Reformatting Moving Images: Opportunities, Compromises and Decision-making in Today’s Media Landscape

Abstract

Hannah Frost (Media Preservation Librarian, Stanford University) presented “Reformatting Moving Images: Opportunities, Compromises and Decision-making in Today’s Media Landscape.” YouTube presents a challenge to the list of new resources; although the argument can be made that it is a form of preservation, YouTube changes the expectation of the user, who in turn assumes that everything can be online. Analog tape or video are really a thing of the past. Frost advocates turning to digital technology. The audio community has a widely held consensus on the specs for reformatting: 24 bit, 96 kilohertz (at a minimum) and uncompressed PCM data in a broadcasting format. Unfortunately, digital technology is not so straight forward. She gave examples of her experiences in reformatting, providing examples of dirty film, after digitization, as well as flaws in analog formats which cannot be helped, and are thus transferred to the digital copy.