Covering Your Assets

The Digital Moving Image Archives (DMIA) guide is designed for independent filmmakers to provide basic information about preserving digital data and to encourage collaboration with moving image archives.

The DMIA guide is a cost-effective plan based on archival best-practices for personal digital preservation. Rather than focus on individual file formats or specific “archival standard” formats (which don’t exist), the purpose is to provide a road map for digital survival.

The DMIA primarily addresses born-digital moving image data – audio and video created using digital equipment. The strategies discussed can be applied to any multimedia or computer-generated digital data, and to analog film or tape that is transformed to digital format.

Resources for the DMIA guide were selected from stable national and international institutions engaged in digital preservation research with the hope that these institutions will continue to provide standards and best practices.

The DMIA is used in the curriculum at the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House, and is a Library of Congress National Film Board resource.

Thank You

Special thank you for the generous contribution of time and expertise to the DMIA project:

• Aaron Baker, PhD, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies and Area Chair, Arizona State University.

• Jennifer J. Jenkins, PhD, Associate Professor of Literature and Film, Faculty Fellow, University of Arizona, Association of Moving Image Archivists Member.

• Alan Duckworth, Photographer, Okanagan College.

The DMIA guide will be updated to reflect the latest recommendations and best practices.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.