FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2025

The Value, Use and Copyright Commission of FIAT/IFTA would like to present the recent year’s work researching the impact of generative AI on the audiovisual archiving sector. GenAI impacts the authenticity, integrity, and future accessibility of archival content, and the goal was to write a paper with insights from broadcasting archives who already implemented GenAI. The paper presents guidelines on these aspects:

• Allowing archives to be used for GenAI training – What are the implications, rights, and permissions?
• Handling GenAI-generated content – Addressing authenticity, ownership, and copyright challenges.

The presentation is built upon the groundwork laid in my previous year's talk. In 2024, I presented the initial phase of my doctorate’s thesis, which explored the migration of audiovisual documents to the cloud, using Rede Globo of Brazil as a specific case study. This current presentation turns its attention to the second part of my research: the environmental ramifications of choosing cloud infrastructure.

Drawing upon the insights of Bindhu and Vijesh (2019) in their work on mitigating the environmental impact of cloud technologies, the concern regarding the ecological cost of computing initially focused on diminishing energy consumption. However, contemporary understanding - shaped by technological progress - emphasizes the efficient utilization of computers and associated technologies while prioritizing environmental stewardship. The adoption of virtual computers and the transition towards Nano Data Centers should yield an energy expenditure reduction of up to 30% when compared to traditional data center models.

The increasing global environmental consciousness, coupled with more stringent regulatory frameworks and the potential for significant cost savings, has spurred considerable efforts to minimize the ecological footprint of the entire information technology ecosystem vital for modern business operations. Cloud computing has emerged as a compelling solution to these aspirations, giving rise to the concept of 'green clouding'. However, it's important to acknowledge that the energy consumption associated with machine learning processes, the development, and the application of artificial intelligence can be considerable. To investigate this topic in a practical context, I will once again analyze the case of Rede Globo, specifically through the lens of their ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reports, alongside those of Google Cloud, the cloud platform utilized by Globo.

Northern Ireland Screen is part of the UTV Archive Partnership alongside UTV and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, with PRONI storing much of the physical film and tape. Northern Ireland Screen is responsible for the digitisation, curation, hosting, education and creative repurposing of this archive. In 2024 UTV approached us to use our knowledge of their archive to create a six-part TV series. We said, “Yes, please!”

My own background is as an archivist on many television series for BBC Northern Ireland as well as a director of my own feature documentaries. My colleague, Paul McClintock, worked for many years as an editor on a variety of TV shows. Within the archive team of Northern Ireland Screen we had the experience necessary to take the archive and create something new out of it for a modern television audience.

My talk will be about how we went about this process of deciding what the series would be about and what time period to focus on, based upon what would tell the best story of social history and entertainment, combined with it being a period represented by heavily digitised parts of the archive. Of course, for most of UTV’s early history Northern Ireland’s narrative is contentious and the archives represent a divided and violent society. We decided we would bypass the troubled period in history and go back to the start of UTV in October 1959 to tell the story of the 1960s – a time before the violence.

Blending the moving images carefully with the music of the period to create a nostalgic experience, history and entertainment come together. With clips and imagery in the talk, we will tell the story of how a national archive can be repurposed for broadcast again to teach an audience about a more shared past they have forgotten about against a backdrop of all the social change of the 1960s. And, of course, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones drop by as part of the journey.

This is archive truly valorised to live again.

The research team in DR Archive has for 10 years worked to change the workflow of producing new programs with archive content. From being in the end of the production chain, the archive team has moved to the beginning of the production chain. This has resulted in better use of the archive, better focus on rights, and a much higher awareness of the archive content as a big asset for the corporation. I would like to explain the new and better workflow from archive to production exemplified by DR’s 100 years anniversary. The archive was consulted way before the editorials started their program workflows, and this very early visibility of the archive team has resulted in many new programs with archive content not only from the surface of the archive, but from all corners of the archive with experts digging to find the very best materials for each production.

In 2019 the BFI launched the Young Audiences Content Fund (YACF), a government sponsored lottery fund which was designed to support programming for children and young audiences against a backdrop of declining industry output in this area. The Fund would go on to award over £40m to 221 projects developed for free-to-access platforms, including UK broadcasters, with specific goals including diversity, innovation and representation of the UK’s nations and regions. Though the Fund closed in 2022, it had resounding successes with award winning programmes including Big Boys (2022-2025), Sol (2020) and Milo (2021).

From the outset, the BFI National Archive worked with the YACF to preserve all the completed programmes that were supported by the Fund, lead to a remarkable collection of over 1000 titles. This presentation will explore the significance of this funding initiative and the cultural significance of the collection. We will set out the challenges in developing preservation workflows that aligned with programme delivery from commissioning to broadcast and outline how expectations changed over the course of the Fund. We will also discuss the ways in which the fund and BFI National Archive attempted to embed Equity, Diversity & Inclusion principles into the preservation workflows – with varying degrees of success.

The presentation will conclude with a look at our open source approach to archiving innovative Ultra Access interactive programming for the final series from the fund - Mixmups (2023) - and how this might inform future collecting plans.

With the disappearance of magnetic tapes and optical discs from digitisation efforts, the archival landscape has undergone a fundamental transformation. As all content now resides within enterprise-scale data centres, the notion of an archive has shifted from a tangible collection to an "invisible" repository. This raises pressing concerns: how can organisations ensure their digital holdings remain accessible, authentic, and safeguarded over time?

The challenge of digital preservation lies not only in maintaining technical integrity but in ensuring awareness and active stewardship. Without the physicality of tapes or discs, archives risk becoming "out of sight, out of mind." To counter this, institutions must establish robust digital preservation policies that define retention strategies, monitoring protocols, and long-term accessibility plans. Implementing these policies requires a blend of automated verification processes, human oversight, and adherence to evolving standards in digital conservation.

The vendor community plays a pivotal role in supporting these efforts. Technology providers must develop solutions that offer transparency into stored data, facilitate auditability, and ensure sustainable preservation strategies. Vendors can also guide organisations in adopting best practices, integrating AI-driven archival management, and maintaining adaptability to future shifts in digital storage technology.

A proactive approach is essential to ensure archives remain not only present but actively usable. By fostering collaboration between archival institutions and technology vendors, the archival world can bridge the gap between the visible past and the intangible future.

SVT’s archive is extensive. We have nearly 1000 square meters of archival facilities filled with film. The oldest film dates to 1897 (re-copied in the 1950s), and the most recent series recorded on film was made in 2011. In addition to this, we had a tape robot, which has now been decommissioned, and during an EU project, we migrated all tapes to low-resolution files. Once that project was completed, we launched the ‘Save the Films’ project with the goal of making the analog archive accessible.

We have over 500,000 hours of film, and initially we used a TeleCine scanner that ran the film in real-time – which would have taken us a lifetime to complete. Instead, we purchased scanners capable of scanning all material at five times the speed. Within five years, we had made 80% of the analog archive available in Full HD. However, there was demand for material in higher resolution and better audio capture, etc., so we invested in new scanners capable of scanning up to 4K and retired the old TeleCine scanner.

Now we have a MAM system filled with files in a mix of different formats and resolutions, and much of it does not meet today's technical standards. With the new scanners, we can rescan films up to 4K, but when the material was originally recorded on tape and has a resolution of only 576 pixels, the challenges are greater.

To help us, we have brought in an AI service that offers digital restoration and cleaning of files, upscaling from low resolution to high resolution, and colorization of black-and-white film.

David, a media technician, will share his experiences not only working with scanning but also supporting many major productions with colorization.

Archives have strived to digitise all their Quadruplex tapes before the format becomes completely obsolete due to lack of equipment and loss of skills. Despite their best efforts, many tapes remain locked in their vault, their content untouched, and the worldwide supply of spare parts and heads is quickly dwindling.

For archives engaging in digitising their remaining quadruplex tapes, many upended questions, with fewer people able to answer them, arise: Who still has the capacity to play back 2inch tapes? How to deal with the multiple sub-types and standards? What would be the cost and resources needed to embark in such a project? Can new digital tools compensate for lack of equipment?

This discussion panel, which aims to be the launching pad of further exchanges, will be led by experts (to be selected) from various backgrounds, such as archive institutions or service providers - all confronted to the challenge of quadruplex obsolescence in different ways.

Amid a global trend for open access to public archives, this study introduces a national initiative to create a digital platform for accessing government-produced audiovisual content held by Korea’s Public Policy Broadcasting Service (KTV). These materials—ranging from public information films to coverage of national events—offer significant historical and cultural value for civic engagement, education, and creative reuse.

The research evaluates South Korea’s evolving digital archive environment, focusing on institutional, technological, and policy strategies to improve public access. It critically analyzes current platforms, such as the KTV NaNuri portal and e-History, identifying limitations in metadata infrastructure, content quality, and user interaction. Drawing on global archival practices and AI applications, the study proposes a roadmap for innovation.

Key recommendations include AI-based metadata enhancement, a dual-track service model for general and institutional users, and phased content release aligned with social demand across sectors such as education, research, media, and cultural institutions (GLAM). Legislative and institutional reforms are also addressed to overcome regulatory and rights-related barriers.

The project concludes with a strategic plan (2026–2028) to foster interagency collaboration and build a sustainable, AI-driven infrastructure for public access. This presentation contributes to international discourse on audiovisual heritage and showcases South Korea’s approach to opening its government media archives for broader public use.

This presentation will focus on the need for CBS/Paramount to develop an archival digitization strategy that would integrate with CBS News' global initiatives for utilizing archival content to enrich production, be accessible across business units, and create new revenue streams for the content.  

Published in April 2025 after 2 years in the making, The Guide to Quality Control in Migration Processes (short: the Quality Guide) is a comprehensive document that aims at describing all quality arrangements that make for a successful migration project, from preparation of legacy carriers to long-term digital preservation. It is intended as a help for anyone dealing with migration of audiovisual content.

This session will provide an overview of what is found in this guide, how it can be of use, and by whom.

The spectre of obsolescence has been looming over audiovisual archives for many years, but is the end really imminent? Does it apply to all types of legacy formats? How can we objectively measure its progression and anticipate its impact? Does the problem end when everything turns to digital files?

The Preservation and Migration Commission of FIAT/IFTA organised an online seminar in June 2025 with the slightly provocative title "Is this the last train for migration?".

This session marks an opportunity to delve further into the subject by confronting the points of view of all parties involved, including archive owners, service providers and equipment manufacturers.

In RAI's massive digitisation of Betacam and IMX tapes, Quality Control was set up since the beginning to ensure the best possible result.  

However, QC activity must necessarily adapt to the required pace. Since the original carriers were retained for potential re-digitisation in case issues are later found with the digitised content, QC could tolerate a certain error rate, as errors would not be irreparable.

Over time it became clear that accessing again the original carriers is not viable, in addition to the fact that the players will not be available much longer than the digitisation process itself.

Quality of legacy content can be low for plenty of reasons: the original recording, past format migration, carrier deterioration and, finally, digitisation.

We decided to run a retrospective QC activity, on a representative sample basis, for assessing, with a different QC methodology, if quality lower than acceptable, due to specific criticalities, was not detected.

Retrospective QC is a means to obtain statistical knowledge about the results of digitisation so far. Knowledge useful for assigning value to the digitised content, making decisions about the original carriers, and evaluating how to proceed with ongoing digitisation.

A few aspects are worthy of attention. Retrospective QC was done having as input the same information that was available to QC operators, but viewing the whole content timeline, at maximum double speed. Provenance, together with year and context of production, were considered for assessing content quality. The quality of digitisation has been rated as either bad, low, acceptable, good, or very good, with only the first two levels requiring a retry of digitisation. This is because minor or short issues can be addressed through intervention on digital content at repurposing time.

The original acceptance decision was found correct for 98,7% of the sample. It’s a success, we are going to explain why.

For audiovisual archives, the need to digitize magnetic media is urgent and immense. This urgency is driven not only by the physical degradation of tapes but also by the rapid disappearance of the equipment, spare parts, and technical knowledge required to play them back. Unlike film, which benefits from ongoing scanner development, videotape formats rely entirely on fragile, aging machines—many of which are no longer manufactured, increasingly difficult to maintain, and often irreplaceable. Without these tools—and the expertise to use them—segments of audiovisual heritage risk becoming permanently inaccessible. The window for mass digitization is closing.

This presentation explores the tension between mission and means in addressing this challenge. While broadcasters have often led the way in digitization and still face significant backlogs, the remaining analog collections extend far beyond this sector (including performing arts institutions, universities, government agencies, and local archives). The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision faces a difficult decision: whether to invest in preserving and operating a vast fleet of legacy video playback equipment, originally held by a private digitization partner at risk of dissolution.

We examine the rationale behind this proposed acquisition—not only as a response to shrinking digitization capacity but also as a symbolic affirmation of institutional responsibility. At the same time, the financial sustainability of this move remains uncertain. Will enough collections be offered for digitization in the coming decades to justify the cost? Can such infrastructure serve both the institution’s own needs and those of the broader field?

Ultimately, this presentation reflects on what it means for a public institution to act as a steward—not just of content but of the tools required to access it. It poses the question: if archives like ours don’t act, who will? And what happens if we don’t?

Over the past 10 to 15 years, the field of digital preservation has expanded significantly, bringing with it a growing need for certification of trusted digital repositories. The OAIS model (ISO 14721) has become a foundational standard, leading to certification frameworks such as Trusted Digital Repository (ISO 16363), Germany’s DIN 31646, and the CoreTrustSeal (CTS, NL), formerly known as the Data Seal of Approval (DSA). A few audiovisual archives – such as Sound and Vision (NL) and NCAA (India) – have already completed certification, and others, like meemoo (BE), are in progress. Notably, no archive managed directly by a broadcaster has yet achieved such certification.

Article 33 of the Swiss Ordinance on Public Broadcasting mandates that “archiving is carried out […] according to recognised professional standards.” In response, RSI (the public broadcaster of Italian-speaking Switzerland) has launched a self-audit based on the Flemish-Dutch ScoreModel for Digital Sustainability, which is aligned with CTS criteria. The goal is to eventually undergo a full audit and, if feasible, obtain certification.

This process, however, has highlighted several challenges: current standards are not designed with broadcast archives in mind. Even within the audiovisual field, applying certain criteria requires contextual interpretation and adaptation.

This presentation outlines RSI’s journey from initial motivation to current status, reflecting on the common difficulties in interpreting and meeting certification standards. It also advocates for developing a tailored standard that supports – rather than limits – the long-term digital sustainability of in-house broadcaster archives, reflecting their specific realities and operational contexts.

I present an AI-driven system for the automatic retrieval and segmentation of video content in which specific artworks are discussed. Given only the title of a work of art, the system identifies and extracts short, relevant video portions where that artwork is explicitly explained—even when it appears within broader, more general content.

The pipeline follows a multi-step process. First, I perform a keyword-based search across large-scale media archives to retrieve a ranked list of candidate videos—the top-K most likely to contain references to the target artwork. Each selected video is then transcribed using Whisper, with speaker diarization to distinguish different voices.

Next, I segment the transcription into longer monologue-style blocks, where a single speaker talks continuously for at least 30 seconds. These segments, along with the artwork title, are processed by a large language model (LLM), which identifies the portions of speech specifically related to the artwork. All original timecodes are preserved, enabling precise extraction of temporally-aligned subclips.

The output is a curated set of “shorts”—concise video segments that explain the chosen artwork—ready for use in educational, curatorial, or commercial settings. Museums can assemble engaging displays, educators can embed authentic expert commentary into lessons, and media organizations can trace and manage rights related to artwork representations across archives.

Additionally, the LLM can automatically generate relevant questions based on the content of each segment. This makes it possible to associate specific shorts with the questions they answer, enhancing both discoverability and pedagogical value within the archive.

Integrating audiovisual media with related materials in other formats in a user-accessible manner presents a significant challenge for many institutions. However, making these resources available on a unified platform can allow materials to be even more technically expressive and valuable to research. At Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories this integration is particularly critical. Researchers frequently rely on both original motion picture footage of nuclear tests and the corresponding technical documentation to conduct thorough analysis and data interpretation. The labs have recently initiated efforts to address this need by leveraging a video streaming platform that allows us to collocate audiovisual materials with related textual documents, greatly improving accessibility and contextual understanding.

This poster will explore the benefits of combining diverse media formats, the challenges associated with making them accessible to researchers, and the technical obstacles involved in digitizing and preparing historic film materials—particularly those dating back to the early 1960s. As a case study, we will examine the film footage from Starfish Prime, the largest nuclear test conducted in outer space, with associated reports and documentation. This consolidation of information will provide valuable insights into the environmental impacts of the nuclear test and the unexpected effects of an electromagnetic pulse on Hawaii’s electrical grid.

This presentation focuses on a significant initiative undertaken by the Royal Danish Library in response to the Danish Media Agreement (2023-2026), aimed at enhancing public access to the archives of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR). The purpose of this project is to empower Danish citizens to explore their shared history and gain insight into the events that have shaped their society.

Pivotal to the project is the establishment of a licensing agreement with the rights holders to facilitate public access to the content. Another key component of the initiative is the development of a user-friendly access platform for the DR archive, designed to allow users to search and access content without requiring login credentials. The effort includes enriching metadata to address the needs of users while ensuring compliance with legal standards. The project also entails processing DR's extensive audio and video collection spanning from 1931 to 2025, making broadcasts identifiable and accessible through segmentation and metadata enrichment processes.

To achieve these objectives, the project employs agile methodologies and integrates user experience (UX) design techniques, including focus groups and user journey mapping, to create an intuitive interface that enhances user engagement.

Ultimately, this initiative aims to preserve and provide access to DR's invaluable content, reinforcing the democratic foundation of society by ensuring equitable access to cultural heritage. This aligns with the Royal Danish Library's commitment to fostering a democratic and informed knowledge society, making this presentation a vital contribution to discussions on digital accessibility and cultural preservation.

This essay explores the evolving challenges to freedom of expression and freedom of the press in both historical and contemporary contexts. Starting with the clandestine origins of the Brazilian press in 1808, it examines the persistent tension between media censorship and the right to free speech, particularly during authoritarian regimes like Brazil's 1964–1984 military dictatorship. The discussion transitions to the digital age, highlighting the 2016 controversy where Facebook censored a Pulitzer-winning Vietnam War photo, sparking international outrage and raising questions about corporate control over public discourse. The author argues that while private platforms like Facebook wield immense power, society must actively defend freedom of expression through open debate and legal recourse. The piece concludes with a strong endorsement of democratic values, affirming the necessity of protecting the right to speak freely, even in the face of powerful interests.

As a result of the SAFE – Sustainability of Italian Film Heritage project (2022-2025), this poster will provide insights into the outputs collected from a national survey of practices and strategies for non-theatrical film heritage in Italy. The SAFE project analyzed the current state of film archiving through three research axes: storage infrastructures, digital preservation practices, and stewardship strategies.

Submitted in early spring 2025, this survey investigates several crucial topics related to sustainable film archiving practices, such as long-term analog and digital storage, labor organization, funding, and environmental accountability. The expected results of this research are twofold: first, it allows a clear and in-depth overview of the current state of preservation of non-theatrical film heritage, and second, it provides a timeline for archival organizations to anticipate the foreseeable future of preservation practices. In the last decades, alongside the more established cineteche and film archives, the field of Italian film heritage has acknowledged the rapid development and emergence of organizations dedicated to non-theatrical heritage (including home movies, political films, and industrial or scientific audiovisual production).

In this presentation, we will make available the main outputs of the quantitative and qualitative research that involved several key film heritage organizations, completed by field interviews, through a still poster including aggregated data visualization of the study. We also plan to provide an interactive data restitution of the survey results using tablets allowing cross-checked research to have a better understanding of the current state of sustainability of Italian film heritage.

This proposal explores representations of tattoo culture in the Music Television Brasil archive, focusing on the 1990s and 2000s — a period of intense cultural and aesthetic transformation in Brazil and the years during which the channel was active. It investigates how MTV Brasil’s programming and music videos catered to youth audiences engaged with alternative aesthetics and bodily expressions, especially tattoos, positioning the network as a key player in legitimizing and popularizing tattoo culture in the country.

The study is grounded in the hypothesis that, by featuring tattooed bodies—both in music videos and among its VJs—MTV contributed to the visibility and cultural recognition of a practice still marked by stigma and marginality. It introduces the concept of “tattooed gestures” to analyze music videos as an emerging audiovisual language and tattoos as bodily inscriptions that function as visual pedagogy, shaping youth identities, styles, and senses of belonging.

The core corpus will comprise over 35,000 Betacam tapes from the MTV Brasil collection, currently held by Editora Abril. Given existing restrictions and preservation challenges, the project proposes an archival intervention that combines institutional dialogue with public campaigns for digitization and access. Complementary material will be drawn from recordings available on the Internet Archive.

This study aligns with the debate on archives as interventions in problematic pasts, examining the tattoo as a historically racialized and subcultural mark. By exploring how tattooed bodies circulated on MTV Brasil and how these representations helped reshape norms around youth and embodiment, the study underscores the value of audiovisual archives as critical tools for understanding cultural change. It also highlights the underexplored significance of the MTV Brasil archive for the broader history of Latin American media and youth cultures.

Today, we have access to more data than ever before, and in the last few years, it has become widely possible to create and share artificial and potentially misleading information. Traditionally, professionals like librarians, documentalists, archivists, and information specialists helped the public access knowledge through methods like indexing and searching. Now that everyone can access, create and share data easily on their own, some might wonder if these roles are still important.

However, we argue that the sheer amount of data available to the public makes effective processing and retrieval of information more essential than ever. Similarly, the rise of artificial information calls for dedicated efforts to ensure that reliable and accurate sources of information are available to the public. In this context, documentalists can play a key role by learning new skills and adapting their existing expertise to new challenges.

This poster examines the changing skill sets that documentalists need to address these challenges, highlighting the importance of data literacy, ensuring transparency, and tracking the sources of information. We share case studies from our organization that illustrate various projects aimed at enhancing users’ access to information in this complex landscape. We discuss how improving data literacy can lead to more efficient internal processes and how teams work to enhance metadata to make information more readily usable for the public. Finally, we highlight the continued importance of traditional skills in the work of documentalists to ensure that the public have access to trustworthy sources of information in the future.