title: Audio-Visual Archiving: Comparing Memory Institutions and Commercial Industries
creators: Carl Fleischhauer
abstract: This presentation will compare and contrast the audio-visual reformatting carried out in memory institutions with the production, distribution, and archiving of born digital content by record labels, television broadcasters, and motion picture producers. For sound recordings, digital practices have been established in both memory institutions and the industry, although issues regarding multi-track productions are troublesome for the industry. For video, digital approaches are widely used for reformatting by libraries and for new broadcast production, but most video masters continue to be recorded on conventional digital videotape rather than as media-independent digital file formats. For theatrical films, most memory institutions continue to reformat using proven photo-chemical approaches.  Meanwhile, the production of new theatrical films is genuinely hybrid: Hollywood's current workflow mixes digital and film-based stages and elements. It is also the case, however, that high costs and the lack of relevant standards prevent motion picture producers from identifying and implementing a clear-cut digital solution for the long-term archiving of their valuable production assets. In all three areas--sound, video, and cinema--memory institutions and the industry face similar problems. Will they find ways to share their investigations and develop common solutions?
keywords: ithaca