Table of Contents

  1. Introduction: The Fragility of the Digital World
    1. A note on motivation
    2. Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer
  2. Threats to digital material
  3. Navigating copyright
    1. Who holds the copyright to an AP?
      1. Terms of Service
      2. Assigned licenses
      3. Fair Use/Fair Dealing
  4. How to save your AP
    1. Create a preservation copy
      1. File formats
      2. Documentation
      3. Naming files
    2. Create an access copy
    3. Gather additional material
  5. Where to save your AP
    1. Vault
      1. Local copy
      2. Remote copy
    2. Sharing
  6. Project files
  7. That's all for now!

Introduction: The Fragility of the Digital World

I produce and perform in APs as a hobby, but in my day job, I’m a digital librarian and part of my work steps into digital archives. And there is one thing that has been proven to me again and again: digital material is inherently ephemeral.

Take a book, leave it on a shelf. In 100 years (assuming there are no major disasters) it will likely still be legible.

Take a hard drive, leave in on a shelf. The data will begin to corrupt within 5 years. Within 20 years, you’ll have a hell of a time finding a computer that is compatible. Within 50 years — well, you get the gist.

This might seem counter-intuitive, because in our personal lives, digital material is often more persistent than physical material. How many of us were lectured in high school about the “digital tattoo” and “the internet is forever”? How many of us have lost a print-out of an important document, only to successful retrieve it from the digital copy? As someone who is prone to misplacing EVERYTHING, I wish I could index all my possessions in a searchable, digital vault!

It's a matter of scale: time is the real danger here. Let’s play a terrible game: what year did you get your first digital camera? How many pictures do you think you took that year? How many of those pictures do you think you could locate now? Now imagine instead of a your personal photographs, it’s all of human knowledge since the dot com boom. Scientific discoveries, cultural legacies, art forms, all these important facets of humanity's legacy that have emerged in purely digital contexts.

It’s actually quite a bit of work to preserve digital content, and there’s very little money in it. With the way things are going … you know.

This is what I think about at work all the time. Institutions like libraries and archives have people dedicated to pondering these conundrums and coming up with solutions. But then I get home and I create digital art, and the knowledge of how fragile this digital world is *follows me*. And now that I’ve told you, it can follow you too.

This page is a brief guide on how to preserve Actual Play, as a producer, both video and audio formats. I say brief because I'm trying to summarize a whole discipline in under 5000 words, and I know this isn't going to be comprehensive enough to meet everyone's needs. I will add to it as people ask questions. My goal is to make something simple enough that an individual can take action without institutional support, but detailed enough that someone will be able to get the answers they need without having to comb through the academic literature on the topic (that’s my job!). Because I love this art, and I think it matters, and I want it to outlive us all.

A note on motivation

I'm making an assumption here: that AP has value, and is worth saving and keeping accessible past its original release. This is actually a pretty bold assumption, and I could write a whole guide on archival appraisal of AP (which is the way archivists decide what to keep), but that is outside the scope of this document. I'm assuming that you agree, and you want the work to be available in the future.

Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer

A lot of my recommendations aren't actually archival best practices, because I'm assuming you don't have access to an archive (if there is a managed, institutional archive of AP, I'd LOVE to know) or an in-house archivist. My recommendations are based on what I think is reasonable for more independent creators.

I'm not a lawyer, and even if I were, I wouldn't give you legal advice (... for free). I'm just a digital librarian who dabbles in digital archives and also happens to produce AP.

I can't cover every scenario in this little guide. "But what about --" leave a comment or email me at annethegnome@gmail.com and I'll try to help you out. A lot of questions that are relevant to preservation aren't really about preservation (what is my producer is an asshole? what if I threw my computer in a swamp? what if I don't want to do any of this?) and I'm going to be less helpful there, but hey, I'm down to give life advice (take it with a grain of salt).

Threats to digital material

There are 5 major threats the long term integrity of digital material.

  1. Plain ol’ loss
    1. Physical loss: I saved our recording to a CD — but then I moved, and moved again, and maybe it got mixed in with my ex’s stuff? Maybe there’s a copy on an old computer, but the hard drive failed.
    2. Digital loss: I saved our recording to my GIANT CLOUD DRIVE, but I put it in folder that now has 10000 files in it, and I don’t remember what I called it … one day I’ll go through all these files and organize it … one day. But I was cleaning my hard drive and I thought it was a copy I deleted but now I can't find the original! Oh no!
    3. Access loss: I saved our recording to my GIANT CLOUD DRIVE but I lost my job and couldn’t pay the bill and I lost access to all my files. Alternatively, GIANT CLOUD DRIVE company went under and took all my files with them.
  2. Media degradation
    1. Bit rot: Entropy comes for us all, including our hard drives. As much as we like to think of digital material is non-physical, it does exist physically, somewhere. It’s saved as 1s and 0s to some sort of device, and that device, like all things, rots. 1s become 0s, 0s become 1s (this is called a flipped bit and it’s super cool but also bad). The data corrupts until the file no longer opens.
    2. Environmental risk: Most bit rot is due to entropy (and solar flares, which is also cool) but sometimes we can hurry it along with a flood, fire, major temperature fluctuation — all the same things that endanger your physical possessions endanger the physical media that store your digital material (and those are usually more fragile — don’t drop your spinning hard drives, please).
  3. Media obsolescence
    1. Readers/carriers: All digital material exists somewhere in the physical world, but I can’t just look really hard at an CD and see what’s on it: I need a device that translates what’s on that CD into something I can understand. And my current gaming PC does not have a CD-drive. Or a floppy disk reader. Or an SD reader. My MacBook doesn’t even have a USB port! As certain kinds of storage media become less popular, the devices required to access those media become harder to find.
    2. Drivers: This is an annoying hard drive issue. Some kinds of external hard drives require specific drivers which are maintained by the corporation that produced the hard drive. When that corporation goes under or decides to stop updating this driver, it becomes much harder to access the material on the external hard drive.
  4. File format obsolescence
    1. Ok, so I have the CD and the CD-drive. I go to access my file and — I haven’t got the software to open it. Heck! The format is obsolete!
  5. Loss of context
    1. I found the old software! I’m able to open the file and — it’s a video of some people I don’t recognize, talking about a world I don’t recognize — who are they? What are they doing? What are they talking about? The file is called “s2e4-finalcut” but I have no other context. Damn.

Navigating copyright & licenses

Preserving a digital work means making copies, which means you should hold the copyright.

Copyright applies to original artistic works that are in a fixed material form -- so your home game isn't copyright, but a recorded game is. As the copyright owner, you have the sole right to produce or reproduce that work or a substantial part of it. It's literally the right to copy. The details of copyright vary by country, but that's the gist.

You don’t have to do anything special to copyright your work! It’s automatic! You are already the copyright holder if you create a work, and once you publish it that copyright is documented. Nice. Incredible.

Who holds the copyright to an AP?

Mandatory disclaimer (again): this isn't legal advice.

I'm saying "you" hold the copyright, but APs are group projects so this is a bit tricky. Typically, in film, the producer owns the copyright to the film. But the screenwriter has the copyright to the script, and composer has the copyright to the soundtrack. Yeesh. Messy.

In AP, the producer probably has the copyright unless otherwise specified. Everyone in the show, and everyone whose work is used (including visuals, custom art, maps, music) must consent to be in the show. If you're using CC material, that's a form of consent, so you're all good. It's worth having a conversation and putting in writing how you will deal with the copyright of your show. What if a big network wants to pick you up and there's a huge payout? What if someone has to be removed from the show? What rights do they retain? Have those awkward conversations early and put it in writing. If everyone agrees, that's a contract. For purpose of preservation, when we talk about the "creator" or "copyright holder", I'm going to assume that's the producer.

But copyright is only the beginning. Next, we have the persnickety little issue of licensing and copyright exceptions. I’m dividing this into 3 categories:

  1. Terms of use/service
  2. Assigned licenses
  3. Fair Use/Fair Dealing

Terms of Service

Most distributors (podcast distributors, YouTube, social media platforms etc) will have something in their terms of service that grants them a license to your work. This isn’t the same as owning your work, but it gives them certain leeway to use it in advertising, remixing, and yup, training AI models. Bummer.

This also gives other people on the platform the right to reuse and remix your work. This is why we can quote-retweets, and TikTok stitches. Those are licensing agreements signed by all creators to allow other users to reuse their work, even for profit.

Fun fact: you know how people love screenshotting a tweet and posting it on another platform? Or ripping a video from TikTok and posting it to Facebook? That’s actually a copyright violation. The terms of service only apply within that platform, not across platforms. So stop stealing my videos, random people on facebook!

Assigned licenses

You, as the copyright holder, can also assign a license to your work to allow others to reuse it more broadly, as part of the Creative Commons. Sometimes there is a metadata field for your to add a license, but you can also just put it wherever and that still counts!

Common CC licenses:

Pick what matters to you! All CC licenses include attribution, but if you want to make sure the derivatives don’t have a more closed license, and don’t want people using your stuff to make money, consider a CC BY-NC-SA license.

Personally, I recommend CC BY, or CC BY-SA. While the idea of someone else monetizing my work gives me the ick, an NC license can be quite limiting because “commercial” activity includes work of other independent artists. CC-BY-SA means that any work produced using your work will be returned to the Creative Commons, which feels much more artists-supporting-artists and a lot less like something a megacorp would be into.

A note about these licenses: they are hard to enforce, especially across borders. Unless you have a copyright lawyer and big wad of cash, you’re probably never going to get monetary compensation for someone violating your copyright. HOWEVER most platforms will respect takedown notices if you can prove copyright violation, and most people are decent and will make the effort to respect your wishes (especially other creators!)

Fair Use/Fair Dealing

Likely one of the most misunderstood aspects of copyright in digital spaces: Fair Use/Fair Dealing are copyright exceptions in specific cases. These cases vary by country, but generally include:

This means that I might be allowed to distribute a copyright work if I’m teaching a course, and I can use clips of a show if I’m making a video critiquing that show. It’s pretty limited, quite technical, and varies by country, so whenever possible be explicit with how you want to your work to be used, and don’t rely on Fair Use/Fair Dealing. If you want to use someone else’s work and aren’t sure if it’s ok, contact them.

One note for our question: sometimes, making copies for the purposes of preservation falls under Fair Dealing. But it varies by country, and at least here in Canada, usually requires an official institutional affiliation, so whenever possible CONTACT THE CREATOR before copying their work.

Note: the Internet Archive is very … enthusiastic … with their wide definition of acceptable uses for online material. I’m not here to tell you what to do, but I’m just saying just because they can get away with archiving someone else’s work, doesn’t necessarily mean you can. And even they will honour DCMA takedown requests.

How to save your AP

When we are talking about saving your work, we're going to talk about two versions: a preservation copy and an access copy. The preservation copy is the "original", as good as you can get it. The access copy is a version you can share easily and get it into as many hands as possible (even if that means compromising on the quality).

Create a preservation copy

A preservation copy is a copy of your final cut that is designed for long term storage while maintaining the highest-quality possible.

If you are live-streaming, see if you can record a local copy simultaneously. Most streaming software (like OBS) will allow you to do this. The local copy will likely be higher quality that what you'll be able to rip from the VOD later. Have these files save to a designated folder, and rename them immediately after the stream, according to your naming convention.

File formats

Preferred video file formats for preservation copies:

note: Library of Congress recommends IMF, FFV1, ProRes, MPEG-2, XDCAM with MPEG-4 listed as acceptable, but you know, most of us aren’t working with archival formats normally so I think it’s fine

Preferred audio file formats for preservation copies:

Documentation

Document the following:

  1. Release title
  2. Release date
  3. Producer or studio
  4. Distributor name (if relevant)
  5. Country of origin (if relevant)
  6. Language
  7. Duration (how long the video is)
  8. Cast names (full names, if possible, and handles) and their roles
  9. Crew names (same as above — record the names of anyone who contributed) and their roles
  10. Game system used (including version)
  11. License information (see licensing)

If you are able to embed the metadata, do that, otherwise create a ReadMe (.txt, .xml or .md) to accompany your file with all this information clearly listed. If there are multiple files described in one document, include file names to clearly identify which file you are describing. You can do this using a free software like Notepad or TextEdit.

If you upload to the Internet Archive or another archival collection, they will ask for some of this information. The rest should be entered in the description field. More about that in a second!

For any librarians reading this: I'm proposing a Dublin Core Metadata Application Profile for AP, because of course I am, largely to allow for the inclusion of game information. I'd love to develop a controlled vocabulary to allow for more structured queries, but that is probably too ambitious (and displaying hubris) for one information professional's personal project. If you are interested in talking to me about this, email me at annethegnome@gmail.com

Naming files

Name your file: ShowName-# (for episode number) or ShowName-YYYYMMDD

Whatever file naming convention you choose, keep it consistent! If it’s not obvious, consider adding a line in your ReadMe explaining the naming convention.

Create an access copy

This is the exact same content as your preservation copy, but it might be in a compressed format that is more easily shared, like an .mp3. If you are publishing on YouTube, or as a podcast, use the biggest file format they’ll allow! If you can use an exact copy of your preservation copy, amazing!

In the description, include most the information you would in the documentation, but you can write it in a way that is more human-friendly. When you share your show, consider what will help people discover it, and what information will give them enough context to understand the work even if you and your original crew are no longer available.

It's always nice to give people a way to contact you, too!

Gather additional material

Consider gathering additional material to save with your show. Publicity images, transcripts, press releases, sound track, lore documents, maps, homebrew rules -- anything you think might add value to someone in the future stumbling across it. You're creating a beautiful little time capsule.

Where to save your AP

If you’ve made it this far, you have:

  1. A preservation copy of your AP in a stable file format with a machine-friendly and human-readable file name
  2. An access copy of your AP in a shareable file format
  3. Documentation, embedded or in a text file in the same folder as the AP file(s)
  4. A license chosen

HECK YEAH! I’m PROUD OF YOU!

ONTO THE NEXT STEP!

Vault

We are going to store the preservation somewhere relatively safe. Ideally, a couple “somewhere”s. There are “best practices” here, but there are also “reasonable practices”.

Local copy

Pick 2!

  1. Your computer
    • A clearly labelled folder on your PC’s hard drive, set to “Read Only”. Make it a different colour so your know it’s important!
    • Strength: since this hard drive is booted regularly, it’s unlikely to suffer from bit rot.
    • Weakness: hard drives fail, and personal computers tend to get cluttered.
    • Recommendation: use this if you keep your local computer tidy, and stay on top of migrating files to a new system.
  2. Optical disk
    • Burn it to CD/DVD, clearly label it (on the case, not the disk, put that sharpie away), store it in a stable environment
    • Strength: optical disk is one of the most stable media, if properly stored. It can last 20 years without additional steps. They are small, and easy to store, so finding a location with relatively stable temperature and humidity might be feasible. They can be cheap, and you only have to pay once.
    • Weakness: if there are problems, you won’t notice, and there are no integrity checks running. They can scratch easily, compromising the quality. Also, if you don’t have a CD burner, you’d have to buy one and maintain it. They are small and easy to lose.
    • Recommendation: use this if you have good storage conditions, aren’t prone to losing things, and are willing to migrate the data to another storage medium every 10 years or so. Label the disks with the date you burn them, so this is easier to manage.
  3. External hard drive
    • Strength: easy to copy files, easy to boot, price is coming down.
    • Weakness: Stability varies, but after 10 years you’re playing Russian Roulette. Requires booting to run integrity checks. Benefits from temperature control. Spinning disks are fragile if dropped. Expensive (but the price is coming down).
    • Recommendation: use this if you don’t have huge amounts of data or have a bit of budget, and don’t mind booting them every few years to check the files.
  4. Network-attached storage
    • A personal storage server for your home! All the fun of a computer, with limited functionality: just storage
    • Strength: powered storage means you can automate integrity checks, making this by far the most stable option of these ones listed here. Reliable enough that I use this as my only local copy. NAS can also be used for non-archival purposes, making is a great solution is you have a lot of data in general.
    • Weakness: Expensive and requires some technical knowledge. It’s a computer, so it has to be taken care of the way you take care of any computer.
    • Recommendation: use this if you’re an IT nerd, or if you are producing huge amounts of data. It’s way too expensive if you’re only trying to store a terabyte or two, but becomes more reasonable compared to other storage media at higher volumes.

Remote copy

Pick 1!

  1. Physical copy at another location
    • Strength: cheap, one-time payment. Can be done at the same time as making your local copies.
    • Weakness: not managed, very unlikely to be checked since it’s in another location, and has a higher risk of loss.
    • Recommendation: Use this strategy if you have another location where you can safely store things long-term, and don’t mind visiting every 5-10 years to check your files (depending on the storage media used). Use a different storage media than you used for your local copy. Make sure the location is in a different disaster profile area.
  2. Cloud
    • Strength: it’s a data centre, so all the regular integrity checks are being run. You have a whole team of sys admins keeping it going for you. Yay!
    • Weakness: it’s expensive, and it’s usually an evil megacorp at the wheel. You’ll have a monthly bill forever. Privacy can be a major concern — those corps get real loosey goosey with their Terms of Service. If the corporation goes under or changes priorities, you could lose your data with no recourse.
    • Recommendation: use this if you are storing relatively small amounts of data (under a TB) but don’t want to release it publicly.
  3. Internet Archive
    • Strength: FREE! And it’s a data centre with all the perks of Cloud, but it’s also an institution devoted to preservation. They have structured metadata associated with each item, which will help the file maintain context over time and facilite retrieval. It doubles as an access point, allowing users to discover and download your show.
    • Weakness: sharing is required (usually — this is a bit touchy), so if you hadn’t planned on sharing your show with the world, it’s not really suitable. They don’t provide any guarantee that they’ll maintain your files over time. There are many reasons they can remove material without notice outlined in their Terms of Use.
    • Recommendation: use this if you want to share your work! And help me set up a collection specifically for AP (feel free to email me at annethegnome@gmail.com) (note: from an archival perspective, the Internet Archive isn’t a suitable repository, but we make do with what we have)

Sharing

Sharing is a kind of preservation! One thing that digital material has in its favour is that it is VERY EASY to create EXACT COPIES (this is not true of physical material). In fact, the concept of “original” is quite murky in a digital world, because we can make so many copies of the original! So share far and wide, and this will help your show last.

On the flip side, consider: hoarding is a destructive act.

If you don't share your show, the show will disappear the day you can no longer access it, or no longer wish to. And that's sad, because this art matters to the community beyond its creator. So SHARE!

  1. YouTube
  2. Podcast hosting
    • Wherever podcasts are distributed, that’s where you’ll share your access copy!
    • When you upload your podcast to a podcast host, they will store a copy on their servers. It then gets pushed to podcast directories (like Apple podcasts). Sometimes the host does this for you, sometimes you have to do it manually. Try to get your podcast published in as many places as possible!
  3. Google Drive/Dropbox/Something like that
    • It’s nice to keep a copy in a place you can easily link to if you want to send it directly to people. And hopefully this file is smaller than your preservation copy, so it will be more reasonable to store here.
  4. Your own website
    • I personally love neocities since it's low-tech and you can save a local copy of your website (I am what I am). When you make a website, you can upload the video file, and it will be stored on that web hosts’ servers and available online to anyone who has the URL. You can embed it in a page (where you can store the information from your ReadMe! Yay!)

Project files

This is the real challenge: project files. In the making of Wayward Autumnal (a 5 episode video AP), my final cuts total to about 12GB. My project files were over 500GB. I had to get a new hard drive.

Depending on the kind of show you’re making, the format, and your workflow, your ratio might now be so wild. Video APs where each cam is a different file are going to be the most cumbersome. Layered videos are going to make things bloat quickly, and even audio files can add up if there are enough layers and you’re using high-quality. A lot of this is going to be a workflow issue, and I have yet to find a sustainable workflow so I’m not the one to give advice there.

The next question is value: do your project files have value to future creators, scholars, or gamers? Probably not. Getting someone else's project to render is a nightmare. Getting someone else's 10-year-old project to render will be virtually impossible.

However, those files may have value to you, as a creator. If you are able, I would recommend bundling all the files in your project and saving the final project files in a compressed format, retained for 5 years: if you want to re-master or change something in the next few years, you’re going to need those files. If you need to make cuts for a festival screeners, it really helps to have the project files.

However, after 5 years, the software you are using will have changed dramatically, the technology we use will have evolved, and it's unlikely those files will render properly. It's also unlikely you'll have a reason to change the work.

My recommendation: if you have the space and expect you might want to tink with a project, bundle all the files, put them in a well-named directory (including the year) on a hard drive other than the original one, make sure the dependencies haven't broken (test render!), compress the directories, and keep it in a designated place for 5 years or so.

That's all for now!

I hope that's a decent start. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at annethegnome@gmail.com.

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