The way that the term codec is generally used makes understanding what one actually is a bit confusing. Most people have the general impression that a codec is somehow related to both software and files. Maybe you have run across the term when you find out your computer doesn’t have the codec you need to play an audio or video file back, or maybe you have heard it referred to as a method to store data inside of a file or wrapper. Beyond that the details are sketchy for most people. The purpose of this paper is to clarify what a codec is, how it is used and what that means to archives.

We were excited to see Part 1 of Jonathan Minard’s documentary Archive — a work about the “future of long-term digital storage, the history of the Internet and attempts to preserve its contents on a massive scale” — released the other day. Jonathan is a Fellow at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, and was the [...]

One has to assume that a major distrust of the shift to digital reformatting and preservation is the feeling that we’re merely redoing work that will need to be redone again when the next format comes along. This may be especially galling to those who fairly recently reformatted video or film to something like Digibeta, [...]

Another year in the circular filing cabinet, another year in review. Only difference from the other ones is, I’m right. Most Interesting Acquisition: One’s Personal Archive From Twitter Though it hasn’t quite been completely rolled out, Twitter’s announcement that they were targeting year-end for release of tool that would allow users to download all of [...]

Economics and human nature dictate that there will never be a single file format and file storage solution, so the job of the archivist will necessarily be the selection and management of the various options available.

I hate digital cameras. I especially hate my digital camera, but that’s probably at least in part because my own camera provides me so many more opportunities to swear at it. I damn it when I miss a shot due to shutter delay or the processing time between pictures. I curse up and down when it keeps insisting on the wrong focal point. I make sailors cringe when my memory of the scene that impelled me to take a photo is not matched, ending up yet again as a flat, poorly framed, un-composed mess.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently announced the public release of several tools related to metadata for digitized video, including AVI MetaEdit, reVTMD, and development of integration with the existing tool MediaInfo. Of primary concern in the development of the resources is the ability to capture, review, edit, embed, and compare/analyze metadata specific [...]

AVPS Senior Consultant will be speaking in front of the Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG) meeting in Austin, Texas this Thursday, January 12th. Kara’s talk, “The Key Ingredient: Technical, Structural and Preservation Metadata for Digital Media Preservation” will be part of the Domain Deep Dive: Media Preservation panel, which will also feature presentation [...]