“Saving the heritage is a very complex process that demands a whole range of technical, political, human, and financial resolutions,” Rahajarizafy said. “If we don’t do it, then whole chapters of this heritage will disappear in less than 10 years, leaving an irreparable void in our cultural identity. This system adds efficiencies that will allow us to make a significant stride forward in our effort.”

Front Porch Digital donated a SAMMAsolo single-stream multiformat tape migration system to Association FL@H, the association in charge of preserving Madagascar’s audiovisual archives, to drive its preservation effort. Association FL@H, also known as Fanajariana Lova association Haino Aman-Jery, relies mostly on donations to sustain its activities. SAMMAsolo will integrate into the association’s digitization workflow to ingest audio and video tape assets and encode them to multiple formats simultaneously, while also analyzing content to ensure the quality of the migration.

Since 2007, FL@H has been working to digitize Madagascar’s cinema, television, and radio recordings before they deteriorate to a point where they cannot be preserved.