The Future of Memory: A History of Lossless Format Standards in the Moving Image Archive 

“A new generation of video standards promises lossless storage of digital objects for future generations. Jimi Jones and Marek Jancovic document the development and adoption of JPEG 2000, FFV1, MXF, and Matroska while investigating the social and material aspects of their design and the forces driving their journeys from niche to ubiquity. Drawing on interviews with archivists and developers, Jones and Jancovic reveal the archive as a dynamic space where deeply entrenched social practices produce disagreements but also resourceful collaborations. They contrast the unprecedented rise of archivist-driven standardization and controversies around non-standard technology with the historical dominance of the film and broadcast industries. Throughout, the authors clarify the role of tech companies, software developers, film pirates, hackers, and other players with poorly understood roles in the process. A timely look at the state of audiovisual preservation, The Future of Memory provides a history of recent innovations alongside a snapshot of a field in the midst of profound technological change.” (www.press.uillinois.edu)

About the authors

Marek Jancovic is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research is centered around the materialities of the moving image, film preservation practices, media and the environment, and format studies. He is the principal investigator of CINEAGRI: Agriculture and the Global History of Celluloid Film Manufacturing, the author of A Media Epigraphy of Video Compression: Reading Traces of Decay (2023); co-author with Jimi Jones of The Future of Memory: A History of Lossless Format Standards in the Moving Image Archive (2025) and, with Axel Volmar and Alexandra Schneider, the editor of Format Matters: Standards, Practices, and Politics in Media Cultures (2020).

Jimi Jones is the Manager of Gift Documentation at the University of Illinois Foundation. He has a PhD and an MLIS from the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois. For the past sixteen years he has taught courses for the School of Information Sciences including Audiovisual Preservation in Libraries and Archives, Digital Preservation and Metadata in Theory and Practice. Jimi’s research focuses on standards for moving image digitization - the social aspects of their design, the technical choices that drive their development and the decision-making processes of large and small cultural heritage repositories when picking an encoding/container combination for digitizing legacy video materials. He is coauthor with Marek Jancovic of The Future of Memory: A History of Lossless Format Standards in the Moving Image Archive, by the University of Illinois Press. He is now researching the history of horror hosts and their contributions to American broadcast television history. 

Entrance = free; RSVP: f.j.j.w.paalman@uva.nl

You can also attend the book launch online:

https://vu-live.zoom.us/j/91527651985?pwd=ZqMso4fh09egMxMhyj1IaaHqPNXhSU.1

programme:

Presentation of the book by Jimi Jones (adjunct lecturer of Library and Information Sciences, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Marek Jancovic (assistant professor of Media Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam)

Conversation between the authors and Sam Yang (digital film registrar, Film Conservation & Digital Access, Eye Filmmuseum) and Floris Paalman (coordinator of the MA Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image, University of Amsterdam)

General discussion.

We hope to see you on the 24th of October!

Giovanna Fossati and Floris Paalman

(coordinators of the UvA/ASCA Research Group 'Moving Images: Preservation, Curation, Exhibition')