There was a time when preserving an audiovisual recording meant protecting a physical object. Film reels, magnetic audio tapes, U-matic, Betacam, VHS, Digital Betacam and other professional formats demanded careful handling, controlled environments and, above all, working playback machines.

Digitization changed that relationship. Instead of repeatedly handling an ageing original, archivists could capture its content as digital files, create preservation masters and produce access copies without returning to the carrier. Yet early digital preservation created another dependency: storage media, especially Linear Tape-Open (LTO).

For many institutions LTO became the dependable workhorse: comparatively inexpensive, removable, offline and suitable for large audiovisual collections. But every new generation brought higher capacity, changing drives and a continuing obligation to migrate data before hardware and interfaces disappeared.

LTO is Evolving, Not Disappearing
LTO-7, introduced in 2015, stores 6 TB natively. Current LTO-10 technology has moved to 30 TB and 40 TB native cartridge specifications. The increase is dramatic, but capacity alone does not solve preservation. Backward compatibility is limited, and a current-generation drive cannot simply read every older tape.

That distinction matters. An LTO-7 cartridge is not automatically useless because it is old; if the media is sound and a compatible drive and software remain available, the data may still be recoverable. The preservation risk lies in the shrinking ecosystem around the carrier and the absence of a planned migration path.

The Scanner Has Become a Preservation Workstation
Modern film digitization is no longer merely a telecine transfer. High-end sprocketless scanners can handle fragile material, capture at high resolution and create multiple outputs from one carefully controlled scan. The British Film Institute has described using a Lasergraphics Director 65 capable of handling gauges from 8mm to 70mm and scanning up to 13.5K, while its normal preservation workflow commonly uses 4K with lower-resolution access derivatives.

Professional systems now include Lasergraphics ScanStation and Director platforms, ARRI ARRISCAN, DFT POLAR HQ, Blackmagic Cintel and specialized systems such as Sondor. Choice depends on gauge, shrinkage, perforation damage, sound format, required resolution, throughput and the archival significance of the material.

The key advance is not simply resolution. A contemporary workflow can connect capture, image processing, metadata, quality control and storage so that the preservation master enters a managed repository immediately after validation.

Videotape: The Disappearing-Machine Problem
Videotape remains more difficult. U-matic, one-inch Type C, Betacam, Digital Betacam, VHS and other legacy formats still require appropriate playback equipment. No cloud service can recover a signal from a cassette if the correct machine, heads, time-base correction and engineering knowledge no longer exist.

The urgency therefore lies at the ingest stage. Once the signal has been captured correctly, software can take over much of the repetitive work. FFmpeg supports processing and transformation; MediaInfo identifies technical properties; MediaConch can test files against defined policies; QCTools assists audiovisual signal analysis; vrecord supports preservation-oriented capture; and embARC assists embedded archival metadata.

Automation is valuable, but it is not a substitute for an experienced eye and ear. A technically valid file may still contain a bad transfer, missing programme content, colour errors, audio distortion or incorrect field handling.

Audio: Capture Faithfully, Then Manage Digitally
Audio preservation has followed the same transition. Analog recordings are captured into high-quality digital files, while born-digital recordings should normally retain their original characteristics unless a documented preservation reason requires transformation. IASA guidance supports professional high-resolution capture, with 24-bit resolution and appropriate sampling rates such as 96 kHz for suitable analogue transfers.

Broadcast Wave Format remains useful because it can carry professional audio together with structured metadata. As with video, the objective is to create a trustworthy preservation master once, document it properly and avoid needless re-digitization of the original carrier.

The Real Revolution is Behind the Scanner
The most consequential change is taking place after digitization. Earlier workflows often ended with delivery on hard disks or LTO cartridges. Modern repositories can ingest the preservation master directly into networked or object-based storage and automatically apply integrity, retention, replication and access policies.

Amazon S3 provides archival storage classes, object locking and replication options. Microsoft Azure offers archive tiers and immutable-storage controls. Google Cloud Storage provides lifecycle management, versioning and retention-lock mechanisms. Institutional object stores can provide similar functions without placing the entire collection in a public cloud.

This changes the archivist's daily task. Instead of manually preparing a separate cartridge for each group of digitized files, the institution can define preservation policy and allow software to create and monitor the required copies.

Does Every Digitized Footage Item Still Need a Separate Backup?
Not in the old operational sense. A professionally designed repository can automate replication, checksum creation, integrity checking, retention and disaster-recovery copies. The technician need not manually create and catalogue an additional tape every time a new asset is digitised.

But this does not mean that one stored copy is enough; replication and backup are not identical. A configuration error, malicious deletion, ransomware event or compromised administrator account can affect multiple online copies. A preservation system therefore needs independently recoverable copies, separation of failure domains, controlled permissions and tested recovery procedures.

The modern objective is not "no backup," it is "no unnecessary manual backup." The preservation copy still exists; increasingly, the infrastructure creates, verifies and protects it automatically.

AI Enters the Archive
Artificial intelligence adds another layer. Speech recognition can create transcripts; computer vision can assist scene and object discovery; automated systems can propose keywords, detect shot changes and make large uncatalogued collections searchable. AI-assisted tools can also support restoration tasks such as stabilisation, noise reduction and defect detection.

The archival rule, however, should remain strict: an AI-enhanced or restored version is a derivative, not a silent replacement for the preservation master. Provenance — what was captured, what was changed, by whom, using which process and when — becomes more important as synthetic and generative tools become commonplace.

The Economics Have Changed Too
Traditional preservation budgets were easy to visualize: cartridges, tape drives, shelves, vaults and migration cycles. Contemporary costs are less visible. They include storage capacity, data transfer, retrieval, cybersecurity, software, vendor dependence, staff expertise and the ability to export an entire collection if the service provider changes.

Cloud storage can remove some local hardware burdens, but it is not automatically cheaper for petabyte-scale audiovisual masters. A hybrid model — fast local storage for active work, managed object storage for preservation, and an offline or otherwise isolated recovery copy — may remain the most sensible architecture for many institutions.

What Digitization Service Providers Must Now Offer
The commercial model is consequently changing. A service provider should no longer be judged only by how many hours of film, video or audio it can transfer. Professional competence increasingly covers the whole preservation chain: carrier assessment, calibrated capture, preservation-format selection, metadata, checksums, automated and human QC, secure transfer, repository integration and migration planning.

Contracts should clearly identify who owns the files, who holds the preservation copies, who verifies successful delivery, how long the contractor retains temporary copies, what security controls apply, and what happens after the retention period. A digitization contractor should not become the permanent custodian merely because its server contains the last surviving copy.

This also changes the question of separately charging for LTO backups. If a client already operates a properly managed repository with independent, tested recovery copies, an additional contractor-created LTO set may be redundant. If that tape is the only genuinely independent recovery copy, removing it would be poor preservation practice. The answer lies in architecture and risk, not fashion.

Storage Capacity is Not Image Quality
A larger tape, faster server or more expensive cloud account cannot improve a bad digitisation. Preservation quality begins at capture. Film condition, scanner optics, transport stability, resolution, colour management, audio alignment, signal correction, file format and quality control determine what survives.

The same principle applies to file formats. FFV1, DPX, TIFF sequences, WAV/BWF and professional video containers each have legitimate uses, but none is universally correct. Institutions should select formats according to source characteristics, preservation policy, interoperability and long-term sustainability rather than following a fashionable specification.

Conclusion: Honor The Old, Redesign the New
The pioneers of audiovisual preservation worked in an era when saving a recording often meant saving its physical carrier. Their discipline preserved films, broadcasts and sound recordings that would otherwise have vanished. LTO then provided an important bridge into large-scale digital preservation.

The next stage is not a rejection of those technologies. It is a change in where the intelligence resides. Scanners are better, storage is distributed, integrity checking can be automated, and AI can assist discovery and quality control. The archivist's responsibility moves upward — from handling every copy manually to designing and supervising the rules by which copies are created, protected, verified, accessed and migrated.

For archivists and digitization service providers, the guiding principle should therefore be simple: digitise once, preserve intelligently, verify continuously and migrate whenever necessary. The golden age taught us the value of the original. The digital age must ensure that convenience never makes us forget it.

• FIAF — Film Scanners Forum and technical resources: fiafnet.org
• IASA — Guidelines for the Preservation of Video Recordings (TC-06) and digital audio principles: iasa-web.org
• FADGI — Digitization software and audiovisual guidance: digitizationguidelines.gov
• Library of Congress — Recommended Formats Statement and digital preservation guidance: loc.gov
• LTO Program — technology roadmap, specifications and compatibility: lto.org
• Amazon Web Services — S3 archival storage, Object Lock and replication: aws.amazon.com
• Microsoft Azure — Blob archive tiers and immutable storage: azure.microsoft.com / learn.microsoft.com
• Google Cloud — Cloud Storage lifecycle and retention controls: cloud.google.com
• British Film Institute — contemporary film scanning and preservation workflow: bfi.org.uk

Fremont, CA - September 5, 2018 - Blackmagic Design today announced that Los Angeles based distribution company Multicom Entertainment Group is using a Cintel Scanner, DaVinci Resolve Studio, UltraStudio 4K and DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel as part of its film restoration workflow.

As an independent distribution company, Multicom Entertainment Group owns more than 1,500 titles, with more than 200 of them on film. According to Executive Director Andrew Baritz, “When looking at our entire workflow it became obvious that building our own post workflow would be more time and cost effective than partnering with an outside post house to do it for us. The costs and wait times of using outside labs for HD and UHD film scans were too high, especially with a library of our size.”

Since purchasing the Cintel Scanner in mid 2017, Multicom Entertainment Group has completed more than 20 film restorations, including Academy Award winning documentary “The Long Way Home,” horror film “Slaughterhouse Rock," the classic tale “The Adventures of Pinocchio” and romantic biopic “The Whole Wide World,” which is slated for BluRay release in September 2018.

“We’ve already restored around two dozen films using the Cintel Scanner and currently have another five in progress. With most films using five reels, and occasionally capturing release prints along with original negatives (ON) for color reference, somewhere between 100 to 200 reels have already been captured, creating close to 100TB of RAW scanned data,” said Baritz.

Multicom Entertainment Group scans 35mm and 16mm film using a Cintel Scanner with a Cintel Audio and KeyKode Reader, and then does its restoration work using DaVinci Resolve Studio and a DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel. Additionally, the team uses an UltraStudio 4K, Teranex 2D Processor and multiple DeckLink capture cards as part of its workflow.

“Once assets are scanned and move to our edit bay, we use DaVinci Resolve Studio for all color correction, grain removal, audio extraction and stabilization,” said Baritz.

Lead Editor Meni Philip described working with DaVinci Resolve Studio as exercising muscle memory, since he first worked with it more than 10 years ago in Berlin. Philip cited using multiple facets of both DaVinci Resolve Studio and the DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel, including how the knobs on the control panel, specifically RGB, keyboard and color wheels, have helped improve his workflow. “I rarely use the mouse as the panel makes post faster and more precise,” he said.

According to Philip, the system gives him the opportunity to go beyond correcting color and grain, since DaVinci Resolve Studio divides colors into RGB and Luminance separately with full individual control of each, which provides much more control in the overall restoration of a film’s color. Philip employed this exact technique to overcome grading issues in his recent restoration of the 1982 film, “The Retrievers.”

“Even if you have a very faded film, you can still achieve very high quality results with DaVinci Resolve Studio, tackling challenging footage with ease,” he noted. “We also work with the Cintel Scanner to create the stabilization and master files from the scans. The quality is great, especially with the cost of the machine, and the ability to scan in real time allows for fast replacements of scanned assets, creating fast and efficient scans."

“We have scanned film stock ranging all the way from 35mm ON, interpositives (IP), internegatives (IN) and release prints to 16mm ON, IP, IN and even A, B prints. Our films live in all formats from all years of production,” concluded Baritz. “Having the flexibility to capture most professional film in house has allowed us to bring back films from the past that could not afford to shoot on 35mm.”

Press Photography

Product photos of Cintel Scanner, DaVinci Resolve Studio, DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel, Cintel Audio and KeyKode Reader, UltraStudio 4K, Teranex 2D Processor, DeckLink and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images

About Multicom Entertainment Group

Multicom Entertainment Group is an independent distribution company focusing on the worldwide television, digital media, publishing, licensing and merchandising marketplaces. With countless episodes of acclaimed classic television series, hundreds of movies and new theatrical films, Multicom's expansive catalog boasts a powerful portfolio of global superstars in every format and genre. Multicom has established itself as an industry leader, cultivating strong relationships with partners worldwide, delivering broadcast quality content wherever, whenever and however it is consumed. For more information, you can visit www.Multicom.tv, for blog updates, www.Multicom.tv/blogs, and to learn more about the library, www.Multicom.tv/Library/

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com

WASHINGTON—If you’ve missed out on the past 30 years of PBS NewsHour you’re in luck, 32 years of broadcasts will be persevered and available online through the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. The Library of Congress, public media producer WGBH and WETA, Washington D.C., will handle the digitization of PBS NewsHour programs from 1975 to 2007. Funding for the endeavor is coming from the Council on Library and Information Resources.

The project will digitize around 10,000 programs with more than 8,000 hours of interviews and reports on major American and foreign affair issues and events. Interviews feature every secretary of state since 1976, presidents, supreme court justices and members of congress, as well as a number of world leaders. The collection will also include coverage of election campaigns, African-American history, end of the Cold War, terrorism and other national issues.

With the addition of the PBS NewsHour collection, the AAPB website will have more than 20,000 programs as part of its online collection. The AAPB is a collaboration between WGBH and the Library of Congress.