The article was prompted by this summer’s release of “The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States: A National Legacy at Risk in the Digital Age” by the National Recording Preservation Board (NRPB) and Library of Congress Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). Chris’ testimony in front of the NRPB as a representative for the Association of Moving Image Archivists and the Audio Engineering Society Technical Committee on Archiving, Restoration and Digital Libraries was used as background for the writing of that report. An essential text, the report is not a damnation of digital media and digital preservation but rather a call for renewed focus on the issues facing audio preservation that are having near term effects on accessibility and persistence.

We’re very happy to have been a part of the Rolling Stone article, but even happier that they took note of the issue and reported on it, which also shows what an important impact the NRPB report is having in creating awareness for audio preservation.

(And for those of you surprised we did not make the cover, Rolling Stone offered it to us but we had to turn it down. For modesty’s sake.)

This 80th edition will take place February 9th-12th, 2011 at the historic Loews Hotel in the Philadelphia City Center. This year’s theme is Born Digital: A New Frontier for Music Libraries. Thursday, February 10th AVPS President Chris Lacinak will be speaking with Kimmy Szeto of SUNY Maritime College on the Technical Metadata for Music panel sponsored by the Bibliographic Control Committee. Chris and AVPS have been involved in a number of recent projects dealing with metadata for digital audio, including being a part of the research and drafting of the ARSC Technical Committee Metadata Study and development of BWF MetaEdit, a powerful new desktop application that enables the analysis and editing of metadata in Broadcast WAVE files. BWF MetaEdit was developed in association with the Federal Agencies Audio-Visual Working Group and is available for free download on SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/bwfmetaedit/.

The use of digital formats for audio is well established, but the development of methodologies and tools for preservation and collection management is a growing but still emergent field. It’s great to see the MLA focusing on these topics and working to move the field ahead. The Annual Meeting is good opportunity to get involved, and if you do head to Philly, say hello to the folks at McGillin’s Olde Ale House for us.

Due to the susceptibility and challenges of both digital and analog carriers, data must be periodically moved from one carrier to another within a preservation process. When analog data is migrated from its original carrier to a new digital carrier, the analog data is ultimately transformed through the process of sampling. Challenges are then posed to authenticating the accuracy of such a migration. Despite the perceptual exactness of an analog source to its digital copy, the analog data and the digital data are never exactly the same. However, in the realm of file-based digital-to-digital migration, exactness can be achieved and evaluated. Within the entirely file-based environment, checksums and data comparison tools can verify that two copies are exact matches or reveal their deviation in a way that is not feasible between analog and digital environments.

The deluge of born digital audiovisual materials will be hitting archives soon if it hasn’t started already, presenting new challenges to asset management and preservation combined with accelerated obsolescence and degradation factors which will not allow a passive approach to archiving. From the description:

“This hands-on primer will introduce archivists and caretakers of digital file-based moving image and sound collections to utilities and processes that will help them perform routine archival tasks in the file-based domain. Activities will include creating and validating checksums; entering, editing, reviewing, parsing and using embedded metadata; identifying file characteristics and attributes; discussion of wrappers and codecs; and discussion of obsolescence monitoring and normalization.

By the end of this program, participants will:
• Know how to perform routine archival tasks in the digital file-based domain
• Gain a basic working knowledge of digital files to enable better communication with other stakeholders in the digital object’s lifecycle”

So come learn the basics of what you need to know to be prepared for the changing media landscape and to be a leader in the preservation and integration of digital materials within your organization. More registration information is available on the METRO website at http://bit.ly/azoc4n or in their September Digitech Newsletter. While you’re there, also check out the information on Gawain Weaver’s upcoming Care and Identification of Photographic Materials workshop as well as METRO’s great new book Digitization in the Real World.

After Chris gives a lay of the land of the challenges involved in conceptualizing and preserving these hybrid formats within the the context of audiovisual archiving, David and Richard will present real life case studies where innovative approaches and solutions were developed to manage migration schemes. David’s presentation will include the initial findings from some controlled experiments he has been performing on the capture of miniDV tape using variable hardware and software configurations. Enabled by DVAnalyzer, David has been able to run comparative analytics on the error rates and bit structures in the data streams of multiple captures of the same tape. The early results are fascinating and the planned further testing looks to be equally revelatory and instructive. Keep an eye on avpreserve.com for further details on David’s testing and for future updates to the DVAnalyzer tool.

Richard’s presentation promises to be highly instructive as well, as he discusses three separate tape-to-file migration decisions and outcomes implemented at the BBC. The migration of media-based born-digital content presents a number of scenarios that are dependent on parameters of the source original and of the ultimate goals for the use of the resulting file, and Richard gives an excellent outline for the decision making process. Follow the developments at PrestoPRIME (http://www.prestoprime.org/) for future release of Richard’s report and for essential guidance on audiovisual preservation.

AudioVisual Preservation Solutions continues their dedicated involvement in the Preservation and Archiving communities with upcoming presentations at the Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) annual conference.

JTS is being held May 2-5, 2010 in Oslo, Norway under this year’s theme “Digital Challenges and Digital Opportunities in Audiovisual Archiving”. AVPS Founder and President, Chris Lacinak and AVPS Senior Consultant, David Rice will be presenting on “Migration of Media-Based Born-Digital Audiovisual Content to Files” along with co-panelist Richard Wright of the BBC. As always, there are a number of fascinating, forward-thinking talks scheduled, and as an added bonus JTS is being held in conjunction with the International Federation of Film Archives Annual Congress set for May 2nd-8th in Oslo. Check out http://www.jts2010.org/ for further details — well worth the trip you can a-fjord it.

Later that month Chris Lacinak will address the ARSC Annual Conference to be held in New Orleans, May 19th-22nd. Chris and Sam Stephenson of The Jazz Loft Project will speak about the history, findings to date, and preservation related to the audio recordings that are part of this revelatory history project. A great story to be told in a fitting location. Reflective of its diverse membership, ARSC always puts together a wide-ranging and informative selection of panels — a conference that should be attended in a great American city that should be visited. More on the ARSC Conference can be found at http://www.arsc-audio.org/conference/

ALA Midwinter 2010 will take place on January 15-19, 2010 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center near Downtown Boston. The Midwinter Meetings are primarily a business meeting for the Association, but there are also a number of Interest Groups, Discussion Groups, and Forums that meet concurrently as well some extra-session educational opportunities. It’s a great opportunity to start getting involved and to meet colleagues, as well as the chance to visit a great city. Catch a flick at The Brattle or Harvard Film Archive while you’re at it. We look forward to seeing you there!

DV tapes are not a preservation medium. As the support for DV tape technology gradually declines, it is imperative to begin migrating DV content from tapes to files for storage and ongoing preservation of the content. In the migration process, the technical nature of DV tapes frequently causes issues generally described as “glitchy” or “finicky”. DV tapes often perform differently from one play to the next and across playback devices. DV Analyzer provides an automated way to monitor and report on the accuracy of the migration process.

DV Analyzer is a technical quality control and reporting tool that examines DV streams in order to report errors in the tape-to-file transfer process. DV Analyzer also reports on technical metadata and patterns within DV streams such as changes in DV time code, changes in recording date and time markers, first and last frame markers within individual recordings, and more. To those concerned with preservation and archiving, this means that you now have the ability to automatically monitor integrity during reformatting of DV tapes and extract meaningful metadata from DV files.

AVPS is pleased to offer DV Analyzer free of charge to the AV preservation community which we serve. DV Analyzer is licensed by AudioVisual Preservation Solutions under the open source GNU General Public License.

For more information on DV Analyzer, or to download it go to: http://www.avpreserve.com/avpsresources/tools

To request specific information about the product go to: http://www.avpreserve.com/you/

Or e-mail us at info@avpreserve.com

We look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions about DVAnalyzer.

Be sure to catch up with David Rice, Chris Lacinak, or Joshua Ranger of AVPS at the AMIA conference this week. They can also answer your questions about DVAnalyzer.

Among the directives in Congressional legislation establishing the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board in 2000 are mandates requiring the Board to conduct a national study of the state of recorded sound preservation in the U.S., and to produce a subsequent National Record Sound Preservation Plan.  Now that the national study is complete, Chris Lacinak, founder of AudioVisual Preservation Solutions, Inc., will assist the Library of Congress by participating in a task force making recommendations for Digital Audio Preservation and Standards.  These recommendations will be incorporated into the Library of Congress National Plan for Recorded Sound Preservation.

The required recommendations will include developing a consensus on “best practice” standards in areas of audio preservation and the codification of this information for public dissemination.  Areas which will be under consideration are metadata, digital preservation, digital storage and content management, and capture of analog and born digital recordings. The group is charged with formulating ideas for developing core audio metadata schemata and the tools to create and manage metadata. Consideration will be given to scalable best practice standards that can be applied to a variety of situations, including archives with limited resources. The final plan is scheduled to be completed and released to the public mid-year 2010.

We at AVPS are pleased to assist The Library of Congress and the other preservation specialists on this project.