PARADISEC
Audiovisual digital format standards
Analog photographic material
Photographs and slides are to be digitised at full-size and at 4,000 dpi in a raw (uncompressed) format such as .tif for highest possible fidelity digital representation of the original image. Jpeg images will be generated from these but only for the purpose of preview (“Access”); they will be greatly reduced in size and quality. The .tif images will constitute the archived material.	Digital photographic material
Natively digital photographs, those taken with a digital camera, should be taken using the camera’s raw file format if the camera has such an option. A minimum resolution of 6.1 megapixels is required
Only if no ‘raw’ format option exists, then the highest quality, largest size image in a compressed (lossy) format, such as jpg, is acceptable.
	
Analog audio material

Analog audio recordings such as reel-to-reel tapes and cassette tapes are digitised at 96 kHz sample rate and 24 bit resolution in an uncompressed format; .wav for windows and .aiff for mac.
MP3 files are later generated for the purpose of preview and web-portability (“Access”). The uncompressed file will be converted into a broadcast wave file (BWF), which embeds the wav file in a metadata header, and will be archived	Digital audio material
Natively digital audio should never be recorded in a lossy format. Always record using uncompressed wav at the highest practicable quality and avoid mp3-only devices.
The minimum standard for native digital is 16 bit resolution and 44.1 kHz (CD quality). Most good recorders encode 16 bit 48 kHz. If a recorder can encode 24 bit resolution and 96 kHz then it is preferable. 
If only mp3 recordings exist, PARADISEC will consider them for archiving based on the importance of the recording. We strongly advise to never opt for mp3 over wav.	
Digital video  Native digital videos should be recorded at the highest possible quality, and without compression where possible. Please deposit this version with us. In 2012 we are arranging for this video to be transcoded to JPEG2000 format for archival purposes	

Summary:
	Archival copy	Access copy	
Photographic	4,000 dpi, full size, .tif	425 px longest side, .jpg Level 5	
Audio	96 kHz 24 bit .wav	128 kbps 48 kHz .mp3	
Video	JPEG2000	MP4