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Guidelines: File Format Comparison Projects
Still Image and Audio-Visual Working Groups

The FADGI Still Image and Audio-Visual Working Groups are exploring file formats for still images and video. Two explorations are focused on reformatting, e.g., digitizing documents, books, maps, and photographs as still images, and digitizing videotapes (mostly analog, sometimes digital) as file-based video.  These two comparisons employ similar, matrix-based tools to make comparisons relevant to preservation planning. The matrixes compare a limited number of formats in terms of roughly forty factors, grouped under the following general headings:

  • Sustainability Factors
  • Cost Factors
  • System Implementation Factors (Full Lifecycle)
  • Settings and Capabilities (Quality and Functionality Factors)

Raster Still Images for Digitization: A Comparison of File Formats

Digital File Formats for Videotape Reformatting

Meanwhile, a third exploration examines born digital video. The report from this effort employs case histories rather than matrix-based comparisons, reflecting the still-evolving state of relevant preservation practices.  The subgroup felt that it would be premature to draft a uniform guideline and, in addition, the separate narratives highlight significant agency to agency variation in the types of material to be preserved, and in the use cases related to them. 

Creating and Archiving Born Digital Video

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Working Groups

Still Image Working Group
This group is involved in a cooperative effort to develop common digitization guidelines for still image materials.

Audio-Visual Working Group
This group works collaboratively on common and sustainable technical guidelines, methods, and practices for digitized and born digital sound recordings and moving images.

Last Updated: 12/2/2014