IMES' Director of Premium Archival Services, Hillary Howell, envisions the effective film archive of the future. She anticipates creators embracing digital preservation, but spending equal time and investment on the caretaking of the original physical media elements. Watch the video, originally shared for AMIA Spring 2021, to learn why she thinks it's critical to address both the digital and the physical in your archiving strategy.

Adhesion syndrome doesn’t appear to be any one's fault. This is not a storage issue; rather, this appears to be a natural degradation of the tape. The effects we are seeing are alarming, and if we're seeing it today, what's going to happen in the next 10 years? We’re able to recover these tapes today, but we just don’t know what the future holds.

We’re honored to play a role in bringing some of the GRAMMY Museum’s most iconic moments in the Clive Davis Theater back into the spotlight. In this, the second episode of the #LiveFromTheVault series, watch the incomparable Ringo Starr in a 2010 interview with GRAMMY Museum Executive Director Bob Santelli.

In the IMES Digital Studios, we only have the opportunity to digitize the historic EIAJ-1 tape format very rarely. Presumably most EIAJ-1 has already been systematically migrated, or dubbed, to newer formats through the years, which may partially explain why we do not see troves of this format rolling through our studios. However, the use of the EIAJ-1 standard was relatively short-lived in comparison to other formats released during this time period, so it’s more likely that large archives of EIAJ-1 simply don’t exist.

Mold on tape is pretty easy to fix once you know it’s there, but it is a problem that needs to be addressed for long-term viability of the precious media assets.

The GRAMMY Museum and IMES will curate specific archived videos as part of a new series, Live From The Vault, which takes fans inside the vaults of some of the Museum’s most iconic programs, showcasing rarely seen footage. Mavis Staples will be the first artist featured from her 2010 program in the Museum’s Clive Davis Theater, released on the Museum’s official streaming service COLLECTION:live with free access to all viewers.

The Studer A-827 multi-track analog tape machine is often referred to as the “Swiss Watch” of analog tape machines. They were actually designed and manufactured in Switzerland until the late 1980’s. This is truly the last great analog multitrack machine that was manufactured.

Watch time-lapse video of the build-out of our FADGI-compliant imaging lab in Hollywood.

These machines are now exceedingly rare, and at IMES we have the privilege of caring for and using some of the last remaining working examples. This is one of two that we are welcoming to our collection, where we will give them a good home and put them to work!

These VTRs were first produced in 1975, and they are tremendously difficult to find parts for and maintain. It can take up to 30 minutes for an engineer to setup and align the tape for playback on one of these machines.

Get proactive with hard drive preservation while older drives are still viable and legacy tools are still available to facilitate the process.