FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2024

Working in partnership with multiple archive collections owners across the regions and nations of the UK and a range of selected service providers, the National Lottery funded BFI Heritage 2022 video tape digitisation project devised a unique approach to the successful mass digitisation of over 100,000  video tapes, spanning every generation and format type.

This presentation will focus on the innovative work done to create a single Quality and Exceptions Methodology (QEM) document, prepared collaboratively between all project stakeholders to ensure that regardless of genre, format type or general condition, every title selected for digitisation would be catered for to meet exacting budgets and quality expectations for both preservation and access.

As well as the smooth flow for the majority of titles digitised, we will also explore the relatively small but not insignificant number of problematic tapes which comprised what were termed, 'exceptions' and some of the ways these too were successfully migrated from their obsolete carriers.