An Update from the Association of Moving Image Archivists
Last week my fiancée invited me to look at some footage of her seven year-old niece performing at a school gymnastics competition, which she had “videotaped” (her word) on her new smart-phone. This off-the-cuff remark in many ways encapsulates the opportunity and the challenge faced by anyone who is in the business of safeguarding moving image media for the long haul. The first and most obvious issue raised is that of technological specificity. What she had done was to create a computer file consisting of an MPEG-4 wrapper, which contained H.264 video and AAC audio components. There was of course no tape involved, but such is the ubiquity and widespread public recognition of what is now an essentially obsolete technology, which, as with the word “film,” is a term that lives on as a generic noun and verb for an audiovisual storage medium and the act of recording.
- Print ISSN
- 1545-0279
- Electronic ISSN
- 2160-2492
- Published
- 2012-09
- Content type
- Original Research
- DOI
- 10.5594/j18214