Preservation Strategies Review

Richard WrightPreservation Guide, UK@RichardWrightSummaryBackgroundMe and the UK Oral History Society

The Problem – what’s out there?
Strategies – transfers, digitisation, making files, coping with the crunch
Prospects – some statistics on what’s entering and leaving audiovisualarchives
Next 100 Years – the future of storage
Conclusions – about likely successes and failures

“People with decades of experience in the field are saying 'This is it,
Birdseye' (or something similar) about video: there is just no time towait any longer. Analogue videotape needs to be under a preservation
plan, now, or it has little hope of survival.”“So that's the message: do it now, as there is no expectation ofaffordable or even unaffordable digitisation beyond the next decade.”What’s Out There?

Flickr: Cochinogarcia CC

Surveys:
1981: BUFVC - The Researcher’s Guide; 2006: 640 audio-visual collections
from the United Kingdom and Ireland
2002 Presto - 1 million hrs of film, 1.6 million hrs of video recordings, 2
million hrs of audio recordings. “2/3 obsolete, 1/3 damaged, ¼ fragile”"Extrapolation" (multiply by 10) => 50 million hours across Europe. Doubled for world,
doubled again by UNESCO for their website "200 million hours". World Day for
Audiovisual Heritage (27 Oct).

2004 PrestoPrime - 20 European countries, 10 million hours
2007 CAVPP California Preservation Survey of Moving Image and Recorded
Sound Collections
32 libraries, 1 million moving image and sound recordings.
"A survey instrument specific to audiovisual materials, CALIPR" [worst practice]

More surveys:
2008 TAPE = 374 AV collections across Europe: 25 million hours (5million hour overlap with PrestoPrime) => 30 million hours
documented.
70% in "acceptable" condition, but 50% no controlled storage, 50% no regularequipment maintenance, 70% no preservation plan.

2009 Indiana University 560k items on one campus
2015 British Library Save our Sounds - 1.8 million recordings, 3000
collections, 488 "collection holders" in UK.
The majority not digitising their holdings, hoping for rescue from “Save ourSounds” project, which aims to digitise 500k of these recordings.

2018 BFI Heritage 2022 Video Tape Collections Audit

Conclusions on Surveys
The real questions is no longer "what's out there" because the answer
is generally well known: lots and lots.
Urgent questions:what is its condition?
what is its value?
is it included in a preservation strategy?

All at risk AV content should be within a formal preservation strategy(which need not be an expensive or laborious process).
But costed preservation plans do require detailed knowledge of the status (andpurpose and value) of a collection.

Preservation strategies – and Ethics
Ethics – Do your best? Do something rather than nothing? At least try?
Do what you can afford? “We all have to be pragmatic.” “The perfect isthe enemy of the good.”« Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien » Voltaire –who also said « La vertu s'avilit à se justifier. »Audiovisual archiving: philosophy and principles – Ray Edmundson“As far as possible, the new preservation copy should be an exact
replica of the original” 6.4.9 p67“If the best equipment is not available, and a lower grade digital copy
from an endangered carrier is possible, it is better than doing nothing”
2.8.4 p17

Preservation strategies – and Technology
1970 – what to do with nitrate film? “Nitrate won’t wait”
1990 – what to do with analogue videotape?
1995 – what to do with sepmags (acetate magnetic sound tracks)?
2000 – transferring (digitising, ripping) to create files
what to do about originals?
what is the artefact?
What is the goal?

And now – digital preservation

Preservation strategies – and Economics
2008 – Copingwith the Crunch

Flickr: Renegade98 CC

Flatbed film digitisation
HD Camera added to existing
viewing table (Steenbeck).
1920 x 1200, 8 bit
24 fps; can transcode to PAL orNTSC HD video
Cost: £60/hr instead of £500
Sited ‘in-house’; quick turnaround; can be operated byarchive’s own staff
Not 2k; not 14 (or 12 or 10) bits
But: “production use it”
3000 items/6 months vs 220/yr

Wikimedia: DRs Kulturarvsprojekt from Copenhagen, Danmark

But where does it end?
Youtube: Digitising
the BBC Film
Archive withFastforward

Super 8
Reflecta budget film scanner £400

'real world digitisation':
AMIA 2016: "...these organizations cannot afford to wait for the perfectcircumstances to achieve "archive quality" A/V digitization...“Responses:• Univ Wisc: RADD
• Iowa State: "Building a Video Preservation Rack for In-House
Digitization AV CLUB"• XFR Collective: pop-up video transfer stations• DC Public Library Memory Lab - for use by the public

RADD: Recover Analog and Digital Data
University of Wisconsin$22 per tape; $15 for state
institutions
No mention of Timebase
Corrector or of time code
2018: U-Matic and Betacam"out of service“
https://radd.dsalo.info/Iowa State: "Building a Video
Preservation Rack”• Iowa State: "Building a Video
Preservation Rack for In-House
Digitization AV CLUB"• Explains a full, professional rack
• ExemplaryXFR Collective
pop-up video
transferstations;for 'indies‘"providing
low-cost
digitization
services"DC Public Library Memory Lab
for use by the public•VHS•VHS-C•DV•MiniDV•Audiocassette"archive quality" A/V digitization
2015 Indiana University – and now other universities following theirlead
Tate Galleries + MOMA (+ others)
Committed to highest quality, owing to the nature of their holdingsIssues (or slogans)
No Time to Wait
- doing something is better than doing nothing

You Won't Get a Second Chance- so do it right the first time
It comes back to STRATEGY
Where are you going? Preservation, Access, Both?

SEAPAAVA-16; Richard Wright; April 2012

Sample map: BBC 16mm film
FormatAge

Storage

Genre/value

Condition

16mm B&W film
negatives

1950 to 1970

archive;
uncirculated

Unique mastermaterial

good

16mm Ektachrome1968 to 1982

office for first 5 yrs,
News; high re-use some colour fadethen archive

16mm B&W film
prints1950 to 1970

archive;

No permanent
value: use
negatives instead

fair: have been
circulated

16m mag soundtrack

1950 to 1980

archive

Masters

vinegar syndrome!

16m mag soundtrack

1950 to 1980

archive

Duplicates; novinegar syndrome!
permanent value

Preservation Strategy: BBC 16mm film
Type of material

Condition

Action needed

16m mag sound track masters

vinegar syndrome!

digitisation to file formats; 2 years starting
destruction of originals
immediatelyContracted; checking inhousevinegar syndrome!

destruction (after2 years starting
respective masters are
immediatelytransferred and checked)

In housesome colour fade

Access copies made on Starting when budget
digibeta and DVD
allows: in 2 years

Preparation and checking
in-house; telecine
contracted out

16mm B&W film
negatives

good

Maintain in appropriate
storage conditions;review condition atintervals

16mm B&W film prints

Maintain in appropriate
fair: have been circulated
storage conditions

16m mag sound track duplicates

16mm Ektachrome

Timescale

In-house or contracted?

Review plan andReview is done in-housecondition every five years
Keep until preservation
actions taken on
negatives

Storage is in-housePreservation Plan: BBC 16mm film
Type of material

16m mag soundtrack – masters

16m mag soundtrack – duplicates

Preservation
ActionDigitisation at CD
quality: 44.1 kHz
sampling @ 16bits; synch pulses
recorded on 2ndCD channel

Service Provider
Three outsidecontractorsselected bycompetitive tender

None

Conservation for 2
16mm Ektachrome more years; 10° C;
35% rhConservation for 5
16mm B&W
more years; 10° C;
film negatives
40% rhConservation for 5
16mm B&W
more years; 17° C;
film prints
35% rhIn House

In House

In House

Batching

OutcomeQuality Control

Monthly basis

One audio CD and Internal spot
one BWF file (on checking of eachCD-ROM) per
CD. Selective endoriginal mag sound to-end checking.
track
Done in-house.

Preservation Prospects
Analogue digitisation 2000-2010: 1.5% per year (EU Broadcasting)
Which implies 67 years to digitise analogue holdings as of 2000
BUT – new material, still not on files, coming it at 4% per year

Since 2010
Budgets cut in archives (and broadcasting); has digitisation slowed down?
New material no longer coming in on physical media
New material probably coming in 6 to 8 times faster than digitisation

A lucky audiovisual archive in 2040
Half their analogue holdings of year 2020 will be gone, if they canmanage to digitise the other half (which requires digitisation at a rateof 2% per year) (1.02)^20= 1.5
Growth: twice as big as in 2020 (6% growth pa) (1.06)^20=3.2
Year 2000: AAanalogue archive, digitising at 2% => half digitised in 20 yrs
Year 2020: AD + P + BB growth: physical media to 2010, 4%, files since @ 6%(1.04)^10= 1.5 (1.06)^10= 1.8

Year 2040: DD BBBBBB half the 2020 analogue and physical has become files D
the BB has tripled to BBBBBB; ¼ of analogue from 2000 is lost

So: 75% of their holdings will be from post 2010; 50% post 2020
And mainly nobody will notice that ¼ of the analogue was lost.An Unlucky Audiovisual Archive
Year 2000: AAA analogue archive, digitising at 1.5% => 1/3 20 yrs
Year 2020: AAD + growth
growth: physical media to 2010, 4%, files since @ 6%(1.04)^10= 1.5 (1.06)^10= 1.8

Year 2020: AAD + 1.5P + BBB
Year 2040: AA->0.5A another 1/3 of analogue should have been digitised, butwork on the physical media interfered, so only half got done, but all the physicalgot ripped to files. The BBB has tripled to BBBBBBBBB.
Result: 1.5D from Analogue plus 1.5D from physical media = DDD.
Half the original analogue is gone. The Archive is DDD+BBBBBBBBB
7/8 is post 2000, half is post 2040; half the pre-2000 analogue is lost.

The next 100 years
Datatape from 1950s was read 50 years later [Ovation Data Services]
Data has survived for long periods already
US Goverment has my social security number (from 1964) and my pension
entitlements.

Continuous migration
looks much easier now that it did in 2010, because service providers do it as
their daily business.

Fearless prediction: in 10 years, people won't even mention migration.
Storage as a service will be taken for granted.

In Conclusion
Equipment is lasting longer than I forecast
film equipment: obsolescence not a problem;
deterioration of film itself (colour fade, vinegar …) remains a problem
videotape equipment: service providers snap it up. No Time to Wait
audio equipment: vinyl lives; open-reel tape on life support.

Prices have come down (and quality is variable)
There is much more "out there" than I estimated 18 years ago (by ?10x)
Which means the rate of digitisation now totally inadequate“2/3 will never be digitised”
Efforts need to be doubled. If 1/3 doesn't need digitisation, doubling ourefforts will mean the bulk of needed work will be done!

Thank you@Richard Wright