Been out of the loop for a while. Is LTO still in fashion?

[Frank Bartouski]

It's been a while since I was in this space and back when digital was relatively new, people were all afraid of drives dying and data being lost. Back then, LTO was the phrase that put everyone at ease enough to believe in a fully digital workflow. My question is, now that digital has been cemented as the way of the future, it's been out for a while now, and film is all but dead considering that they closed the last film processing lab in LA, is everyone still so afraid of digital still that LTO still holds power? Is LTO a necessity still for large budget films? Do insurance companies still require LTO copies? What's the skinny on LTO for film?

 

[Adrian Weinbrecht]

Hi Frank

There are many people here using LTO. However they are using LTO as an archiving/backup format. Original acquisition of footage is usually to some sort of solid state media eg. Redmags, CF cards etc.

So yes LTO is 'Still the fashion' for archiving/backup.

Adrian

 

[Marc Wielage]

Yes, and LTO6 is quickly becoming the new standard. I have seen LTO's fail before, so it's still not a 100% secure backup solution. I think the best practice is probably still to save files on multiple media drives, like hard drives and tape, then hope that in a few years one or more of them will still be retrievable. I've seen tapes only 8 years old fail in a restore, so bear in mind bad things can happen.

The deliverables contract from the distributor will usually tell you what the releasing company expects, and once you deliver everything, you're off the hook in regards to insurance. BTW, it's not so much that Hollywood is "afraid" of digital, but more that they've seen how rapidly things can change, particularly with digital formats. I know of an Oscar winning 1992 film with digital sound where all the audio is no longer playable, and we wound up using the analogue tracks for remastering (as one example).

Read these papers by the Motion Picture Academy:

http://www.oscars.org/science-technology/council/projects/digitaldilemma/index.html

http://www.oscars.org/science-technology/council/projects/digitaldilemma2/index.html

There are many, many concerns for the longterm survival of digital formats. And believe me, modern motion pictures are​ still being archived to film negative. We know film will still play back 50 years from now; digital files... not so much.