#avarchives

At MIPoPS, we’ve been working on creating a set of test tapes for DV Rescue! Each DV tape will have the same one minute of content on it (maybe one of our Moving History trailers!) Half of the tapes will be fresh, and the other half will be previously used tapes that have been erased and written over. Once all of the tapes have the control video recorded to them, we’ll intentionally cause damage to each set of tapes, to see what errors and issues we can expect. Here’s an example of what our research set may look like:

We’ll transfer the tapes using FirewireSDK, then run each file through DV Analyzer and save the outputs for analysis. 

These are a few of the decks we’ve got on hand at MIPoPS. Thanks to recent donations, and some serious auction hunting, we’re now able to transfer DV; MiniDV; DVCAM; DVCPro; and HDV.

We’ve also go the DV Rescue github page up and running, thanks to Ashley Blewer!

Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound (MIPoPS) and RiceCapades are thrilled to announce that they are the recent recipients of a Research & Development grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund their collaborative project DV Rescue!!!

This project will develop procedures and tools that will support migrating data from DV tapes into digital files suitable for long-term preservation. This will fill an urgent need for DV tape transfer tools that can rescue content from at-risk digital videotape formats. The DV Rescue project will entail two years of work to develop open source and freely available software, conduct user research and testing, and create documentation to help define and perform comprehensive, automated, and easy-to-use data migration techniques.

Specifically, MIPoPS and RiceCapades will:

Develop open source software to facilitate the most complete and accurate transfer of DV video from tapes to files, including video, audio, captioning, timecode, camera metadata, and preservation metadata.

Develop open source software to support improving DV files that have already been created by allowing such files to be assessed, so that the software may selectively retry portions of the tape and incorporate any improvements into the existing file.

Build a player to support visualization of uncorrected DV data, including categorizing DV transfer errors, illuminating when selective re-transfer may be most likely to offer improvements, and providing a method to easily distinguish authentic DV data, from error concealment techniques, and unconcealed damage.

Develop and pilot universal training materials and tools for ready deployment using a selection of partnering institutions as a test group.

Publish a white paper and present findings at significant preservation conferences throughout the United States.

The institutions selected for participation initially will include:

Carnegie Hall Archives (New York, NY)

New York Public Library (New York, NY)

Democracy Now! (Washington, D.C.)

Smithsonian – National Museum of African American History & Culture (Washington, D.C.)

Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive (Baltimore, MD)

UCLA Library Preservation Program (Los Angeles, CA)

Living Computer Museum (Seattle, WA)

Seattle Municipal Archives (Seattle, WA)

Follow DV Rescue’s progress:

#dvrescue

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Twitter: @mipops_seattle

Face-off, 1979 by Robert and Ingrid Weigand

Archives of American Art

Face–Off features Robert and Ingrid Wiegand on separate monitors explaining to viewers the mechanical nature of video, while simultaneously exploring the nature of relationships with its use of comedy.

It is part of the Robert Wiegand papers and video art collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

ON THE WAY FROM KANDY TO COLOMBO, ca. 1913

Human Studies Film Archives

The century old ON THE WAY FROM KANDY TO COLOMBO (HSFA 89.9.1) is a four minute film documenting a scenic train trip through the countryside of Sri Lanka (Ceylon).