“You oughta be in pictures”: Insights to Digital Moving Image Preservation from the BFI, EYE, and LOC
Anne Gant Laura Drake Davis Lucy Wales
In this panel session, current and future approaches for digital moving image content – film, video, television, and streaming - will be discussed. With concepts applying to both born digital and digitized moving image content, this session will provide a foundational overview of digital moving image files, including formats and technical characteristics, and will provide insight into how three of the leading moving image archives are meeting the challenges of long-term preservation of our collective moving image heritage. 

The session will begin with an introduction to working with digital moving image content, including basic concepts of digital moving image content, codecs and containers, lossy vs lossless files, and impact of sound and image quality on file sizes. Good practice will also be discussed. The introduction also includes a brief discussion of both consumer and entertainment industry formats. The presenters will share open source tools and resources available for processing moving image content - democratizing capabilities for processing moving image content. 

Panel participants will share current workflows for moving image content, including use of scripted workflows, open source tools, specialized hardware, and a combination of approaches to ensure the preservation of our moving image heritage. The discussion will also include acceptable formats and the necessity to be flexible on accepted formats while retaining a focus on formats appropriate for long-term preservation. 

Participants will also discuss current challenges working with high volumes of content, and the increasingly large digital moving image files and file sets as well as the entertainment industry’s drive to produce higher quality content and the impact on cultural heritage institution resources. Participants will have time to ask questions and engage in meaningful discussion with the panel members.
approaches to preservation from document to data