Hello Wendy: My colleagues and I in the Technology and New Media department are in the early stages of a video digitization project, and we've found these resources to be credible as best-practices for digital media. There's a lot of information contained in these links; you can branch off from there:
Library of Congress (LoC) - Principles: http://www.loc.gov/preserv/prd/presdig/presprinciple.html - Technical Information: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/about/techIn.html - Formats: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/index.shtml National Archives - http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/initiatives/dav-faq.html - http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/initiatives/sustainable-faq.html In our own preservation efforts, we're standardizing on the Apple software platform for ingesting digital video (Apple Final Cut Pro), organizing it in a Digital Asset Manager (Final Cut Studio), and ultimately publishing it via the web using Adobe Flash Video (FLV). We've selected the Apple ProRes 422 format as our digital intermediate video format. Quoting Wikipedia, "ProRes is an intermediate codec, which means it is intended for use during video editing, and not intended or practical for end user viewing. The benefit of an intermediate codec is that it retains higher quality than end user codecs while still requiring much less expensive disk systems compared to uncompressed video." The ProRes 422 format works in the 4:2:2 colorspace, which means its color sampling is better than even MPEG2 DVD or HDV formats that are in the 4:2:0 colorspace. With 4:2:2, we can more accurately record the color information from the archived videos we're digitizing. Hope this helps, Adam Carrier Audiovisual Technician II The Mariners' Museum 100 Museum Drive Newport News, Virginia 23606 Phone (757) 952-0431 Fax (757) 591-7335 acarrier at MarinersMuseum.org www.MarinersMuseum.org America's National Maritime Museum -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Wendy Sporleder Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 5:00 PM To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Subject: [MCN-L] New Media Acquisitions - formats, hardware, storage, etc. Greetings, The Saint Louis Art Museum is relatively new to New Media acquisitions but we have identified the value in implementing best practices into our processes as we see this area gaining momentum. Could anyone please share any information on this subject? We are interested in lessons learned and processes: digital formats being used (compressed/uncompressed/raw), delivery methods (softcopy/hardcopy), storage methods (network/offsite storage), etc.? Thank you! Wendy Sporleder Database Administrator Saint Louis Art Museum One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park Saint Louis, MO. 63110 314.655.5318 wendy.sporleder at slam.org
