AV Preservation by reto.ch

If it’s not awesome, we don’t do it.

A stencil-coloured print of
Création de la Serpentine by Segundo de Chomón,
Pathé Frères, France 1908
(Courtesy by Österreichisches Filmmuseum, the Austrian Film Museum)

We are a highly skilled moving image conservation and restoration company, partly operating at the Lichtspiel in Bern, Switzerland. Our team provides worldwide comprehensive services that encompass the whole range of audio-visual preservation, offering Swiss quality at a competitive price. We publish a newsletter approximately once a month, summarising news relevant to the preservation of audio-visual media. We have a particular commitment to the dissemination of low-technology and low-energy audio-visual conservation and restoration techniques. We support open-source projects which we believe are beneficial for the archival community.

Our Services Include

research, training and consultancy on audio-visual preservation
film digitisation for both preservation and access purposes
digital moving image and sound restoration
files and data transformation
maintenance and migration of digital archives

Training

The Path from Analogue to Digital, for the SEAPAVAA Fellows Lecture Series AV Archiving: Do We Still Need Vaults? in 2026 [en]
Einführung in FFmpeg, one-day workshop at the Lichtspiel in Bern on 12 February 2026 [de]
Initiation à FFmpeg, one-day workshop at the Lichtspiel in Bern on 13 February 2026 [fr]
FFmpeg-Aufbaukurs, one-day Memoriav workshop in Bern on 16 March 2026 [de]
Cours avancé de FFmpeg, one-day Memoriav workshop in Bern on 20 March 2026 [fr]
FFmpeg-Workshop at Hochschule der Künste Bern on 7 Mai 2026 [de]

Publications

Reto Kromer: Review of The Future of Memory, in Journal of Film Preservation, n. 113 (October 2025) [en]
Reto Kromer: Review of The FIAF Disaster Handbook, in Journal of Film Preservation, n. 112 (April 2025) [en]

Patronage of the Arts and the Sciences

AMIA, the Association of Moving Image Archivists
FIAF, the International Federation of Film Archives
IASA, the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives
No Time to Wait, the 10^th edition will take place in Warsaw, Poland, from 14 to 16 October 2026

2025-11-10