Selecting what to archive depends heavily on how the video was created. As discussed in the opening sections, many digital devices are limited in terms of the quality and type of video that they can produce and so it is essential that the capabilities of the device are assessed against the requirements of the project. Ideally digital video should be captured at a quality suitable for archiving – i.e. the original would be stored – and then lower quality files derived from this ‘master’. Although creating and storing completely uncompressed video may not be an option for many, it is essential that a suitable format is chosen as once files are converted between formats (transcoded) then there is no ability to recover or improve data from low quality formats. The significant properties identified below highlight the aspects that should be maintained if moving data between formats.