The experts at Scene Savers have been creating digital video for our clients for over a decade.  Throughout our history, we have designed and perfected our own systems for the creation of digital files and have designed unique ways of sharing and storing digital video files between global locations.  Whether you have a need to create a streaming video file, MPEG 1, MPEG 2 or MPEG 4 files, or if you want to create DVDs of your materials, let us show how we can provide superior video quality and service.  Digitizing is also an integral part of any digital asset management system and facilitates convenient access for research and duplication.

There are several questions that must be answered when deciding to digitize your audiovisual content.  There often isn’t a simple answer to the questions “What data-rate should we use?” and “What format should we digitize into?” You must consider your audience and how they will access the materials, the reason for digitizing in the first place, the end use of the digital files, the storage requirements for the digital files, etc.  For example, if you are digitizing for preservation, then your decisions may be different than if you are digitizing for access.  You may find that you need to digitize at multiple data rates to meet all the requirements of the digitizing project.

Scene Savers can help by providing you with the knowledge you will need to determine the best course of action for your archive.  We have also created cost-effective and efficient methods of creating multiple types of files and data rates simultaneously, which helps you to control costs.

There is some basic information to be aware of when considering a digitization project.  We hope this will get you started down the right path when digitizing your materials.

1. The higher the data rate, the better the image quality of the digital file, but the larger the file.  So, a higher data rate will provide you with a better looking picture, but will require more disk space for storage and will take longer to download for viewing.
2. If you are digitizing for preservation, you should consider either an uncompressed format or a compressed format that retains the information from the individual frames of film or video.  This latter description can also be called “intra-frame” compression (within the same frame) as compared to “inter-frame” compression (between frames).  JPEG and MPEG “I frame only” are examples of intraframe compression, whereas standard MPEG is an example of interframe compression.
3. The benefits to uncompressed formats include the ability to transcode to “new” uncompressed digital formats in the future with no loss in quality but require a tremendous amount of storage space (one second of uncompressed NTSC video requires about 21 Megabytes of storage space).
4. Digitizing for access usually requires some form of compression.  Making the files smaller through compression is the only feasible way to provide access to the content when sharing with a large audience.
5. Consider the source you are digitizing from when choosing a compression format and data rate.  The digital file won’t have better quality than the source materials, so if your source is an old VHS tape you may find that a lower data rate is acceptable.  However, if your source is higher quality, you may need a higher data rate to preserve the image quality.
6. When you undertake a digitizing project, you have the perfect opportunity to capture metadata about the contents of the materials being digitized.  Think carefully about what information you want captured as this information can be included in current/future media asset management systems.
7. Consider what you will do with the source materials after the content is digitized.  Will it be stored at your facility, or can you free up space by storing it in a long-term storage facility?

Call us if you have any questions about how to digitize your materials, or what additional considerations are necessary to ensure the project is successful now and in the future.