Montreal: Digital asset management and migration standards for archives represented two key issues investigated at this month’s ‘entirely successful’ Association of Moving Image Archivists conference in Montreal. More than 550 delegates and commercial vendors joined newly elected amia president Sam Kula for the event.

Kula directed the National Archives of Canada’s moving image and recording sound division from 1973 to 1989. He says the National Film Board [and Ed Zwaneveld in particular] did a great job hosting the amia event.

A major concern of the industry, identified during the Nov. 1-6 conference, is digital asset management. Attendees also reported an important European Broadcasting initiative to develop ‘a migration standard for archives.’ The European efforts mirror amia’s own pursuit of a North American standard. The creation of a single universal archival standard ‘would enable us to standardize holdings, improve access and support the easy interchange among countries,’ says Kula.

In a Canadian archival context, Kula says many of the older independently produced films are ‘orphaned’ productions, created by small companies long ago disappeared. ‘The necessity in this country is therefore to develop a collective program of action involving some of the major private players, the cbc, the nfb, to protect the current production. But when we go back in time it’s very much going to have to be a government activity.’

Lilly Koltun, director, archives preservation division, offers a summary description of a/v preservation programs at the National Archives:

* acquisitions and locating lost documents;

* maintenance of an exhaustive a/v documentation database (available at www.archives.ca);

* the preservation side includes tv, video of all types, sound recordings, radio and all forms of film;

* the division is also regulated to do off-air recordings, mainly of programs with longer term interest.

The archives currently have about 500,000 hours of film, tv and sound materials, almost half of it from cbc and nfb, says Koltun.

An independent organization – the A/V Preservation Trust.CA headed by Katherine Hurley is charged with coordinating industry stakeholders, developing funding options and projects with partners (such as the Astral Television Networks service Moviepix) and creating and promoting a Master Works Program. A selection announcement concerning Master Works is expected soon.

cbc now has a very active archival program. Vaults have been built in Toronto and work is being coordinated with cbc Vancouver, Calgary, St. John’s and Halifax to protect regional programming. Radio-Canada in Montreal is ‘in the process of developing a really splendid set of vaults,’ says Kula.

Kula says the nfb has done what cbc has yet to do, namely, provide access to large portions of its collection. He says the nfb’s electronic delivery system – CineRoute – has focused on ensuring the board’s collection is adequately protected.

Cinematheque Pacific in Vancouver has always been underfunded and ‘doesn’t have a formal archival program,’ says Kula. He says Simon Fraser University professor Colin Brown (a member of the A/V Preservation Trust.CA board) and others are working to form a Moving Images Association in b.c.

Cinematheque Ontario ‘is not really an archive as such. It is a collection of films and it has some important stuff in it,’ says Kula. He says there’s a start on archival work taking on the protection of films from directors such as Atom Egoyan. ‘But they have no adequate storage facilities. Did you know that nowhere in Toronto (cbc aside)…is there a set of cold storage vaults essential for the long-term preservation of color film?’

Cinematheque Quebecois has a cold storage vault and a ‘tremendously important’ collection of French-language Quebecois production and a very significant international collection, and it also has superb, world-class animation collected over 25 years or more.

On the operations side, Digital Betacam is the current mastering platform at the National Archives, says William O’Farrell, chief of moving image and audio conservation, preservation division. ‘It’s adequate and fairly robust in that it has some degree of market penetration, which is always a concern.’ And while Beta sp has been a popular post-production format, O’Farrell says there aren’t otherwise any ‘compelling’ formats on the market.

As for the commonly held belief ‘digital is seductive, digital is now and digital is forever,’ O’Farrell says.

‘Most of the digital formats involve some form of compression, and these days, with post-production imperatives – where you are dealing with hard drives and servers and Avids – you’re basically moving material from an acquisition format [field or studio camera] onto an Avid, which automatically means it’s being significantly compressed.’

‘One of the things we have to deal with is the multiplicity of formats, and they each have their own obsolescence cycles,’ says O’Farrell. ‘And the problem at the moment is that there isn’t any one really good platform to migrate material to for safe keeping.’

That said, he says Beta sp and Digital Betacam are ‘perfectly reasonable, adequate’ archival formats. He says many of the other formats are problematic, essentially for reasons of compression.

O’Farrell suggests a temperature of 45¡F or 7¡C and a humidity level of 25% rh standard for videotape storage, adding the relative coolness and dryness factors are both essential. However, the standards are not easily attainable nor necessarily commercially available in Canada.

‘Coming out of the gate with anything that has a color emulsion, what you need to be aware of is that the material is essentially made up of die couplers, and they are affected by temperature and humidity,’ says O’Farrell. ‘What is known…is that if you don’t store color film for processing but primarily after processing – essentially if you don’t freeze down below 32 F into a freezer with humidity controls, then essentially the die couplers will start to spread apart.

‘The problem is still that these stocks are subject to fading if they are stored at conventional room temperature. Films should be preserved on film and video should be preserved on video.’

Efforts are being made to develop a legal deposit system for original Canadian motion pictures, similar to what exists for books. These efforts have grown in the past two years, especially in the context of the Feature Film Policy Review. A deposit system would automatically create an additional single $3,000 pristine print for storage with the National Archives. As it stands, the National Archives cannot pay for the important single copy.