Broadcast
Newscasts, station idents, interviews, commercials and programme masters from Guyana's television and radio stations.
Ignite Archive · Georgetown, Guyana
Before
it fades.
Ignite Archive captures Guyana's old tapes, film, photographs and audio — then stores the originals and keeps a master that will outlive the formats they were made on.
SMPTE bars · NTSC · CH 6
Captured
Tape age 00 yrs
Signal 100%
TC 00:00:00:00
Drag to age the tape. Every year on a shelf costs a little signal; capturing stops the clock.
Why now
Archivists gave magnetic tape a deadline: 2025. The last new VHS machines were built in 2016, the tape itself is shedding its oxide, and most of Guyana's record from the last sixty years sits on exactly that tape.
Tape
Videotape is stable for roughly fifteen to thirty years. After that the binder breaks down, the coating sheds, and decks refuse to play it.
Film
Acetate film shrinks and gives off acetic acid — the vinegar syndrome — while colour prints and slides fade from the reds first.
Machines
The decks that read Betacam, U-matic and Hi8 are no longer manufactured. Every working one is a survivor, and every play wears it.
What we do
Capture. Store. Archive.
Three jobs, in the order they happen. The first saves the signal, the second keeps it safe, and the third is what turns a box of tape into something you can find again.
Capture
One pass at full quality on decks and scanners we maintain ourselves. Video is captured uncompressed or lossless, film is scanned frame by frame, audio at 96 kHz / 24-bit, and photographs at archival resolution. The master is never compressed.
Output · lossless master + viewing copy
Store
Originals go into climate-controlled shelving, boxed and labelled with their accession number. Digital masters are kept in three copies — on-site, off-site and one offline — and checked against their checksums on a schedule.
Kept · 3 copies · checksummed · climate-controlled
Archive
Every item gets a catalogue record: what it is, when and where it was made, who appears, and who holds the rights. That is what makes it an archive rather than a hard drive — something you can search, cite, licence and return to.
Record · catalogued · searchable · rights-cleared
Collections
What the archive holds.
Collections are organised by what they document, not by format. Filter by the kind of media you have to see where it belongs.
National record
Independence, Republic, elections, state visits, Mashramani and the public life of the country as it was filmed, photographed and printed.
Sport
Cricket, football, athletics, boxing and cycling — club, school and national footage, and the photographs that went with it.
Culture & faith
Phagwah, Diwali, Eid, Christmas; music, dance and theatre; the calendar of churches, mandirs and masjids.
Family & community
Home videos, weddings, village life, school days and reunions — the record no broadcaster kept.
Photographs
Negatives, slides, prints and albums, from studio portraits to street photography and press archives.
Voices
Radio programmes, oral histories, speeches, sermons and music recordings — the sound of the country in its own words.
Business & industry
Sugar, bauxite, rice, mining, shipping and advertising — company archives, training films and campaigns.
Nothing here yet for that filter.
Catalogue access opens as collections are accessioned. Have something that belongs here? Contribute it →
Formats
What we capture, and how.
Each format has one right way to read it. These are the ones the archive is equipped for today.
Video tape
- VHS · S-VHS · VHS-CDeck transfer
- Betacam SP · Digital BetacamDeck transfer
- U-maticDeck transfer
- MiniDV · DVCAM · HDVFireWire capture
- Hi8 · Video8 · Digital8Deck transfer
- DVD · Mini DVDDisc rip
Film
- 8mm · Super 8Frame-by-frame scan
- 16mmFrame-by-frame scan
- Vinegar-syndrome reelsAssessed first
Photographs
- 35mm slidesSlide scan
- Negatives · 35mm · 120 · sheetFilm scan
- Prints & albumsFlatbed scan
Audio
- CassetteDeck transfer
- ¼-inch reel-to-reelDeck transfer
- Vinyl · 78sTurntable transfer
- DAT · MiniDisc · CD-RDigital transfer
- Newspapers · programmesLarge-format scan
- Posters · maps · plansLarge-format scan
- Letters · documentsFlatbed scan
Don't see yours? Bring it anyway. If a machine was ever made for it, we can usually find one.
Process
From the box to the catalogue.
Six steps, always in this order. Nothing is played before it is logged, and nothing is played twice.
1
Intake
Bring it in or we collect. Every item is logged with an accession number and a condition note before anything is cleaned, opened or played.
2
Assessment
We look for mould, sticky-shed, vinegar syndrome, cracked shells and broken splices. Fragile tape is baked and cleaned before it goes near a deck.
3
Capture
Tape only has so many plays left in it, so we capture once, at full quality, on serviced equipment — and keep that master.
4
Restoration
Optional. Dropout repair, colour correction, audio de-noise and tracking fixes are done on a copy. The untouched master stays untouched.
5
Catalogue
Description, dates, places, people and rights holders, plus a checksum for every file. This is the step that makes it findable.
6
Keep and return
Originals go back to you or into our shelving. Masters live in three copies, and access is arranged for family viewing, research, broadcast or licensing.
Contribute
Have a box of tapes?
Families, churches, schools, clubs, companies, ministries and photographers all keep pieces of the record. Tell us what you have and we'll tell you what it needs.
What can happen to it
Digitise & return
We capture it. You keep the originals and the files. Nothing enters the archive unless you want it to.
Donate
It joins the archive, is preserved and catalogued in your name, and stays available to you.
Loan for copying
We capture it, return the originals, and hold a preservation copy so it exists in more than one place.
Licence
Your footage becomes available for broadcast, documentary and research use — on your terms, with you credited.