HAVE MultiMedia Client Stories
Customer Stories - New York State Archives
The New York State Archives came to HAVE to preserve unique historic video footage. The tapes were degrading quickly and it would not be long before irreplaceable moments of New York State history would be permanently lost. Some of the footage was shot in a format that emerged in the late 1960's and was obsolete by the mid 1970's.
Often when we take on an archiving project, the video or audio tapes are already in bad condition, and prep work needs to be done even before the tapes can be put into a playback machine to be captured. For this particular project we first cleaned the 3/4" videocassettes with special equipment, to make them ready for playback. Then, all the various formats of video were played back on our period machines and captured to computer hard drives as digital video files. The digitized files were then backed up to another set of hard drives, to be stored on the NYS Archives' network to re-purpose for new multiple distribution specifications.
The many hours of captured and archived footage, including images of Governor Cary meeting with former Iran hostages in 1981, and the Attica Prison uprising of 1971, are now permanently available as primary source material at the New York State Archives.
Please visit www.archives.nysed.gov to learn more about the NYS Archives.
Digitizing and Archiving Brings New Life to Video and Audio Collections!
