What’s the first component to give way in a VCR? As is often the case, as many mechanics know well, rubber is the fail point. As a VCR is unlikely to be met with high moisture, destruction from material decay will be due to rubber aging before metal gives way.

Aging magnetic tape made with particular binding agents can develop “sticky shed syndrome”, which can shred your tape when played! Symptoms of this decay can be observed in slowed performance from the tape, shedding residue onto the playback heads, or worst of all, the squealing sound of your tape shredding.

VHS tapes and other forms of magnetic tape are subject to decay. As with old books, mold can come for your tapes.

To properly store and organize media, many use digital access management (DAM) systems.  Be it photos, audio recordings, video, or documents, many DAM systems provide you access to your multimedia digital assets in a centralized location. The centralization of your digital assets makes them easier to share and it facilitates collaboration with others.

Infrared dust removal systems, like Digital ICE, are a valuable tool for film scanners to improve the quality of their scans. Let’s discuss how this works, the pros, and the cons.

As technology advances and society becomes increasingly digital, it's important to consider the best ways to preserve and digitize analog media. Analog media, such as film reels, cassette tapes, and VHS tapes, can degrade over time, making it difficult to access and enjoy the content they contain. By digitizing these materials, we can ensure that they are preserved for future generations and are easily accessible today. Here are some best practices for digitizing and preserving analog media

Archival video formats can be a confusing and complicated matter. We get questions frequently asking what formats we recommend for media preservation. One great resource we’ve found is The Library of Congress's Recommended Formats Statement (RFS).

Why is 10 bit video important for transferring analog tapes?

One thing we take a lot of pride in at Archival Works is the fact that we do true, lossless video encoding, lossless video compression, and lossless capture to perform our video tape to digital file conversion. But what does this term “lossless” mean anyway? And why should you care?