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.