In the area of digital preservation of endangered analogue audio carriers the principle of lossless digital archiving is stated in the IASA's (International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives) whitepaper TC-03: This digitization process will most likely not be able to be repeated in the future.įor that reason 'lossless' is the paradigm for preservation of endangered analogue media.

Since the lifespan of analogue video formats is limited due to the limited availability of video recorders and their limited lifespan (in a few years time many recordings on analogue video tape will be forever lost), a digitization process should be performed in the best quality possible. In that cases digitization offers the only way to save and preserve the recordings for the future. The principle of lossless preservation is especially pursued when unique and cultural precious recordings are solely existent on endangered physical carriers.Īn example for endangered media are video recordings on magnetic tape. In archives with no priority on fast access or optimization for editing workflows the principle of preserving media content without additional losses should be applied. The premise of fast access and optimization for editing purpose is often the reason for using lossy codecs in broadcast/production archives. The top priority of broadcast or production archives often lies on fast access to their digital videos and easy use in their editing workflows. If you on the other hand choose to accept losses in picture quality – like it is often the case with broadcast or production archives – the necessary storage space reduces drastically: but parts of the original information are permanently lost. The question of storage space is not specific to FFV1 – it rather questions the principles of digital archiving: lossy or lossless?Įvery kind of lossless archiving of video content takes a lot of storage space. Why not use a lossy codec for archiving? This is often the choice of broadcast archives.

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