Automating AV Archival Workflows: Part 2

February 02, 2026 by Eddy Colloton

INPT (INgest and Processing Toolkit) is a bash scripted command line tool for automating the processing workflow for time-based media at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (HMSG). Prior to developing INPT, we were running these tools manually, one at a time. Some of the steps in the workflow are quick, like running MediaInfo on a video file, but others, like using FFmpeg to create a frame-level MD5 manifest, can be quite time consuming and tedious. With INPT, the conservator can select which files they wish to process, which tools they wish to use, and then let the process run unsupervised end-to-end.

Automating AV Archival Workflows: Part 1

January 26, 2026 by Eddy Colloton

For the past five years I’ve had the opportunity to learn coding on the job. I never really planned for that. I never had any intention of becoming a “software developer,” but here I am developing software. Still, I’ve only had a little formal training, it’s all been very trial and error. The feeling of “I have no idea what I’m doing” has kind of typified the journey. This is the first of my multi-part blog series describing that journey and what I’ve learned (and created) along the way.

NMAAHC Disk Imaging Workshop

August 10, 2022 by Eddy Colloton in preservation

In the summer of 2021, my friend and colleague Caroline Gil & I taught a two-day workshop on disk imaging for the media archiving team at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The workshop focused on the process of disk imaging physical media: the hardware and software involved, quality assurance procedures for disk images, and, of course, use cases for disk images in a museum collection.

DPX: What Not To Do

April 14, 2020 by Eddy Colloton in preservation

We got our first set of dpx files at the Hirshhorn back in December. I was really excited about developing a workflow for processing the files, especially in light of the development of Media Area’s new RAWcooked tool. Sure it was a lot of data, but I was ready. How bad could it be? And so began a two month process full of frustration and disappointment.

MARMIA cocktails @ AMIA

November 13, 2019 by Eddy Colloton

Worlds collide! Media preservation AND booze! Two of my favorite things. I was really happy to get to merge my hobby of making cocktails with my love for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive, a.k.a. MARMIA. MARMIA is a super cool org that preserves the cultural, social and political history of the region we call home through moving image material. Check out their website to learn more: https://marmia.org/

The Association of Moving Image Archivists conference was a great excuse to have lots of AV archivists over to MARMIA HQ at Impact Hub, Baltimore, for a few drinks. Recipes below!

Disk Imaging Drag Race

October 21, 2019 by Eddy Colloton in preservation

There are many applications to choose from when deciding to create a disk image. As a part of developing the disk imaging workflow at the Hirshhorn, five common disk imaging applications were tested. These applications were chosen based partly on the media conservation team’s familiarity with these tools, as well as their prevalence in the field of digital preservation. In order to assess the performance of different disk imaging software, the same 32GB USB 3 Samsung flash drive, containing 2.42GB of data in a FAT32 file system was imaged using ddrescue (v.1.24), Guymager (v.0.8.8), FTK Imager for Mac (v.3.1.1 CLI), FTK Imager for Windows (v.3.2.4.6), and Tableau Forensic Imager (v.1.2.1).

That DAM Project

June 14, 2019 by Eddy Colloton in preservation

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) has an encyclopedic collection of over 70,000 artworks, spanning centuries and the entire globe, over 400 of which fall into the fairly broad category of “electronic media” (video and software-based installations, CD-ROMs, websites, video tapes, and more). Due to the exhibition and acquisition of electronic media art and time-based media art often out pacing the development of best practices for the preservation of such artworks, the Denver Art Museum, like many museums, has developed a “backlog” of untreated and minimally cataloged objects necessary for the realization of the museum's media artwork collection. To combat this backlog, the museum has adopted an iterative, project-based approach to identification and treatment of such objects. I had the pleasure of taking a leading role in the most recent project at the DAM, an IMLS grant-funded initiative aimed at migrating all of the media artwork in the collection to a digital repository, and updating all catalog records for each object, either physical or digital, associated with those works.

NDSR Round-Up

August 01, 2017 by Eddy Colloton in preservation

I recently completed my residency at Louisiana Public Broadcasting, as part of my role as a National Digital Stewardship Resident (NDSR) in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) cohort. I'm excited to be moving on to a position in the conservation department at the Denver Art Museum, but I want to pause and indulge in some navel gazing regarding the whirlwind of a year I have had since graduating from NYU's Moving Image Archiving Program last May.

The Films of James Colloton, Sr.

October 12, 2016 by Eddy Colloton in preservation

My grandfather, James Colloton, Sr. (1926-2014), or "Papa" to my cousins and me, recorded home movies of my dad and his siblings with his 8mm film camera. Christmas mornings, family vacations, sledding in the front yard, and water skiing every summer, all moments mechanically frozen in time and stowed away in a film canister.

Buky Schwartz: Re-constructions

August 29, 2016 by Eddy Colloton in preservation

I recently completed my MA degree thesis project on the conceptual artist Buky Schwartz. Schwartz is perhaps best known for the video installations and single-channel video art that he created during the 1970s and 1980s. His estate's collection of photographs, video tapes, and other forms of documentation embody the artist's legacy as well as the key to preserving his artwork.

Video Artist Paul Ryan's Archive

February 13, 2016 by Eddy Colloton in preservation

Paul Ryan was a pioneer of his field and can be considered one of the first video artists. The collection of Paul Ryan is now housed in an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where Ryan lived and worked for much of his career. The following Collection Assessment describes the significance, organization, and condition of the Ryan's analog video collection.

AIGA Electronic Media Survey for the Denver Art Museum

November 17, 2015 by Eddy Colloton in preservation

In the course of an 8 week period, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) was able to implement a complex digital preservation strategy quickly and efficiently. Artworks from the museum’s design collection were disk imaged, ingested into the museum’s digital repository, and described in the museum’s collection management system.

TechFocus iii

November 15, 2015 by Eddy Colloton in art, preservation

“TechFocus iii: Caring for Software-based Art,” a symposium organized by the American Institute for Conservation’s Electronic Media Group, sought to address the difficult task of preserving works created in a constantly evolving medium. Hosted by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the symposium brought together leaders in the field of software-preservation from a variety of cultural institutions to share case studies, provide workshops, and to further develop a network of collection caretakers. The complexities of software-based artworks are immense, and a community of collection professionals (formed through events like these) is essential to providing future access and exhibition of such works.

New (+Old) Media: Restoration, Preservation, Archiving and Access

August 01, 2015 by Eddy Colloton in preservation, art

I had the good fortune to attend the New (+Old) Media: Restoration, Preservation, Archiving and Access Meeting and Symposium this summer, from June 25-27. Richard Lowenberg of the 1st-Mile Institute (http://www.1st-mile.org/) organized the meeting as part of the 2015 CURRENTS: Santa Fe International New Media Festival (http://currentsnewmedia.org/).

Icarus

November 11, 2014 by Eddy Colloton in music

Almost a year ago, Brian Haack and I (my collaborator on the Sound Design for the German Expressionist Exhibit at LACMA) began work on the "sonic accompaniment" for the iPad App The Plunge of Icarus. And it's finally finished! Please check it out in the iTunes Store.

Video Printer Collage

January 31, 2014 by Eddy Colloton in art

I created a sequence of prints from a mitsubishi video printer for the 2013 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Staff Art Show.

At the Gate

January 21, 2014 by Eddy Colloton in video, music

At the Gate is a short video I created for the 2013 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Staff Film Festival.

Static

December 03, 2013 by Eddy Colloton in video

A recent collection of video static I've collected, and manipulated. This video originally comes from VHS footage, U-matic footage, and a malfunctioning LCD monitor. Those clips are edited, then altered using video filters and effect.

LCD TV Table Design Drawings

September 03, 2013 by Eddy Colloton in art

I have a damaged LCD TV that I want to use as a light source in a bar-end style table. The TV's screen would illuminate the table from underneath, and would be visible through the glass table top.

Lake1

Lake Bloomington

August 30, 2013 by Eddy Colloton in video

I got some video of Lake Bloomington, Il when I was there for the 4th of July this year. I've edited it into some video assets for live mixing, you can download them from my vimeo page.