Preservation & Migration Seminar 2026

Millions of 16mm film reels hold our shared visual history — and they are at risk.Until now, digitization has been constrained by complexity, cost, and lack of scalability.This session presents a new approach to film digitization through a practical demonstration.

At the core is a simple principle: True-to-source digitization — no alterations, no hidden processing, no compromises.

The session shows how institutions can move from slow, specialist-driven scanning to standardized, high-throughput digitization workflows, and how this enables the establishment of scalable internal capabilities.It is structured around three core dimensions:
 • Physical & digital capture: How analog film is transformed into a digital signal — from illumination and transport, through optics, to sensor capture — and the key parameters that define quality (resolution, dynamic range, bit depth)
 • Workflow & productionHow consistent, repeatable workflows enable reliable, preservation-grade digitization at scale 
 • Organizational model & scalingA community-based model for organizing, implementing, and scaling digitization within institutions — enabling internal capability, control, and long-term sustainability

The session draws on experience from digitizing more than 250,000 film reels in collaboration with leading broadcast archives.

This workflow demonstration closely follows the best practices and recommended procedures of leading archivists and preservationists. From tape handling to digital output formats, from respect and care of the existing metadata to preserving the images as originally created, the SAMMA system workflow process removes a significant portion of the technical load, allowing operators to focus on the successful migration, metadata enrichment, and preservation of the videotapes they hold.