{"id":4308,"title":"Video Preservation: A Report from the Trenches","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/video-preservation-report-trenches","version":"05ee0d8c451e13d1d175d83b33f8a21a708c21674e9343bf7658eb73df4481a3","modified":"2026-09-13T19:42:08.2198535+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Maria Troy"}],"authorKeys":["Maria Troy"],"subjects":["Preservation Texts"],"metadata":[{"label":"Publication","value":"Afterimage","url":null},{"label":"Date","value":"September/October 1996","url":null},{"label":"Volume","value":"23","url":null},{"label":"Issue","value":"2","url":null},{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC0897","url":null},{"label":"Original publication","value":"Afterimage","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Video Preservation: A Report from the Trenches.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/video-preservation-report-trenches.","publication":"Maria Troy. Video Preservation: A Report from the Trenches. Afterimage. vol. 23, no. September/October 1996. September/October 1996.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/4308.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Scanned document","url":"https://archive.org/details/ETC0897","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":23400},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":857}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"It is safe to say that you will outlive your videotapes three or four times over. Ten years after the widespread use of home recorders, our video memories are beyond the fading of old kodachromes; some are totally unplayable. Even before the mass logging of personal memories onto videotape, there were the early users of portable video beginning in the late 1960s, whose recordings are now significant cultural artifacts because they provide alternative documents of one of the stormiest American decades. Attitudes about videotape have shifted in the independent media field as well; once valued as a highly ephemeral material and a \u0022non-object,\u0022 producers now worry about the lifespan of their tapes. \u0022Video preservation\u0022 describes the physical refurbishing of tapes as well as the ethical and aesthetic decisions about what images will become part of history. Re-mastering is a means to achieve an historical record, the content of which is at the heart of current preservation practice. Working for the Video Data Bank (VDB), I have supervised the preservation of the Castelli-Sonnabend collection and coordinated the compilation of 65 early titles for Surveying the First Decade: Video Art and Alternative Media in the U.S. I am encouraged by the increased interest in video preservation, yet awareness of the compelling need for preservation needs to grow if we are to save a vital piece of our cultural history. General Practices There are as yet no agreed-upon guidelines for video preservation yet, but that haven\u0027t stopped distributors and collectors from going ahead and doing it. (1) Nor should it, since cleaning methods have been tested and verified, and prices have come down. Here are some basic principles of preservation: Transfers (Re-recording). The material to be preserved, often a tape on an obsolete format like 1/2\u0022 open reel or 1\u0022 type IVC, is played back and re-recorded onto another format that uses available technology and is considered more archivally stable. (2) (By conservator\u0027s standards, video is not an archival medium because it has not been proven to last for 100 years. So, to conservators, \u0022video preservation\u0022 is something of an oxymoron.) Digital tape shows some promise as a preservation medium, especially considering the fact that no information is lost in successive generations (copies from the master tape). Yet since the technology is so new, and constantly developing, it is impossible to predict how long even digital tape will last. (3) Formats once considered standard and relatively stable, like 3/4\u0022 U-matic, are finding their days numbered. Ampex has stopped making 3/4\u0022 machines, so in 5 or 10 years the decks and repair parts will be hard to come by. Re-mastering onto progressively better formats will continue until a permanent storage medium is found. Cleaning. Tapes are usually cleaned before transferring to remove dust and dirt. There are many methods of cleaning; current practices include \u0022baking\u0022 or heating tapes, dry or wet wiping, scraping, and chemical or water baths. The technology is adapted from that used to clean computer tapes. The concerns are consistency and safety - it is important that the process does not damage the tape. (4) Reference Copies. Before transferring cleaned tapes to the new master, it is advisable to watch a VHS copy of the tape first. This allows you to check its condition and avoid making an expensive new master of a tape that is unusable because of severe drop out or skew problems. If there are other working copies of the tape, the images are compared and checked for improvement. Two \u0022Masters.\u0022 The need for a dedicated master that is never played, only rewound periodically, is clear. In the past, one master was struck from the source, and was then sent out for dubs or used as a viewing copy. Now, 10 years later, those masters are badly degraded from excessive use and exposure to changing environmental conditions. Having two masters, one a dedicated or archival master and the other a preservation dubmaster, protects your preservation investment. Cataloging. Preservation is not complete without the creation of clear, accessible records of what work was done, where, what source was used, and the content and condition of the tape. Ideally these records (and the terms used) would be standardized from archive to archive, and be accessible to other organizations. (5) Storage: While the need for proper storage is well documented, few independent media centers have the money to establish climate-controlled storage. (5) The Museum of Modern Art has recently developed such a facility for their considerable videotape and film holdings, but small and mid-sized institutions cannot afford their own facilities nor pay an independent facility to store tapes properly. There are preventative measures that these institutions can enact, however, such as having two masters as mentioned above, storing tapes upright and not on their side, air-conditioning the space where tapes and machines are kept, and avoiding extreme temperature/humidity changes by limiting the number of times a master tape is shipped. The practices and methodologies of preservation need further refinement, and media independents should enlist the help of professional conservators, librarians, and archivists. Toward this goal, the \u0022Playback 1996\u0022 conference at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, March 29-30 (organized by Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) and New York City\u0027s Media Alliance), gathered people from the conservation and media arts fields to begin a shared discussion on a range of preservation topics. Clearly, the independent media field can benefit from networking with groups like the Association of Moving Image Archivists and American Institute of Conservators, to share experience and build support for video preservation in related fields. Weird Science Video preservation is not only an inexact science, at times it is almost schizophrenic. In general, each tape marked for preservation opens up a completely different can of worms, technically, aesthetically, and ethically. Just because two tapes are stored side-by-side on a shelf does not mean they will be in the same condition when played. Problems in playback can be the result of a number of factors, including intrinsic production values and the quality of the video signal as first recorded. The first generation of portable 1/2\u0022 open reel cameras was a bit eccentric; different cameras generated slightly different video signals and the image produced was low resolution. Some early experimenters were deliberately altering the video signal to produce special effects. Tapes were reused over and over during an era that championed process over product. There were few character generators in the 1970s so most tapes lack internal titles. Early editing techniques involved literally cutting and pasting the tape together which creates a \u0022glitch\u0022 (temporary loss of video and audio). In addition, companies experimented with the chemical and physical composition of tape stock in the early days, and some compositions have held up better than others. The second biggest factor concerns the conditions under which tapes are stored-temperature, humidity, horizontal or vertical orientation, and condition of the wind (how the tape is wound around its spindles). Humidity is probably the worst culprit as it produces changes in the tape\u0027s chemical composition. Storing a tape on its side causes the successive winds to separate and causes edge damage. Drop-out is caused by bits of the magnetic coating flaking off the polyester backing of the tape, and means an irreplaceable loss of video information. Some problems such as bad skew (a result of tape stretching) can be fixed in playback by stabilizing the signal through a time-base corrector (TBC). Another consideration is that modern playback equipment does not process video signals in the same way as older machines do. For example, it is generally accepted that old 3/4\u0022 tapes play back better on old 3/4\u0022 decks. A former 3M technician told me that the older decks have different skew and time-code allowances, and can compensate better for old, slightly warped tape. (6) Preservation techniques are developing with each tape that is preserved. Aesthetic and Ethical Issues Beyond the technical, there are other complications that fall into a more gray area. For example, the VDB distributes a copy of Robert Morris\u0027 videotape Exchange (1973) that had been preserved in the mid-1980s, probably from a 3/4\u0022 copy. (Since no records were kept, this is just an educated guess; 1/2\u0022 open reel decks are hard to come by, and it would be easier to use a 3/4\u0022 copy, plus the VDB has both a 3/4\u0022 and 1/2\u0022 open reel copy.) In 1994, the 1/2\u0022 open reel copy of the title was cleaned and found to be four minutes longer than the previous version. On closer inspection, running the tapes on side by side monitors, it appears that the two tapes are completely different edits of the same source material. After conferring with the artist, and considering that one tape has a natural ending and the other cuts off abruptly, the VDB decided to distribute the newly-recovered version of the tape. The shorter version may have been the result of a mistake made in the transfer of the tape decades ago; a mistake that was copied over and over again. In another example, the VDB had a copy of Vito Acconci\u0027s Undertone (1972) that was very gray and had a bad flicker. When the 1/2\u0022 open reel copy was cleaned, the resulting tape looked beautiful, except for a four-minute glitch in the middle of the tape. The question was whether to cut out the blank part of the tape, creating an edit in a piece that originally has no edits, or ask viewers to sit through the break, both unsavory options. Luckily, another 1/2\u0022 open reel, nearly perfect copy with no glitch was found. With more preservation work being done, problems like this will arise over and over again, especially for distributors. Do you leave in segments of the tape that are unwatchable because of bad skew, or do you omit them? Do you boost sound levels when they are inaudible, or adjust the gain so the image is not too hot? Should adjustments be made to the master or just distribution dubs? The ethical (and legal) considerations around the issue of copyright are another rat\u0027s nest of problems. If the tape does not have a copyright, are the producers still to be paid a royalty? And when the original producers have vanished, disbanded, or died, what then? A larger discussion of ethics has to incorporate the process of selection. Perhaps it is because no one wants to admit that their preferences will determine what gets saved, that they have the power to deem this artist\u0027s videotape as more culturally significant than another. Few are comfortable making these assertions today now that, in postmodern fashion, we are all lost in the sauce of a relativized history. The process of selection seems hopelessly ideological. On a comforting note, the issues surrounding video preservation are no different from the foibles and follies of every preservation effort, from art history to archeology. There will be mistakes and omissions, and hopefully enough interested scholars to correct them. Selection will occur both consciously (by curators, conservators, funders, distributors, etc.) and by default (the can of beer that spilled on a tape in 1975). Videotape is a material dependent upon technology for access to its contents. Having an archive of tapes that are unplayable is as useful as a library of books that won\u0027t open. Without a doubt, the physical condition of the tape will determine whether it can be saved, regardless of the value of its contents. The tape may be labeled \u0022The Secret of Eternal Life and a Conversation with God Himself,\u0022 but if it has congealed into a hockey puck, no amount of effort is going to unlock that material. Most archivists, curators, and conservators face decisions a bit mor","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":23400,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}