Internet Archive begins digitizing 40,000 VHS and Betamax video tapes

Employees of the organization Internet Archive have embarked on a long and grueling process of digitizing and publishing on the Internet the contents of 40 thousand video tapes in VHS and Betamax formats. On tapes - television recordings made by Marion Stokes. For 35 years, she has been recording TV programs for MSNBC, Fox, CNN, CNBC and CSPAN. The former librarian clearly understood the importance of her work: eight VCRs worked almost around the clock in her house.

Internet Archive experts were amazed to receive such a unique amount of historical material.



Now we have a lot of work to do. The problem is not so much in the digitization of the video, but in the painstaking work of entering the accompanying data (metadata) for the video sequence. It is necessary to indicate each person who appears in the frame, and accompany the video sequence with a transcript of conversations. For example, simply entering into the computer only the names of 537 video cassettes took about 16 hours from one of the employees of Internet Archive.

It took six weeks to digitize the first part of the Marion Stokes collection, which recorded about 60 issues of the Input program., a journalistic program that went on Sunday morning on the regional television station WCAU-TV10 in Philadelphia from 1968 to 1971. The guests invited to the studio discussed issues of genetic engineering, eastern religions, the war of the sexes, payment of compensation for slavery, the gap between generations, educational reform, etc. For many participants in the broadcasts of 45 years ago, this is the only surviving visual material, although among them there are many historically significant persons. Now the collection is available for free access .


One of the boxes with cassettes Marion

In the 60-70s, television had nothing to do with high-speed television shows of our time. Then the invited experts sat in a semicircle in front of the camera and each one for a long time, slowly expressed their opinion. There is no introduction at the beginning of the Input transmissions, the broadcast simply starts from the middle of the conversation.


A significant part of Marion’s collection was recorded on Betamax cassettes: the equipment had to be searched on eBay, and engineers had to be found to fix it.

According to Internet Archive, digitizing the collection will cost about $ 500 thousand. A significant part of this amount remains to be collected in the form of charitable contributions. The help of volunteers is also needed.