December 6, 2010 -- Two National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program staff members, Carl Fleischhauer and Jimi Jones, recently led a working group focusing on a proposed standard for audio-visual preservation.
An example of damaged film.
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Development of the MXF Application Specification for Archiving and Preservation of audio-visual materials is an activity of the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative Audio-Visual Working Group. The proposed standard involves both digital reformatting as well as born digital materials. This working group session was held in connection with the recent Association of Moving Image Archivists joint conference with the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (external link).
There were over 50 people present from 11 countries at this special meeting, which included several presentations as well as group discussion on a range of issues from technical to licensing.
Fleischhauer, an NDIIPP program officer and coordinator of the FAGDI AV working group, said: "The audience was weighted toward public archives but we were happy to see private sector companies there too, and we look forward to working with them to build some needed tools."
There was overall support for the AV working group to move forward with further exploration, with the goal of a finalized specification. For those interested in tracking the development of this specification, updates will be posted to the project web page. Feedback is welcome – all those who are interested are encouraged to submit comments via the link on this page.
