Memoriav Recommendations
Digital archiving of film and video

These Memoriav recommendations have been drawn up by a cross-sectoral working group, reviewed by the Memoriav Video Competence Network and edited and prepared for online publication by Memoriav, the Association for the Preservation of the Audiovisual Heritage of Switzerland.

The role of Memoriav is to preserve, develop and disseminate Switzerland’s audiovisual heritage. When initiating projects, it gives due consideration to professional standards and ethics. One key task in this field is to draw up and publish recommendations such as these.

The focus of these recommendations is on dealing with digital data of an audiovisual nature. This document is intended to provide guidance and advice on digitization and digital archiving for archivists and curators of collections. It may also be of interest to those in the media production sector as well as anyone submitting project applications to Memoriav, who will be able to find criteria for the long-term preservation of digital audiovisual documents here.

Given the breakneck speed of developments in all fields of IT, regular updates are essential, particularly with regard to specific recommendations. For this reason, these recommendations will be supplemented on an ongoing basis. So when using these recommendations, please check the date and version number of the latest edition.

The digital world opens up excellent new prospects for accessing and making use of archive material. However, preserving digital archive masters calls for the staff responsible to acquire and develop specialist knowledge, and generates considerable additional costs, both for the one-off digitization of analogue documents and also the ongoing maintenance of data. It is vital that these factors are taken into account during the planning phase, and these recommendations provide fundamental advice for this task.

The recommendations provide a basic introduction to the relevant terms and an overview of the issues involved. They also include a general evaluation of the quality of different video formats and their suitability for archiving. However, they do not supply any ready-made solutions or specific instructions or guidance on programs or tools for long-term preservation. These Recommendations take the form of a critical introduction, with the aid of which specific solutions can be developed and then implemented depending on the circumstances in question.