A PROJECT to look at the North-East becoming a worldwide centre for digital archiving has been launched.

The pilot Northern Centre of Digitisation and Encoding (N-Code) study will showcase the region's technical capability and help promote the region's expertise in digital techniques and archival film and media.

N-Code is being delivered by Codeworks, the trade association for the North-East's digital industries, with financial support from development agency One NorthEast.

The project has been launched in response to BBC estimates that there are 250 million hours of analogue audiovisual content in archives worldwide, which could be digitally converted, but which no region or company has found means to do so.

N-Code has attracted interest from major digital archive content owners including the BBC, ITV, the British Film Institute and the Imperial War Museum

Andy Walton, of One NorthEast, said: "With so many hours of footage which could be potentially digitised, and the fact there is little large-scale capacity for analogue content conversion and encoding, there is a real opportunity for the North-East to take the lead in the market.

"There is no reason why we could not become a centre for digitisation services."

The project is based at Sunderland University, with support from Teesside University.