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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Academy Warning on Digital Preservation
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-07-2012 08:46 AM
Joe, I think we're talking about the same concept but from different sides of the fence.
You were saying, "If data is copied in a timely manner."
I was saying, "If data is NOT copied in a timely manner."
If a new type of storage comes out, if the data is valuable, transfer it ASAP but real life shows that people do not take the time to do so and the OP's article suggests that most people are have not even considered it.
In David's article, had the scientists of the Pioneer mission stored their images on 5-inch glass lantern slides, they would still be accessible. Just pick them up and look at them. If you want to view them on a computer, just scan them. Further, I wonder whether digital data could be stored on film or slides using some kind of bar code. It might not be a convenient format but it is something that can be recovered in the future.
This is what I think the main point of the article is getting at. We don't know what kinds of data technology will exist in the future. Who knows? Maybe metal platter hard drives will still exist. If so, great! Just back up your data onto hard drives and you're safe for the foreseeable future.
Back in the 1970s, Hollerith cards were among the best technologies we had. It made sense to store data on cards but most people had no idea what would happen in the future. A warehouse full of punch cards is useless today, only 30 years later. However, we still have the first permanent photograph ever, taken by Joseph Niépce in 1826. It looks like crap because it wasn't a very good photo in the first place but we still have it and we can digitize and display it on computer screens.
I don't see the question as being about technology, per se. Some people are just making the assumption that digital storage is better. Others are saying film is better. The truth lies somewhere in between. Maybe making backups in both analog and digital is the answer? I don't know.
The main thing that people need to do is think ahead. Punch cards and magnetic tape are obsolete and, in many cases, unreadable but 100+ year old film is still readable but not easily accessible. Where's the middle ground? How will we carry that solution into the future?
We still have ancient records on Sumerian clay tablets and Egyptian papyrus scrolls but the people who made them, thousands of years ago, never gave any thought to those documents' longevity. Nowadays, we struggle to preserve our data for 50 or 100 years. Go figure... ![[Shrug]](graemlins/shrug.gif)
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 02-07-2012 09:58 AM
I think Scott hit the nail on the head in that analog storage is typically self-explanatory. One does not really have to figure out film or paper formats. With digital, you must not only know the medium but how the data is stored and what that data is!
When it comes to migration (moving from one digital format that may be obsolete to a current one) the problem becomes geometric. That is, you have the ENTIRE history of one's digital work to deal with. So if next year a new format that looks like it has legs to it becomes the standard, we will have to migrate say the last 5-years of things mastered in a DCP format...but moving ahead 20-years, now we will have 20-years of history to once again migrate to the then current format. 50-years away...it repeats...etc. Your list of things to migrate is constantly growning exponentially with each migration. As for film, if motion pictures are stored on film (or stills), then it only need come off that medium to get it to the current medium of the day on a case-by-case basis unless the one detects deterioration.
The chief reason that films were lost in the 20th Century (except for Disney) was a film's value dropped pretty fast after it was released. There was no home market until TV came along to the masses and no real revenue stream for those old titles until home-video hit the masses. Disney has titles that they could reissue every 7-10 years for the next generation...thus they knew to keep them in good shape...they would be perpetually valuable.
The archiving methods in the past were very cursory. They might make a separation copy of the movie but NEVER check to see if it was a good copy. That is how cheap the studios, historically, have been with titles that have done their thing on 1st run. One would think that after making a protection copy in separation or even just a dupe negative they would then immediately strike a print off that to ensure it was a good copy. One thing I hope they start doing more is when they do separations, do it on one negative (three sequential frames) rather than three reels. This will avoid the lost color but more importantly, ensure that the shrinkage or other possible distortions are uniform across the three colors. But again, before putting the separations in the vault, strike a check print off of them to ensure that you have something worth keeping. Spending 100s of millions of dollars and not spending 10s of thousands to ensure you have it forever is short-sighted.
Like with film, LPs or even cylinders are almost self-explanatory on how to get the information off of them...it makes the a good storage medium for longevity if not for accuracy. Remember too...all of this encyription business will only go to thwart future archivists from retrieving "lost data."
-Steve
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David Buckley
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 525
From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand
Registered: Aug 2004
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posted 02-07-2012 01:13 PM
quote: Randy Stankey
Back in the 1970s, Hollerith cards were among the best technologies we had.
These cards are still handy for taking notes; they just fit nicely in a shirt pocket. Not that I wear shirts with pockets much these days.
At work I have a couple of boxes of original IBM Hollerith cards, which should last me until my box is summoned. These cards have outlasted the IBM 360/44, which was what these cards were originally purchased for, by half a century.
More scarily perhaps, some of my colleauges who date back to that era still have boxes of cards in their offices that ran production back in the day. And it was only last year I persuaded the tape librarian to dump all the old 9 track tapes from the safe, these dating back to the IBM's sucessor, a Burroughs...
Books and other physical stuff last (almost) forever, and almost in spite of our efforts not to care for it. Digital data only lasts as long as we want it to and we are willing to put in the effort to keep it.
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