Today’s technology, coupled with a world driven by content, has brought the demand for digital video to the forefront of the media industry. To date, many content owners have viewed the content digitization process as labor intensive, time consuming and cost prohibitive. Additionally, the constant evolution of technology has led content owners to be concerned about making an investment in preservation when the marketplace is still in a state of flux. While these concerns may appear to be difficult to overcome, the efficiencies and revenue potential created by digital preservation make the reward far greater than the risk.
As a collegiate content owner, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the magnitude and cost of preserving your entire library. However, digitization is not an “all of nothing” venture. Instead of dismissing library digitization as too time consuming or too expensive, consider breaking down the project into much more manageable tasks. Rather than attempting to digitize your full arsenal of video content at once, consider beginning the preservation process with your current season content. Digitizing and tagging your most recent content will allow your staff to become acclimated with the equipment and processes of digitization. Once the content is digitized, content can be searched and accessed through a digital asset management system based on the metadata that is included. A web based system will increase workplace efficiencies by allowing users to easily search and access the necessary video content for a variety of uses, including placement on the official athletic website, as well as the creation of originally produced programs. With digitized libraries, the days of scouring shelves of tapes to find a specific play from a specific game will be gone.
Once the process of digitizing current season content has begun, the next step is to develop a plan to preserve your archives. To illustrate the importance of a digital archive plan, the marketplace needs to look no further than in early June 2008. During this time period, an explosion occurred near the video vault of the Universal Studios back lot. The vault had approximately 50,000 videos and reels, including every film made by Universal. Important and historical television series such as “I Love Lucy,’’ were severely damaged. Despite the irrevocable damage, Ron Meyer, Universal Studios’ COO, stated that “nothing irreplaceable was lost,” due to the fact that Universal had duplicate copies in their main vault containing motion picture negatives which was not affected. This example highlights the need for a co-location of university and conference content archives. Over the years natural disasters, such as fires and floods, have erased the video record of many historical events. Digitizing your archives will prevent documentation of your athletic history from being destroyed. Rather than simply dubbing tapes to create a backup for your archive, the decision to move towards digitization will make your archive more easily searchable and backed up, and less prone to degrading over time. Although the digitization of archives is a daunting task, it is an important one and should begin one step at a time.
The following components are necessary when considering the digitization process: Storage, Bandwidth, Digital Asset Management System, Format of Digitized Files and a Redundancy Plan.
| • | Storage costs are considerably less than five years ago and are expected to continue to decrease over time as technology advances. A good rule of thumb is that storage costs will decrease by 50% every five years. Since it is not necessary to purchase all of the storage needed to digitize a library up front, storage costs can also be staggered throughout the digitization process, allowing content owners to take advantage of the continued decreasing costs associated with storage. |
| • | Bandwidth to transmit files internally and externally is a necessity to increase efficiencies, promote content and generate revenue. Many universities are able to utilize Internet 2 connections currently established on campus, minimizing costs and allowing for greater control over the digitization and file transmission process. |
| • | In order to properly organize, store, search and manage your digitized content, a digital asset management system is required. This system will allow various internal staff members the opportunity to view and utilize your athletic video content. Most digital asset management systems have the capability to store video files, and can also store your digital photographs, audio files and digital publications. |
| • | Before digitizing your tapes, library owners must decide on a video file format (container) and codec (file compression) for your content. Choosing the correct file format and codec isn’t always easy and could lead to additional questions such as storage capacity, video quality and transcoding issues. Additionally, if your video is housed in a digital asset management system, you will want to have a low-resolution proxy file created, in addition to your high-resolution file, so that videos can be viewed and downloaded easily for file searching, metadata creation and screening purposes. |
| • | Finally, like all digital systems, a redundancy plan is needed to avoid the loss of data during natural disasters, power surges, and other disaster scenarios. The backup system should include a mirror image of the data stored on a server in a remote location. The system should be backed up nightly to ensure optimal performance and avoid peak hours of business. |
At times, the digitization process appears to be a daunting task. However, by developing a long term plan that is broken down into more manageable parts, the process becomes less daunting. Identifying the equipment, staff members and process needed to digitize current season content are the first steps towards completely digitizing your archives. « Return to top