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Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC) is restoring and digitising a unique video archive, including the Sheikh Zayed Archive and more than 30,000 pieces of film and video, of unseen footage that records the foundation and development of Abu Dhabi.
The company has appointed broadcast services company DMA Media to preserve the archive, much of it recorded before the formation of the UAE, for future generations, including historians and students of recent Middle Eastern political history.
Some of the footage has degraded to a dangerous level and could be lost forever without urgent intervention now, says DMA Media’s CEO Rob Beynon.
“The restoration is coming just in time to save a region’s broadcast heritage. ADMC has been quick to recognize its role as a primary custodian of an important visual record of the UAE’s history and has now stepped in to take action while the bulk of the archive is still in reasonable condition,” Mr Beynon added.
Ahmed Al Menhali, director of broadcast technology at ADMC, said: “We are fortunate to have thousands of pieces of footage that document our heritage and key events in the history of the UAE. We have identified in DMA Media a company with the necessary expertise and technology to preserve these items, without which a significant period of our past would be lost forever.”
Once the archives have been restored and digitized, ADMC plans to use them in the future as material for documentaries or TV programs, he added.
DMA has started cataloguing, restoring and digitizing the material. The archive is in several formats, each one posing specific challenges.
Most of the material is 16mm and 35mm safety film, but there are also 30-year-old items on two-inch Quad video tape. This is difficult to restore as the foam used to protect video reels frequently breaks down and coats the tape. Some of the material can only be played once before it degrades completely.
The film will be inspected, cleaned and physically repaired before being scanned and digitally restored. Images will be kept in digital formats while any 35mm films will be kept in HD and will be meta-tagged for easy retrieval.
DMA is bringing international experts to the UAE and is training staff to work with the damaged and unstable media to ensure the best possible results. Chris O’Hearn, an international archive expert and one of the DMA team, said the problem of preserving national archives was not unique to the UAE and other countries in the region needed to act fast before it was too late.
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