Federal Agencies
Digitization Guidelines Initiative

About This Initiative

Started in 2007, this is a collaborative effort by federal agencies to define common guidelines, methods, and practices for digitizing historical content.   As part of this, two working groups are studying issues specific to two major areas, Still Image and Audio Visual.

Learn more about the initiative

Still Image
Working Group

This group is involved in a cooperative effort to develop common digitization guidelines for still image materials.

Audio-Visual
Working Group

The goal for this working group is to identify, establish, and disseminate information about standards and practices for the digital reformatting of audio-visual materials.

Digitization Guidelines
  • Technical Guidelines for the Still Image Digitization of Cultural Heritage Materials
    Approved by Working Group | September 2016

    The 2016 FADGI Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials has been approved by the Still Image working group. This represents shared best practices for still image materials (e.g., textual content, maps, and photographic prints and negatives) followed by FADGI agencies, and is used by cultural heritage institutions worldwide. This major revision of the guidelines is the first since 2010. It expands on the earlier works and incorporates new material reflecting the advances in imaging science and cultural heritage imaging best practices.

  • MXF AS-07 Milestone: Sample Files Available
    Review draft for comment | Comments requested by December 31, 2016

    The FADGI AV Working Group, through a contract with AVPreserve and their subcontractor EVS have created a set of graded sample files based on the AS-07 Application Specification as of June 2016. Comments are requested.

  • MXF AS-07 Milestone: Approved as AMWA Proposed Specification
    Review draft for comment | July 11, 2016

    The Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) has approved FADGI's MXF AS-07 Application Specification for Archiving and Preservation as an official Proposed Specification. The detailed AS-07 file "wrapper" specification intended to serve reformatting programs includes a list of permitted encoded essences (the underlying content bitstreams), defines a means for the carriage of multiple timecodes; the handling of captions, subtitles, and Timed Text; a minimal core metadata set; program segmentation metadata; and embedded content integrity data.

  • Audio Analog-to-Digital Converter Performance
    Approved by Working Group | July 2016

    Comments requested for ADC guideline version 1.1 that concerns metrics and measurement methods for analog-to-digital converters. Other reports linked from this page describe the problem of interstitial errors, i.e., accidental loss or transformations of audio samples within the digitizing system before the data stream is written to file.

  • Digitizing Motion Picture Film: Exploration of the Issues and Sample SOW
    Approved by Working Group | April 18, 2016

    The FADGI Audio-Visual Working Group's report on motion picture film scanning combines an introductory essay, a set of tables that describe a range of film "inputs" and digital "outputs," and concludes with a model statement of work for outsourced conversion of film to video.

  • File Format Comparison Projects
    Posted by both Working Groups  | December 2, 2014

    Comparisons of file formats for still-image reformatting, video reformatting, and preservation-oriented treatment of born digital video.  For the reformatting examples, matrixes are used to compare formats in terms of about forty factors.  For born digital  video, current practices in six federal agencies are described in case histories.  The offerings include narrative explanatory documents and supplementary reports.

  • Embedding Metadata in Broadcast WAVE Files
    Approved by Working Group | April 23, 2012

    Version 2 of the guideline for metadata to be embedded in Broadcast WAVE files that reproduce historical and cultural heritage digital sound recordings.

All digitization guidelines

Last Updated: 09/27/2016