians

The National Film Board (NFB) will soon launch its Canadian Culture Online Program (CCOP)-supported CinéRoute project from its exclusive home on CANARIE Inc.’s experimental broadband platform CA*Net 4 to the broader commodity Internet. Within weeks, the service, which streams Canadian films from the agency’s collection, will be available to 2,000 NFB members in Canada - people who have completed a free sign-up procedure online to let the NFB know they’re interested in receiving news and services from it. NFB spokeswoman Laurie Jones tells Canadian NEW MEDIA the service, which is receiving money from the CCOP Memories Fund envelope, will help the film board meet its mandate to make cultural heritage accessible. The expanded program will make 400 films in French and English - animation, documentaries and some feature-length docs - available in MPEG4 format free to up to 2,000 NFB members. More people might be added, but rights discussions have limited the number of potential viewers for the time being. The program was first launched in Canadian universities via CANARIE’s broadband pipe in 1999, and has expanded to include about 800 films. But, says Jones, while there have been tens of thousands of movies viewed, the trial still encounters some challenges in the academic environment. For example, she says, schools can face physical limitations on where terminals may be placed since the CA*Net pipe is so large, and students may not always find those locations convenient. The move to thinner pipes, however, also required the transition from the MPEG1 format to MPEG4, which results in much smaller files without overly compensating the quality. "For the Internet, it’s a good viewing experience. You can go full screen on it, of course, with a very good quality in terms of the image itself. It also allows us to put subtitles on, which is important for the type of films that we have," says Jones. In fact, she notes, some older films that have now been digitized look better than they ever did on the large screen. One of the key aspects, for both rightsholders whose films are being shown and for the NFB, is to use the project to test new digital rights management technology, and to explore the potential for eventually using micro-payment technologies to start charging for some customers and films. The pilot has been launched with the full cooperation of the appropriate copyright collectives, who are offering the content free of charge for the time being. "Obviously, it would be nice for them to see some kind of economic model and a micro-payment system - which we’re not doing at the moment because we really want to see how people are going to be using this…This is a first. Will people sit down and watch a 78-minute documentary (on their computers?)" The pilot will also be introduced with a sophisticated serving and digital rights management system built in. The NFB has developed the backbone in-house, also with funding from the CCOP. "When we first started developing, we shopped around to see if there would be anything, because it’s always better to buy something off-the-shelf. For us, what we found was a lot of rights management systems for licences that were already granted in terms of contracts, but there was nothing that could actually assign rights that you have. Films are composed of a rights trail that’s just incredible. It has music. It could use archival footage…It’s got tons of rightsholders and underlying rights." She notes that the NFB’s system will automatically, for example, remove films from circulation when the rights are exhausted. "All of a sudden the film will no longer be there. That’s because the rights are exhausted. It takes it off automatically. It doesn’t require someone to pore through on a weekly basis…When you have a large collection like the film board has, you really need those automated systems."

CCOP helps NFB put streaming movie service CinéRoute online to Canadians

News | 01/26/2004 5:00 am EST

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