ChristineCB

And their network administrator would chose one RAID format and, sure enough, their hardware failure would only affect that one choice!

I think Digital's Perfect-World Promise of easier copying and delivery can make restorable backups a better option than multiple film-stock prints. If rightsholders will allow that - but since there are examples where they are more intent on burying art instead of letting it be displayed, I'm sure they'll object.

Brett Sinclair

Sorry, the point I was trying to make is that surely we have two separate issues here. The second of which could, arguably, be split into two itself.

1) Current/future films already being made in digital format and which can more easily be stored/archived and distributed via digital media, which can be easily ported over to new drives/disks as and when required. Hence my suggesting a WD Drive from 97 and no earlier. The end of Chemical film projection.

2) Older original celluloid films which either have to be copied to digital media for current /future distributuion at home and should also be kept as celluloid as they are historical articles of some value both in terms of interest and money. Continued need for Chemical film projection


I'm not advocating that celluloid is dead...or indeed digital is the be all and end all. I think that there is a necessity for both.

What is more of a concern in terms of digital is not the media that the films will be stored on or in, but the format. Think in terms of still photography. RAW vs jpg vs tiff; or music AAC vs mp3 vs mp4 then video mpeg 3, mpeg4...lots of differing formats some better than others but for differing reasons. Then think VHS vs Betamax. Surely it is these advancements in technology that could have a bigger impact?

There's no need to kneel, I'm a very democratic sort of lord.

ChristineCB

Absolutely true - formats, even in Still Photog, are a huge factor. All the different film stock is touted as a "superior format" to camera photographers, all for various chemical reasons. Yet, the Brady Photos from the 1860s look pretty darned good. And even more, they capture The Moment. And that's after 150 years of thumb prints.

We don't have digital formats that have accomplished as much in even a fifth of that time period.

With the future format assault of HD, BluRay and EVD on the horizon, we've all got stacks of one digitized format that will need considerable data-compensation when it's converted to those newer formats.

Meanwhile, the Brady photos or a 1950's Brownie camera picture of the kids still look good.

Brett Sinclair

Well...the old colour Kodak and Agfa pics of me when I worralad...are now a beautiful shade of either orange or green. Thank god for monochrome!

There's no need to kneel, I'm a very democratic sort of lord.

Steve Crook

To play Devil's advocate ...
Do you know that whatever you use to store the digital films on will last for 20 years? Or 50? Or 100?

Mind you, how many recently made films are worth preserving for even 2 years? :

Steve

Brett Sinclair

a) no...it's a shame that no-one has yet managed to figure out how to store a film on a piece of my mother-in-laws pastry...that will still be around when the world ends...in fact I'm pretty sure that we have a bigger problem with my MIL's pastry than we have with old fridges!

b) Severance

There's no need to kneel, I'm a very democratic sort of lord.

MarkG

Format is pretty much irrelevant, since it's just another codec... you don't convert it, you just play it. The most likely cause of problems with old files for users will be 'copy protection' nonsense which won't allow you to play them on newer systems.

In particular, the original masters are going to be uncompressed HD video, which doesn't require a codec at all... just read the raw frames from the file and display them on the screen.

Brett Sinclair

But as was mentioned earlier we aren't just talking 10 -20 years here. I understand what you say about 'just another codec' but think how hard it is now to find an 8Track player. If a film made in 2007 is made digitally and recorded in HD video it is feasible that it will still be watchable in that format on a HD player of some description in 10 years hence. But what about in 30 years? We may have the ability to film and play true3D or holographic films (extreme POV granted). Would we not, therefore, crave the ability to upgrade some of the older stock to new technological advances. At the moment I can't see this going much beyond resolution issues, but you never know. We already have Bluray vs HDDVD!

There's no need to kneel, I'm a very democratic sort of lord.

ChristineCB

I don't think "another codec" answers the Original Format's data limitations. We're not talking about re-creatingi characters on the page or HTML/XTML document.
'
We're talkinig about shadings and colorization down to pixels at X,Y Coordinates.

Not X1,Y1 Coordinates. That's a different format. Any coloration or fading that actually occurs between the pixel distances - the Nothingness - is lost forever.

Different, newer, better codecs can interpolte that - Interlaced, De-Interlaced, etc. - but Original Nothingness isn't going to be improved on. It can be tranformed into non-original data later, perhaps, but that's still not capturing or maintaining the original image.

Increasing the number of bits and bytes in a storage can improve things, but iti doesn't alter Data Nothingness.

Perfection still seems to be missing, and I don't know why. if only I was Emperess Of The Universe, I could straighten out all this mess!

Steve Crook

You mean to tell us that you aren't?

Steve

penfold

Placing digital recordings in a landfill site or to be attacked by vermin probably wouldn't do them much good either...so that proves nothing.

Properly handled, nitrate film actually lasts longer than safety stock. Part of the problem facing older archives now is that conservation dupes made fifty years ago are not actually in as good nick as the eighty/ninety year old originals...but fortunately these were kept also. However, despite some deterioration, they are still watchable and restorable. The same may not be the case for digital copies made now, in fifty years time. Have you actually seen a fresh print from a pristine nitrate negative, say, ninety years old?? You will not believe your eyes. In the same way that a modern camera could not reproduce the look of a Matthew Brady, a modern film camera and stock, let alone a digital one, cannot reproduce that pearlescent luminosity. The example I'm thinking of, by the way, isn't some Maurice Tourneur art movie, but a Bronco Billy western from 1911....somehow the original camera negative turned up at George Eastman House, and was printed up last year. Kevin Brownlow has just started to use it as an example of not how lovely a great film could look back then, but how most run-of-the-mill films looked originally...which is fantastic, to our eyes.

Safely as in Health and Safety, perhaps. Safely stored, as in guaranteed to be accessible in fifty years time ? No, you don't actually know that; and no-one will...for another fifty years.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

MarkG

Yes it does. Lose the negatives and you've lost the best quality version of your film... even a duplicate negative will look worse than the original. Digital files, on the other hand, can be copied an infinite number of times without losing any quality.

No-one is going to dump their RAID array in a land-fill or let rats into their servers.

Uncompressed HD video stored on a RAID array that's upgraded over time by competent people will be both safe and trivial to replay.

I just don't get why people keep talking about how you won't be able to read files from fifty years ago because the hardware to read them won't exist. The hardware to read them will be upgraded over those fifty years, because they're a collection of bits, not a physical item... that's the whole point! Copying analogue footage from 1" video tape to U-matic to Beta SP would have lost quality in every step... copying it from a hundred terabyte RAID array to a new petabyte RAID array loses absolutely nothing. Why don't people get this?

penfold

They might not put them in the RAID array at all....like some people dumped The Wicker Man in landfill....it simply bypassed (Boom, boom) the archival process.

OK, so the array has to has to be upgraded, how often? Competent people...how competent? Airline pilot standard, say? Because aircraft never crash through pilot error .... do they....
They don't get this, because it's currently only theory. For the last time, we do not know the long term, ie 50 years plus, viability of digital storage and retrieval of archivally deposited films. And your constantly updated array with attendant experts sounds hideously expensive compared to printing off five reels of celluloid and keeping it on a mildly refrigerated shelf. Which we do know works.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Nick Dando

If you had the original source for the photos, the negatives, then more copies could be made, without the fading. Unfortunately, the negatives always seem to disappear or get badly damaged as they aren't treated with care.
The only photos that will last for a long time are monochromes and use processes to remove any trace of the silver that first allowed them to be made. The traces of silver are modified into chemically inert compounds using other metals, such as selenium, gold, platinum.

Nick

ChristineCB

Selenium? From the Moon? The stuff that Professor Cavor was going to bring back from the Selenites? Man - I KNEW I shoulda repainted my box and made that trip. Mom never let me have ANY fun! I'm going to tell her she's now risking all those fine photos because I couldn't go see Professor Cavor!

That'll shw her!

I sure hope she doesn't keep telling me to sleep, that these men in white coats and butterfly nets are just there to help me sleep. I hate it when she does that-!