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AVPS Participating In “Preservation Oriented Production Workflows” Session At The AMIA Annual Conference On November 13, 2008

Chris Lacinak of AudioVisual Preservation Solution will be speaking at a session at the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) annual meeting in Savannah on the topic of “Preservation Oriented Production Workflows”. He will be chairing a panel joined by Brian Hoffman and Kara Van Malssen of NYU, and Jonathan Marmor of WNET.

The summary program description is as follows:

“Traditional workflow models pose great challenges to preserving and managing content over the long term. After years of grappling with them, these challenges have become all too evident to the AMIA community. A new model of production has begun to evolve from this awareness, and with some surprising consequences.”

We welcome all AMIA Conference attendees to join us as we share in our experiences while defining a new model of preservation oriented production workflows that will undoubtedly impact the future of archives.

The website for the 2008 Annual AMIA conference is here:
http://www.amiaconference.com/index.html

AVPS Participating In The 125th Annual Audio Engineering Society (AES) Convention In San Francisco October 2-5, 2008

Chris Lacinak of AudioVisual Preservation Solutions, as well as a long term participating member of AES, will make several contributions to this year’s convention. He will be presenting at a tutorial titled “Audio Preservation at the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC)”, and will introduce Brad McCoy, who is a Senior Sound Engineer at The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Culpeper, Va.

“This tutorial will discuss audio preservation at the Library of Congress’ National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) that was recently completed in Culpeper, VA. It will also give an overview of the NAVCC, a state-of-the-art facility for storing and preserving recorded sound, video, and film materials.” The tutorial will take place on October 4, 11:00 am — 12:00 pm

In addition, Chris will be co-chairing the standards committee workgroup on audio metadata and will be working towards the standardization of the emerging audio metadata (SC 03-06)

Chris hopes to have an active and productive conference and looks forward to sharing what he learns from his colleagues.
The link to the 2008 AES Conference Website is here:
http://www.aes.org/events/125/

The Archivists Round Table Of Metropolitan New York (NYART) Is Hosting A Workshop On “Digital Asset Management And Institutional Repositories” On November 10th, 2008

Chris Lacinak, founder of AVPS and Education Coordinator at NYART is pleased to announce an upcoming workshop titled “Digital Asset Management and Institutional Repositories: Case Studies Addressing the Development and Implementation of Systems”, which will be held on November 10th at The NYU Kimmel Center in New York City.

This workshop consists of three presentations from a group of five experts. These presentations will present case studies of projects in which they have been involved. The projects span all relevant content and media types including documents, still images, moving image and sound. The presenters will share their valuable experiences, focusing on covering concerns and questions that many NYART members are, or will soon be asking as they embark on their own projects.

The Speakers will be Leala Abbot – Digital Asset Librarian, Enfatico; Einar Brendalen – Image Systems Analyst, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Jonathan Marmor – Manager of IT and Broadband Operations, Thirteen/WNET New York; David Rice – Digital Media Archivist, Thirteen/WNET New York; and Sunny Yoon – Digital Resources Coordinator, The City University of New York, Office of Library Services.

Development and implementation of these systems is a topic that has been, or will soon be tackled for the first time in many organizations. For those organizations already beyond this initial milestone, the challenge and experience serve as practice while they look forward to repeating the process many more times to come.

AVPS Working In Ghana To Help Save The Country’s Moving Image And Sound Heritiage

Chris Lacinak of AVPS traveled to Ghana for three weeks early this summer as part of the Audiovisual Preservation Exchange (APEX) team. APEX is a recently established effort stemming from NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) Program . The team’s activities were multi–faceted and focused on Ghana’s moving image and sound heritage.

These activities included visiting and interfacing with partner organizations, vendors and technicians to determine current audiovisual preservation capabilities, and to obtain the functional resources needed for local involvement in preservation efforts.

The APEX team met with archives and libraries of cultural institutions located in Accra and Cape Coast, Ghana. These institutions hold rich collections of sound and moving images documenting Ghana’s history. These meetings focused on issues of archiving and preservation while exploring ideas for possible collaborative projects with NYU and MIAP in Ghana.

A considerable amount of Chris Lacinak’s time was spent in supporting Seth Paris, a Fulbright Scholar, who is in Ghana working on preserving the recordings of Ghanaian music legend Kofi Ghanaba (Guy Warren). Chris Lacinak performed an assessment of the audio collection and installed an audio digitization lab at the NYU in Ghana Academic Center. Documentation of preservation workflows, metadata specifications and training materials were also developed in support of the current and ongoing efforts of the audio lab. The lab is capable of preserving content housed on open reel audiotape, audiocassette and analog discs.

The Ghanaba collection serves as a pilot project for the audio digitization lab. The goal is to establish ongoing capability for use as a resource in the preservation of Ghana’s audio heritage.

Digital Asset Management With Free And Open Tools

David Rice and Mike Castleman represented Democracy Now! at the 2008 AMIA Digital Asset Symposium presenting on the integration of open source technology and Free Software in efforts to record, disseminate, and archive moving image media.

The presentation included references to:

• Tools for Recording: dvgrab, cron, vidi
• Tools for Transcoding and Wrapping: ffmpeg, mplayer, MP4Box, ffmpegX, x246 for Quicktime
• Tools for Online Media Accessibility: The Internet Archive, blip.tv, Miro
• Tools for Migrating AudioVisual Data from Tape-Based Digital Media: DATXtract and Live Capture Plus
• Tools for Backup and LTO Management: Bacula
• Metadata Extraction Tools: MediaInfo, getid3, qt_tools
• Metadata Standard: PBCore
• DAS (PDF)

AVPS Moves Office Location To Flatiron/Chelsea, Manhattan

AudioVisual Preservation Solutions has moved its operations to the historic Masonic building on the corner of 6th Avenue and 23rd Street, Manhattan. This move brings us closer to a greater number of our New York clients, and affords us the opportunity to conduct hands-on audiovisual preservation workshops for our clients in an easy to reach location.

While we will miss Williamsburg, Brooklyn, we are pleased to be better situated to serve our clients in the historic Masonic building.

Our new Address is:

AudioVisual Preservation Solutions
71 West 23rd Street
Suite 504
New York, NY 10010

New York Archivist Roundtable Workshop On Moving Image And Sound Preservation

Serving as Education Coordinator for NYART, Chris Lacinak of Audiovisual Preservation Solutions hosted and participated as a speaker in a workshop titled “Preserving Your Moving Image and Sound Collections: An Overview of the Present with a View Toward the Future”.

The workshop featured an array of impressive speakers including Howard Besser, Director of the Moving Image and Preservation Masters Degree Program at NYU; Lee Shoulders, Getty Images; Joshua Ranger, NYU; Tanisha Jones, The New York Library for the Performing Arts, and Peter Kauffman, President of Intelligent TV.

Attending archivists from the New York Metropolitan area represented a wide array of commercial, academic, non-profit, governmental and arts institutions. While some attendees have been working with the preservation of their moving image and sound collections and were seeking to learn new developments in the field, others are just beginning to overcome the unique challenges posed by efforts at preserving dynamic media and content.

The workshop quickly reached maximum capacity early in the enrollment process. Initial feedback provided by the attendees indicates that the event was an overwhelming success.

To see the program for the workshop click the link below.

Chris Lacinak Becomes Vice Chair Of AES Standards Committee 03-07 On Audio Metadata

Chris Lacinak of AudioVisual Preservation Solutions was honored to receive an invitation to co-chair the Audio Engineer Society (AES) Standards Committee Working Group on Audio Metadata. As a long time participant in the development of metadata standards for moving image and sound, Chris enthusiastically accepted the invitation to take on this role.

Chris co-chairs alongside his esteemed colleague Chris Chambers of the BBC and long time standing chair of SC 03-07. The scope of the SC-03-07 Working Group on Audio Metadata includes the co-ordination and support of metadata activities within the AES, and harmonization with other bodies through working-group level liaisons and the preparation of related documents.

AVPS Project With Cunningham Dance Foundation And NYU Featured In New York Times Article

AudioVisual Preservation Solutions is designing and installing a system for the recording and editing of “Mondays with Merce”, a project aimed at capturing the technique of living dance legend Merce Cunningham. AVPS plays a multi-faceted role in this Mellon Foundation grant funded project involving the Cunningham Dance Foundation and New York University.

The capturing system includes a single operator with remote control over 4 High Definition video cameras, 2 of which are on robotic arms. AVPS is additionally developing highly innovative preservation oriented workflows for the Cunningham Dance Foundation that will deliver preservation worthy deliverables to the NYU digital library team.

NYU is serving as the digital preservation repository and host of the content, as well as acting as team members in the development of applications, workflows and processes.

This highly technical and complex system will be installed by AVPS at the beautiful Cunningham Dance Foundation Studio which is part of the historic Westbeth Complex in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan.

The New York Times article linked to below features the “Mondays with Merce” project.
www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/arts/dance/20bloo.html

Dance: An Old Mentor’s New Medium
Sunday New York Times, January 20, 2008 By JULIE BLOOM

The link below will bring you to The “Mondays with Merce” website, where you can obtain additional information. This site will also feature a series of webcasts which will be available for free download beginning in late 2008. Each episode will include segments from Merce Cunningham’s Company Class, and rehearsals with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The programs will also include interviews with Merce Cunningham and his associates.

www.merce.org/studioandclasses_mm.html

AVPS Is Recognized By The Association For Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) In Their Annual Report

AudioVisual Preservation Solutions (AVPS) was pleased to receive acknowledgment from the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) in their annual report for contributions made to the organization.

Chris Lacinak was recognized for representing AMIA at the National Recording Preservation Board Hearings. Chris was also acknowledged for his work with Moving Image Collections (MIC), where he worked alongside Hannah Frost of Stanford University chairing the MIC Preservation Portal Working Group and presented on the MIC Metadata Schema at the 2006 AMIA Conference in Anchorage, Alaska.

MIC is sponsored by the Library of Congress and the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), and funded in large part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the first development phase (2002-2005). MIC is part of the National Science Digital Library.

For more information on Moving Image Collections please visit their website below:
mic.loc.gov

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