The 2009 Black Saturday bushfires that ravaged Victoria were a stark reminder of how nature’s fury can destroy life and property in an instant. Marysville was one of the hardest hit communities with multiple fatalities and devastation. The historical society was completely destroyed in the fire. Members of the society were aware of the impending bushfire threat and hastily divided the collection into three locations to minimise any chance of the collection being damaged. Tragically all three sites were razed by the ferocity of the fire.

In 2010 fire destroyed the Town of Claremont’s Library and Council chambers. The Council’s records containing archival documents, photos and other invaluable items were destroyed in the fire. Over 112 years of municiple history were destroyed in a matter of hours.

Your film, video, audio and image archives are priceless and irreplaceable. In their current analogue form however they’re fast becoming inaccessible, and losing quality every day. Analogue material deteriorates rapidly as it ages. It takes as little as 10 to 15 years, and there’s nothing you can do about that. Additionally it’s becoming harder and harder to find devices to play the various analogue media formats. The only way to preserve your library for future generations is to convert it to an open digital format.

Magnetic tape media is inexpensive and plentiful, helping it to be one of the most common forms of content storage in the world. These two traits, however, also cause it to be the most difficult form of media to preserve. Videotape manufacturers are not motivated to make tapes that will last a century; tape formats are not guaranteed to last very long. Approximately sixty-five videotape formats were introduced in the last 45 years, with only a handful surviving. The obsolescence of formats causes further problems for media preservation and migration.

The Digital Factory is a premium media acquisition and archiving facility based in Perth. With over 25 years experience in audio/visual recording and archiving in both analogue and digital formats.
Our facility is purpose built with video edit suites, audio restoration suites, scanning room and duplication facilities.
Our mission is to work closely with all our clients to ensure the successful transfer of analogue collections to the digital domain.

The Digital Factory can migrate all common analogue storage mediums to open source Digital formats for long term archive. Multiple copies can be made allowing safe off site storage for entire collections.
Most media and historical collections are currently contained on the following formats;

• Movie Film ; 8mm, Super 8mm, 16mm, 35mm motion picture film.
• Negative Film ; 35mm mounted slides, 35mm negative film strip.
• Photographs ; Colour, B&W, Sepia prints.
• Video ; VHS, Beta, VHS-C, U-Matic, Betacam, Mini DV, Hi 8.
• Audio ; Cassettes, Reel to Reel , DAT Tape, Mini disc

The Digital Factory recently completed the Digital migration & archiving for the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation’s entire history collection.
The library contained over 25 years of valuable historical material in many obsolete formats including: Reel to Reel tape, audio cassette, VHS cassette, 8mm film, U-matic tape, Photos, 35mm negative strips, 35mm slides & paper documents.
The process was documented along the way and the following video gives an overview of some of the procedures used in the archiving process as well as the importance of migrating analogue collections.