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

by Jimi Jones, Marek Jancovic

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252088759
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	07/08/2025
Series:	The History of Media and Communication
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jimi Jones is an adjunct lecturer of library and information sciences for the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Marek Jancovic is an assistant professor of media studies at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is the author of A Media Epigraphy of Video Compression: Reading Traces of Decay.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Acronyms

Introduction. So Many Standards, So Little Time: The People and Politics Behind Archival Video Formats

1. “Lossless”: The Materiality of Archival Video Format Standards
2. Standards with a Capital S: The Making and Meaning of JPEG 2000 and MXF
3. Wild Formats: The History and Standardization of FFV1 and Matroska
4. Standards at Work: For-Profit, Nonprofit, and the Global and Social Technopolitics of Standardization

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Editorial Reviews

The first history of film was written in 1894, when cinema had not been born yet. A quarter of the twenty-first century has elapsed, and no global history of digital media is still in sight. It would be a daunting task, worthy of a Jorge Luis Borges story, but Jones and Jancovic have succeeded in writing a key chapter of it. Don’t be deterred by its acronyms: you don’t have to be a computer geek to enjoy getting lost in the labyrinth of media archives’ quixotic struggle against impermanence.”—Paolo Cherchi Usai, George Eastman Museum

From the Publisher