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.

9. They also list 337 audio file formats.

8. These numbers do not take into consideration the different release versions of each format.

7. Nor do they begin to approach the number of variable applications of codexes, settings, and other options.

6. An archivist may run into any one of these permutations some day, and will have to deal with the common, the obscure, and the obsolete equally to figure out how to make them accessible and maintain that accessibility.

5. There is no great joy for the archivist in the continual establishment of new file formats.

4. But you needn’t be caught flat-footed.

3. Having a plan in place for the ingest, monitoring, and migration of digital collections will help you control the process rather than feeling controlled by virtual strings.

2. Be prepared to address What Was? What Now? What Next?

1. And there are great resources to help you establish best practices and manage your digital collection:

• Library of Congress Sustainability of Digital Formats & NDIIPP
• Preserving Access to Digital Information (PADI)
• AES Technical Committee on Archiving, Restoration and Digital Libraries
• And more in our Links page and throughout avpreserve.com.

— Joshua Ranger

I guess this means the companies that distribute these apps possibly have databases where the original link is associated with the shrunken link, or the shrunken link goes through some sort of decoding process during some routing through their servers. Whatever the case, we are essentially relying on a proprietary encoding format when we use one of these shrinkers. tinyurl claims their encoded URLs are permanent access routes, but should we trust that any more than we trust that file formats, codex and operating systems will persist over time? There is a Firefox add-on that decodes tinyurl-encoded addresses (Greasemonkey), but that is only one encoding system among a growing number.

This may seem like a tiny issue, but shrunken URLs are an ingrained part of the functionality of the shortened forms of communication we are using more and more nowadays (texts, Tweets, instant messaging, short emails). If they do not persist, then the fullness of our communication does not persist. Some people may question if these forms of communication are worth saving, but this is an issue beyond just what belongs accessioned into an archive; this is about maintaining our personal histories. The image of pulling out a stack of old letters tied up in a ribbon or an old photo album is something that will be increasingly rare for one’s own memorabilia. Opening files on a thumb drive or from a storage system will be what we are doing (unless you really want to print out all of those Tweets and texts…).

Just as we must be with all of the image/text/video/audio file formats and codexes out there, we must also be aware of the encoding/decoding/tagging cycle that occurs in all aspects of materials we produce and receive. It seems tedious or uptight or unimportant, especially because we have such easy access to our stuff right now and can’t imagine when we won’t. But then again, it would seem difficult to misplace 22 million e-mails until it actually happens. And that’s no small problem.

— Joshua Ranger

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.