SAVE YOUR ARCHIVE PROGRAMS.O.S The Live Romanian Revolution

Romanian Television Archive The Live Romanian Revolution

Collection, the Save Your Archive Program and “The Policy Of Small Steps"

The achievements of the project "SOS The Live Romanian Revolution“

Video “The Live Romanian Revolution”

Romanian Television Archive The television history in Romania starts with TVR in December 31st 1956. TVR

Archive includes, today, around 240.000 hours of images, a patrimony that is increasing every year with 10 000 hours. The archive catalogue counts today 135.000 of titles and there are still many unknown materials.

The main collections of the Romanian Television Archives are: “Communist Romania and Nicolae Ceausescu” (5207 items), “The Live Romanian Revolution” (300 items), “News” (3350 items), “Golden Stag Festival” (350 items), “Fore Front” (500 items), “Folklore and traditions” (3350 items),

The audiovisual patrimony of the Romanian Television Archives can be found in a variety of formats: 16 and 35 mm film, VPR and MGS (tapes of 1 and 2 inch), U-matic tapes, BETA tapes (SP, DIGITAL, IMX), DVCAM tapes, Optical Disks, audio tapes, CDs and DVDs. An important part of our patrimony, around 40% is still on 16 mm film. This support is not in use anymore and copying it is difficult due to the lack of the technical equipment. TVR has also problems with the degradation state of the tapes that is advanced because at the moment the production inside TVR still uses the master tapes from the archive. Unfortunately a full digitisation plan is not possible for TVR at the moment.

Trying to avoid a permanent lost of our patrimony we’ve implemented a new strategy: “The Policy Of Small Steps"

“The Policy Of Small Steps“ - The Live Romanian Revolution Collection and the Save Your Archive Program

“The Policy Of Small Steps“ – consists in saving the endangered collections piece by piece. So, in the first place we've identified the most endangered collections and we've started looking for funding for the preservation and digitization. We've conceived a list of collections that are in desperately need for digitisation and in the first position of this list was the collection "The Live Romanian Revolution“.

“The Live Romanian Revolution” collection contains 400 hours of footage. This collection is unique in many ways. It contains 120 hours of footage that was broadcast live during the first ever revolution broadcasted live on television. TVR Centre was one of the battlefields of the revolution, with Studio 4 – where most of the live broadcasting was taking place – having been under severe attacks. The collection also contains material that was filmed, but never broadcast, not shown to the public, which makes it an unique historical document.

Fortunately, the "Save Your Archive" program was designed for helping audiovisual archives that are in danger and "The Live Romanian Revolution" collection had the exact circumstances for being part of this program.

The main reasons for launching the “S.O.S The Live Romanian Revolution” project were:

1) the vulnerability of the collection (given the state of degradation of this collection, digitization is imperative);

2) the inestimable value of this collection known in the entire world;

The achievements of the project "SOS The Live Romanian Revolution“

"SOS The Live Romanian Revolution" project had 3 simple objectives:

1) To digitize and preserve the audiovisual collection “The Live Romanian Revolution”;

2) To index and create metadata for the entire collection;

3) To make part of this collection accessible online for the general public; The working progress:

1. We have finished all the pre-digitisation activities ;

2. We have started the supports indexation at the beginning of April and we’ve implemented a digital labeling system with bar code (including labels) using an in house application.

3. We have checked the technical status of each support and we have divided them into 3 risk categories: 1- major risk; 2 - medium risk; 3 - low risk. Each support has a temporary label mentioning its risk category;

4. Using the application for the labeling system we have added primary information about each support, such as: unique identification code, title, duration, color, support type, broadcasting date, sound type, aspect ratio, etc.

5. We have started the ingest activities and the digital restoration on September - unfortunately there are items that we couldn't restore. The master tapes had a bad quality from the beginning (were recorded on VHS tapes and TVR never received master VHS tape);

6. We have settled the metadata schema (part of the informations we already have);

All the supports of the collection were gathered together.

the supports indexation

The labeling system with barcode - applying labels.

the supports indexation

The technical status check.

the supports indexation

The ingest activities and the digital restoration

The digitization

Video “The Live Romanian Revolution”

Thank you!