Becca Bender, City University Television (CUNY TV), City University of New York, Fall 2017, NEH
I spent my Fall 2017 internship at the CUNY TV Archive under the supervision of archivists Dave Rice and Catriona Schlosser as well as video engineer Mike DeFillipo. My internship was very wide-ranging, with projects related to analog video, digital files and tools, as well as rights management. I spent a lot of time with CUNY TV’s digitization rack, which includes several VTRs for analog and digital cassette tape formats, different types of time based correctors, multiple video capture cards and computers, and various types of converters and signal processors, all patched through the station-wide signal router. After doing a thorough clean-up on the back of the rack, removing extraneous cables and streamlining proper connections, I diagrammed all of the source and destination hardware along with the respective cable types and connectors.
Additionally I did testing and troubleshooting relating to Umatic digitization, documenting problems and solutions. On the digital side, I received a lot of training related to command line software, and drafted an XML policy to validate various file types created using the open-source video capture software vrecord. Finally, I worked with various stakeholders at CUNY TV to assess the overall practices of rights management at the station. This included making recommendations for the creation of new agreements as well offering revisions to existing agreements and rights metadata documentation workflows.
Becca Bender interned at City University Television (CUNY TV) in Fall 2017.
