About a week ago I had the opportunity to visit Crawford Media Services, Inc. with Margie Compton. This organization does multiple duties related to audio-visual material, such as post-production for commercial and studio works, digital asset management for media, and many others. The purpose of our visit was to drop off a home movie collection that was deemed a priority for the University so that they could perform conservation measures and put the information on discs so that researchers will be able to assess the information without risking the overuse of the original film. The archives is very lucky to have an annual preservation budget that they spend to do things such as this. The good thing about Crawford is that the staff seems to really care about the collection and the importance of the collection. They sat down with Margie to discuss details of how to best approach the digitization of the collection, which will be an ongoing process as they work through the duration of the project. This collection came to UGA in good condition, and it depicts a wide variety of countries on one man’s travels around the world, so the archives wants to put it online to show the breath and scope of this traveler's films. This experience triggered this week’s topic: what exactly goes into preserving or digitizing a film?
The process of truly conserving film and digitizing it can be a complex process, depending on the format you’re working with. Most people don’t think about what goes into either of these processes, but I’m sure if they did, they would realize it isn’t quite the same process as transferring a VHS tape into a DVD, which is something many people have done at home. First of all, archives hold a variety of film formats: Super 8, 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, films with mag sound (magnetic strips that hold audio), and more. Each of these formats has to be considered carefully in the conservation and digitization process. For instance, films with mag sound cannot be cleaned with alcohol-based film cleaners because alcohol can damage the audio track. All media archivists are aware of the correct procedures of film cleaning, but they often do not have the time or equipment to perform this duty on their own, so they may have to rely on organizations such as Crawford to perform this step for them. There is also the process of digitization to consider. Film scanning can be done in-house, as you have seen in my post titled "The Process of Scanning Films", but again, there is very little time to do this and many archives don't have their own scanners. The Andrew Avery Collection took approximately four full 8-hour days to scan; imagine how long it would take an archive to scan hundreds of these reels on top of their other duties! And archives often do not have the proper equipment to digitize certain older media formats due to the expense or inability to obtain such equipment (much of this machinery is becoming obsolete and difficult to find). For smaller collections, archives may be more inclined to perform these duties in-house, but for collections that contain hundreds of items, where saving the film in time is a factor and the preservation of the information of the films is a priority, a decision must be made as to whether or not to use outside vendors for these preservation measures.
The process of truly conserving film and digitizing it can be a complex process, depending on the format you’re working with. Most people don’t think about what goes into either of these processes, but I’m sure if they did, they would realize it isn’t quite the same process as transferring a VHS tape into a DVD, which is something many people have done at home. First of all, archives hold a variety of film formats: Super 8, 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, films with mag sound (magnetic strips that hold audio), and more. Each of these formats has to be considered carefully in the conservation and digitization process. For instance, films with mag sound cannot be cleaned with alcohol-based film cleaners because alcohol can damage the audio track. All media archivists are aware of the correct procedures of film cleaning, but they often do not have the time or equipment to perform this duty on their own, so they may have to rely on organizations such as Crawford to perform this step for them. There is also the process of digitization to consider. Film scanning can be done in-house, as you have seen in my post titled "The Process of Scanning Films", but again, there is very little time to do this and many archives don't have their own scanners. The Andrew Avery Collection took approximately four full 8-hour days to scan; imagine how long it would take an archive to scan hundreds of these reels on top of their other duties! And archives often do not have the proper equipment to digitize certain older media formats due to the expense or inability to obtain such equipment (much of this machinery is becoming obsolete and difficult to find). For smaller collections, archives may be more inclined to perform these duties in-house, but for collections that contain hundreds of items, where saving the film in time is a factor and the preservation of the information of the films is a priority, a decision must be made as to whether or not to use outside vendors for these preservation measures.