Preservation & Migration Seminar 2026

The greatest threat to a movie is invisibility. As film production has almost fully transitioned to digital, a dangerous myth still haunts our industry: that professional preservation of masters is an optional cost. Producers often leave their works – their most precious digital assets – in some informal limbo, trusting that they will always be there when they need them. Thus future heritage and economic value float on fragile, dispersed infrastructures, with policies and practices still largely designed for an analogue era. This is how long-term preservation of audiovisual works has become a critical issue for Europe’s cultural memory and screen industries.

The panel discussion will explore how pan-European and national frameworks can better protect digital masters and related assets over time, identifying best practices, concrete policy options, and cooperation paths that bring together preservation and access, culture and business, public good and private interest. Key issues include the definition of the master and its location, the roles and responsibilities of rights holders and technical partners, the models for preservation, funding, and sustainability, as well as the adaptation of production workflows to meet long-term preservation requirements, so that Europe’s audiovisual heritage remains accessible for future generations.

Worldwide, millions of historically invaluable audio and video recordings stored on magnetic tape are at risk of being lost forever, with digitisation hindered by media degradation and playback equipment obsolescence. In this panel, we will explore the possibilities opened by combining scientific, lab-based characterisation techniques to understand degradation mechanisms and their origins.

We will connect microscopic measurements to the real-world “syndromes” encountered in archives, such as sticky-shed and adhesion syndromes and embrittlement, drawing on case studies from private and national archives worldwide.

Recent synchrotron X-ray imaging results show that tape degradation is not limited to the binder. The magnetic pigment can also degrade, potentially leading to loss of stored information. Complementary diagnostics (e.g., spectroscopy, microscopy, and magnetic measurements) can reveal degradation pathways and help explain observed failures.

To address equipment obsolescence, we will introduce progress towards a universal tape reader using a high-sensitivity, touchless magnetic readout architecture, aimed at reducing reliance on increasingly scarce legacy machines.

The discussion will focus on practical decision points: what measurements can tell us about risk, which interventions are likely to help (or harm), and how to translate lab diagnostics into actionable guidance for digitisation workflows and long-term storage. From the perspective of content libraries, we will also highlight the scale and value of at-risk collections, and the accelerating opportunities for access as new technologies mature. We will conclude with a forward-looking view of how scientific innovation can help overcome tape degradation and format obsolescence, and how archives can position themselves to take advantage of these emerging capabilities.