SILVER & BALLARD COMPLETES CONTRACT WITH eTV TO DIGITISE VIDEO TAPE LIBRARY AT THE VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON.

Silver & Ballard, New Zealand’s leading audiovisual preservation and digitisation company in conjunction with The Education Television and Video Communications Trust (eTV) has recently completed a project to digitise more than 1400 hours of content held in the Victoria University of Wellington archive. Completed in just 4 months, the educational collection is now readily accessible across a variety of digital mediums as well as being preserved for future use.

The Victoria University of Wellington commissioned eTV to provide a solution to store and access the content owned by the University using its private library within the eTV online platform. The challenge for the University and eTV was that the content resided on VHS videotape which was not only hard to access but was also showing signs of deterioration that is common in ageing analogue media. The material on the tapes was very valuable to the University and much of the content could no longer be obtained.

Campbell Downie, Learning Resources Manager at eTV explains “eTV provides a leading content distribution platform for the education sector. When the University approached us the first thing we knew we needed was a professional digitisation partner to enable us to get the content online.”

“When we went to market to find a partner, we were seeking high quality digitisation and quality control of the final product; experience working with precious and valuable media collections; strong company history and good client recommendations. Silver & Ballard ticked all the boxes and they provided an outstanding service from working through the technical challenges the project presented through to the on-time delivery week after week.”

Using SAMMA technology, Silver & Ballard created a single mp4 streaming file for eTV. The tapes were managed in multiple batch deliveries over the life of the project requiring excellent control of the physical digital collection. The digitised content was delivered back to eTV using hard drives.

Tim James, Silver & Ballard’s Media Migration Specialist speaks of his excitement in undertaking this digitisation project and closely partnering with eTV.

“We are thrilled to have partnered with eTV to facilitate the creation of this rich resource for the University. We recognize there are wide ranging challenges facing organisations that have content locked up on physical AV media. From content that is hard to access due to obsolete videotape formats through to content that is at risk of being lost due to failing physical carriers. Our services are designed to address these issues and allow any organisation to safely migrate their content into a digital form to create an accessible and usable resource that will benefit the organisation.

“I believe that this project is a great example of how organisations can make the most of the content that they have already invested in, and return real value either commercially or culturally.” “END”

www.silverballard.co.nz

Contact Information –
Tim James
Media Migration Specialist at Silver & Ballard
Mobile – 0210507227
Email – tim@ballard.co.nz