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Articles

Dance Videotapes at Risk
Dance Heritage Coalition
Videotape is extensively used by the dance community to document performances. This detailed article discusses the risks to videotape by physical deterioration and obsolescence. It also contains recommendations for improving storage conditions, safe handling and playback and copying and reformatting.
http://www.danceheritage.org/publications/dance_video_risks.html
Also available in .pdf.
New Digital Archaeology: Recovering Digital Objects from Audio Waveforms
Annu, John; Ghete, Mihai; Guttenbrunner, Mark; Lederer, Chrisanth; Rauber, Andreas (Date Created: Oct 2009)
This paper presented at iPRES 2009 (5-6 October 2009, San Francisco, California) presents a case study on the recovery of data from audio tape created with an early home computer system, the Philips G7400 in the 1980's, using a methodology and application without access to the original system.
http://planets-project.eu/docs/papers/Guttenbrunner_DigitalArcheology_
iPres2009.pdf
Safekept
Historical Digital Video Preservation Reformatting Project : a Report
Media Matters (Date Created: Jun 2004)
This report (88 p., 2MB) was undertaken on behalf of the Dance Heritage Coalition and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It is intended that the results of this research will be used as the basis of a nationally-accepted model, providing a technical foundation to those engaged in dance documentation and preservation, as well as others who use videotape to document their experiences and research. The report describes some of the problems with lossy compression compared to the viability of JPEG 2000 compression as a lossless alternative. Also discussed is the concept of 'file wrappers' by audiovisual digital media which combines video files, audio files, and metadata into a single, unified format. A chief goal of this report was to endorse a specific file format to use for the preservation of dance material. The report concludes by recommending the file format Material Exchange Format (MXF) container format. The report also recommends use of JPEG 2000 compression, as it serves preservation needs and is affordable to implement.
http://www.danceheritage.org/preservation/Digital_Video_Preservation_R
eport.doc
Lossless Video Compression for Archives: Motion JPEG2k and Other Options
Davila, R. Justin; Gilmore, Ian (Date Created: Jan 2006)
This article compares various lossless video schemes including JPEG, MPEG and MPEG 4 as well as some lesser known systems. They are discussed against the requirements that an archival file being both lossless to preserve content and also compressed to conserve storage capacity.
http://www.media-matters.net/docs/WhitePapers/WPMJ2k.pdf
Mining Contextual Information for Ephemeral Digital Video Preservation
Shah, Chirag In: International Journal of Digital Curation (Date Created: Jun 2009) (United States of America)
This article discusses the issues of extracting metadata for digital video preservation and proposes a framework for capturing contextual information for ephemeral digital video preservation. It describes the ContextMiner system which has been developed for digital video curation as part of the VidArch Project.
http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/111
Historical Open Video Digital Library
Geisler, Gary; Marchionini, Gary (Date Created: Dec 2002) (United States of America)
An overview of the Open Video Digital Library (OVDL) at the University of North Carolina. The article reviews the theoretical and practical goals of the digital library, provides some detail of its makeup, architecture and user interface and notes the digital library's future directions.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december02/marchionini/12marchionini.html
Preservation of Magnetic Tape Collections: A Perspective
Bigourdan, Jean-Louis; Reilly, James M; Salesin, Gene; Santoro, Karen (Date Created: 22 Dec 2006) (United States of America)
This report (70 p.) describes the Image Permanence Institute's (IPI) approach to the preservation of magnetic media and is the final report to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) on a 3 year investigation to identify the major issues for preserving the physical integrity of magnetic tape collections. It includes findings from a survey of 17 institutions on preservation management of tape collections, and discussion of research on tape decay.
http://www.imagepermanenceinstitute.com/shtml_sub/NEHTapeFinalReport.p
df
Historical Research into Four Media Installations
Wijers, Gaby; van Saaze, Vivian (Date Created: Dec 2003)
Four case studies are used to illustrate the various aspects of the documentation, registration and preservation of multimedia art. The main objectives of the study were to identify what particular aesthetic and technical elements are essential, and should be preserved in order to ensure that the integrity and significance of the work remain intact during future presentations and to identify the criteria for preservation and re-installation.
http://www.montevideo.nl/en/nieuws/detail.php?id=52&archief=ja&showjaa
r=2003&beginjaar=2004
Research Report on JPEG2000 for Video Archiving
Gilmour, Ian (Date Created: 17 Jan 2007) (United States of America)
This technical report tests Motion-JPEG2000 with the aim of determine typical values of compression for a range of program content, to assess whether average and peak values affect accuracy of predicting data capacities for planning digitizing projects and to investigate particular characteristics which may significantly increase or reduce encoded file sizes.
http://www.media-matters.net/docs/WhitePapers/IansWhitePaper.pdf
Media Matters Technical Report
Scientific Workflow Solution to the Archiving of Digital Media
Altintas, Ilkay; Gilbert, Lucas; Hou, Chien-Yi; Jaegar-Frank, Efrat; Marciano, Richard; Moore, Reagan; Rajasekar, Arcot (Date Created: May 2006) (United States of America)
This paper for HPDC workshop on Scientific Workflow Systems (Paris France, May 2006) explores the challenges of embedding long-term preservation processes into existing video production workflows.
https://www.irods.org/pubs/DICE_HPDC-DigArch.pdf
Transferring Old Analog Videotapes to a New Digital Medium
Wheeler, Jim (Date Created: Jan 2006)
The paper focusses on archiving video.
http://www.wheelertapeforensics.com/ArchivePaper.pdf
VidArch: Preserving Video Objects and Context: Final Report
Marchionini, Gary; Tibbo, Helen (Date Created: 11 Sep 2009) (United States of America)
This is the final report of the VidArch Project, supported by NSF and the Library of Congress NDIIPP. The project contributed to development of policies and tools to facilitate preservation of digital video from the internet (such as YouTube) and explored context related aspects of curation. Tools include ContextMiner, TubeKit and VidArch Exchange.
http://sils.unc.edu/research/publications/reports/TR-2009-01.pdf

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Events

SCARP Workshop: Building and Curating Online Video Corpora
22 Apr 2009 , Digital Curation Centre, University of Edinburgh
Digital Curation Centre
(United Kingdom)
This workshop was held by the Digital Curation Centre to discuss curation issues raised in the DCC's SCARP case study on the roles and re-usability of video data in social studies of interaction. This event aimed to raise mutual awareness of research communities' practices and needs for archiving, sharing and re-using digital video data; and identify how local and national research data services may contribute to the infrastructure for video data curation. Presentations and workshop report available from the website.
http://www.dcc.ac.uk//events/scarp-ovdc-2009/
SURA/ViDe 2006: 8th Annual SURA/Vide Digital Video Conference
27 - 30 Mar 2006 , Georgia Tech Hotel & Conference Center, Atlanta, Georgia (United States of America)
Conference theme was IP-Based Video: Short Term Solutions and Long Term Perspectives and the keynote speaker was Rick Prelinger founder of the Prelinger Archives and President of the Board of Directors of the Internet Archive.
http://www.vide.net/conferences/spr2006/
PDF of slides for some presentations available from http://vide.net/conferences/spr2006/program_early.shtml

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Organisations and Websites

Getting to Disk-based Loss-less Digital Video Preservation
National Library of Medicine
This website includes the presentations and summary notes from an event held on 1 August, 2005, at Maryland (U.S.). Sessions include prospects and challenges of migrating to digital moving image archives, video preservation workflows, motion JPEG 2000 and video archiving.
http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/VideoArchivists2005/
Conference held at the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland (US) on 1 August, 2005.
Historical Immaterial Variable Media Art / Video Art Preservation : Studies and Suggestions
Danish Video Art Data Bank (Last Updated: Nov 2004) (Denmark)
This website concentrated on the preservation of videotapes. It covered a wide range of aspects including storage, handling, preservation strategies, obsolescence ratings and case studies. It also Included a bibliography and links to other sites of interest.
http://www.videokunst-danmark.dk/preservation/start-2.htm
Video Preservation
Frost, Hannah (ed.) In: CoOL Conservation OnLine : Resources for Conservation Professionals (Regularly Updated)
A bibliography of resources on the preservation of video recordings, maintained on the Conservation Online (CoOL) website. The bibliography includes resources on video media and formats, care and preservation best practice guidelines, as well as resources on digital video formats and organisations involved in video preservation.
http://cool.conservation-us.org/bytopic/video/
Video Preservation Website
Messier, Paul; Vitale, Timothy (Date Created: 2007) (United States of America)
This website encourages preservation of historic video using digital capture to create individual video files, which would be stored on mass storage media such as hard drives (HDD) or data tape (DT). The site includes images and documentation for historic videotape equipment.
http://videopreservation.stanford.edu/index.html

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Policies, Strategies & Guidelines

AES Recommended Practice for Audio Preservation and Restoration : Storage and Handling - Storage of Polyester Based Magnetic Tape AES22-1997 (r2003)
Audio Engineering Society (AES) (Last Updated: 2003) (United States of America)
This standard (reaffirmed in 2003) provides recommendations concerning the storage conditions, storage facilities, enclosures, and inspection for recorded polyester-base magnetic tapes in roll form. It covers analog and digital tape and includes tape made for audio, video, instrumentation, and computer use.
http://www.aes.org/publications/standards/
AES standard - AES 22-1997 (r2003)
Dance Videotapes at Risk
Dance Heritage Coalition
Videotape is extensively used by the dance community to document performances. This detailed article discusses the risks to videotape by physical deterioration and obsolescence. It also contains recommendations for improving storage conditions, safe handling and playback and copying and reformatting.
http://www.danceheritage.org/publications/dance_video_risks.html
Also available in .pdf.
ISO 18933:2006 : Imaging materials : Magnetic Tape : Care and Handling Practices for Extended Usage
ISO (International Organization for Standardization) (Date Created: 13 Jun 2006)
ISO 18933:2006 concerns the care and handling of magnetic recording tape during use. It addresses the issues of physical integrity of the medium necessary to preserve access to the data (information) recorded on the tape.
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER
=44128&scopelist=ALL
Available for purchase in pdf or hardcopy.
Short Guidelines for Video Digitisation
Pavuza, Franz (Date Created: Aug 2008)
This brief guideline (8 p.) provides practical advice on procedures for digitisation of videotapes and includes a useful list of references (3 p.).
http://www.tape-online.net/Short_Guidelines_Video_Digitisation.pdf
Videotape Identification and Assessment Guide
Texas Commission on the Arts (Date Created: 2005) (United States of America)
This guide covers 15 common video formats. Topics covered include format identification, risks to longevity of videotape, condition assessment, and conservation actions. There is also a glossary and links to resources.
http://www.arts.state.tx.us/video/
Also available as PDF http://www.arts.state.tx.us/video/pdf/video.pdf.
Historical Videotape Preservation Handbook
Wheeler, Jim (Date Created: 2002)
This document covers videotape formats, common problems, care and handling, cleaning and maintenance, risk management and preservation. Also included is an extensive glossary and a list of related organisations, websites and other resources.
http://www.media-matters.net/docs/resources/Traditional%20Audiovisual%
20Preservation/WheelerVideo.pdf

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Projects and Case Studies

New Digital Archaeology: Recovering Digital Objects from Audio Waveforms
Annu, John; Ghete, Mihai; Guttenbrunner, Mark; Lederer, Chrisanth; Rauber, Andreas (Date Created: Oct 2009)
This paper presented at iPRES 2009 (5-6 October 2009, San Francisco, California) presents a case study on the recovery of data from audio tape created with an early home computer system, the Philips G7400 in the 1980's, using a methodology and application without access to the original system.
http://planets-project.eu/docs/papers/Guttenbrunner_DigitalArcheology_
iPres2009.pdf
Historical Research into Four Media Installations
Wijers, Gaby; van Saaze, Vivian (Date Created: Dec 2003)
Four case studies are used to illustrate the various aspects of the documentation, registration and preservation of multimedia art. The main objectives of the study were to identify what particular aesthetic and technical elements are essential, and should be preserved in order to ensure that the integrity and significance of the work remain intact during future presentations and to identify the criteria for preservation and re-installation.
http://www.montevideo.nl/en/nieuws/detail.php?id=52&archief=ja&showjaa
r=2003&beginjaar=2004
Historical Sustainability of Video Art : Preservation of Dutch Video Art Collections
Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art (Date Created: 2003) (Netherlands)
This collaborative project was completed in 2003. The project report has three parts; part one is the report itself, part two is the list of preserved video art works and part three is the glossary and bibliography. The report discusses the preservation methodology that was developed and evaluated during the project.
http://www.montevideo.nl/en/pdf/CONSERVERING_1tm80.pdf
VidArch at SILS
School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina (Date Created: 2006) (United States of America)
This project was focused on developing a preservation framework for digital video context by initially applying it to two important digital video collections: the complete series of NASA broadcast educational videos and the complete set of juried ACM SIGCHI videos presented at annual conferences from 1983 to the present. Later focus was on the US Presidential Election of 2008 and Internet services such as YouTube. Bibliography of papers and demonstrations available from the site. This project was an NDIIPP demonstration project and supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
http://www.ils.unc.edu/vidarch/

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Bibliographies

Video Preservation
Frost, Hannah (ed.) In: CoOL Conservation OnLine : Resources for Conservation Professionals (Regularly Updated)
A bibliography of resources on the preservation of video recordings, maintained on the Conservation Online (CoOL) website. The bibliography includes resources on video media and formats, care and preservation best practice guidelines, as well as resources on digital video formats and organisations involved in video preservation.
http://cool.conservation-us.org/bytopic/video/

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Surveys

Preservation of Magnetic Tape Collections: A Perspective
Bigourdan, Jean-Louis; Reilly, James M; Salesin, Gene; Santoro, Karen (Date Created: 22 Dec 2006) (United States of America)
This report (70 p.) describes the Image Permanence Institute's (IPI) approach to the preservation of magnetic media and is the final report to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) on a 3 year investigation to identify the major issues for preserving the physical integrity of magnetic tape collections. It includes findings from a survey of 17 institutions on preservation management of tape collections, and discussion of research on tape decay.
http://www.imagepermanenceinstitute.com/shtml_sub/NEHTapeFinalReport.p
df

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Related Topics: Magnetic disks

Broader Topic: Magnetic media

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