Course Information
Session |
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Credits | 1.5 CEUs or 15 PDHs |
---|---|
Registration dates | We accept registrations through the first week of classes, unless enrollment is full, and unless the class was canceled before it started due to low enrollment. |
$200.00
Dates: June 6 - July 3Credits: 1.5 CEUs or 15 PDHs
This course introduces audiovisual media formats and outlines best practices for their long-term care, preservation, and digitization. Students will gain a practical overview of handling and physical assessment, documentation, digitization workflows, and storage recommendations for audiovisual recorded sound and moving image collections. We will explore the lifecycle of media like VHS tapes, audio cassettes, optical DVD discs, and home movie film reels as they graduate from dusty shelves to digital repositories. Real-world scenarios from students and the course instructor will guide shared learning and media archaeology, and course graduates will grasp the core principles to care for analog and digital audiovisual collections, alike.
Session |
---|
Credits | 1.5 CEUs or 15 PDHs |
---|---|
Registration dates | We accept registrations through the first week of classes, unless enrollment is full, and unless the class was canceled before it started due to low enrollment. |
This course introduces audiovisual media formats and outlines best practices for their long-term care, preservation, and digitization. Students will gain a practical overview of handling and physical assessment, documentation, digitization workflows, and storage recommendations for audiovisual recorded sound and moving image collections. We will explore the lifecycle of media like VHS tapes, audio cassettes, optical DVD discs, and home movie film reels as they graduate from dusty shelves to digital repositories. Real-world scenarios from students and the course instructor will guide shared learning and media archaeology, and course graduates will grasp the core principles to care for analog and digital audiovisual collections, alike.
Course Objectives and Goals:
Week 1: Signals
We introduce core concepts about audiovisual recordings, forming a foundation by which we can understand all subsequent audiovisual recording formats regardless of medium. Using examples from popular culture, we consider: encoding and decoding, format specificity, calibration, analog representations, digital conversions, noise and interference, fragility and degralescence, human perception, time and death, being and existence. To orient ourselves with the range of audiovisual formats, we look at a handful of specific historical case studies to tease out the core concepts we’ve learned.
Week 2: Recorded Sound
We trace sound recordings from experiments by a French bookseller in the 1850s, through Edison’s multifarious grooved discs, to top-secret machinery stolen from the Nazis by Bing Crosby, all the way to Billie Eilish on your smartphone. Topics include: a primer on acoustics, fidelity, amplitude and waveforms, auditory perception, sampling, and compression. We consider how core qualities of sound signals are affected across varying format recordings thereof, and learn about contemporary workflows for preserving digital audio files and embedding metadata. Our grasp on magnetic media formats will segue into Week 3’s discussion of analog and digital videotape.
Week 3: Moving Images
We traverse the simultaneously parallel yet entwined “paths” of moving image recordings as films and as videos. Horse-racing, television soap-operas, moon landings, and Beyoncé are illustrative sights on a journey that considers how media recordings capture time. We overview basic equipment and set-ups for working with moving image formats. We demonstrate basic characteristics and handling of 16 mm on a film bench, and physically assess both analog and digital videotapes for typical signs of damage and deterioration (on physical carriers and upon playback). Topics include: visual acuity, resolution and “high-definition,” aspect ratio, frame rate, interlacing, display, deterioration metrics, storage climates, colorspace, codecs, compression, bit-rates, cables, hardware, and machine maintenance. We conclude with demonstrations of digitization workflows for motion picture film (telecine vs. frame-discrete DPX scans), and for analog videotape (using AMIA’s open-source vrecord software).
Week 4: Audiovisual Digitality and Long-Term Preservation
Broadly navigating digital technology since the late-twentieth century, we consider how digitality has homogenized recorded audiovisual signals (and, how it hasn’t always done so), with a focus on digital video. Core audiovisual digital preservation topics include: fixity and characterization, embedded metadata, transcoding and derivative-making, and command-line media micro-services. We consider pros and cons of digitization reformatting audiovisual media in-house versus with a third-party vendor service, and look at several RFP resources. We look at web-based video streaming and access workflows.
Walter Forsberg is an Adjunct Professor at New York University, and works as a media conservator and filmmaker. He holds a B.A. in History and Critical Theory from McGill University, and an M.A. in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) from NYU. Walter has preserved audiovisual collections for the Museo Jumex, the Kramlich Collection/New Art Trust, and the Smithsonian Institution, where he founded the Media Conservation and Digitization unit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Audiovisual digitization initiatives designed and led by Walter have twice been awarded the National Digital Stewardship Alliance’s “Innovative Project” award (2014’s XFR STN and 2019’s Great Migration Home Movie Project). He is an active member of the Laboratorio Experimental de Cine in Mexico City, and a Member-at-Large of XFR Collective.
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