In the first week of January, the first cohort of Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellows and many of their mentors from host stations and universities joined AAPB staff and experts in the field for an Immersion Week boot-camp training in the fundamentals of audio and video digitization and preservation.

Undaunted by a bomb cyclone blizzard and record low temperatures in frozen Boston, Immersion Week attendees learned about the history of the AAPB, how analog media works, the difference between common analog and digital video formats, and the fundamentals of PBCore before undertaking hands-on workshops in audio digitization with George Blood of George Blood LP, video digitization with Jackie Jay of Bay Area Video Coalition, and digital preservation in the command line with Ashley Blewer of QCTools and MediaConch (among others).

Follow along with some of the presentations from Immersion Week:

AAPB Background and Current Status, by Casey Davis Kaufman

Audiovisual Archiving: Magnetic and Digital Media, by Rebecca Fraimow

Intro to AV Metadata, by Sadie Roosa

Capturing Video from U-matic, Betacam SP, Digibeta and DVCPro, Jackie Jay

FFmpeg and MediaInfo, Ashley Blewer

This week, the Fellows will start to use what they learned at their respective host stations, inventorying media in preparation for digitization. Stay tuned for updates from their projects!