Kodak files for bankruptcy

[Peter Moretti]

Good points but film is STILL the ONLY medium that all you have to do is hold it up to some light to see the frames. thats why it will rule supreme as the BEST long term archive medium - just my 2 cents. nothing else can just be held up and viewed decades from now. save film

Long live the GAF Viewmaster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJhY21qJe_U&feature=related

 

[Marc Wielage]

History has shown the best form of archive is often the one that accidentally survives, not the one that is planned and managed. Libraries, museums and storage facilities can become neglected or abandoned, burnt down, get levelled by natural disasters or bombed/ransacked in wars. Securely kept digital copies over a long enough life span are less likely to survive for this reason then unsecurely kept mass distributed digital copies.

There have been a few occasions where the best surviving copy of an old 1950s or 1960s movie was in boxes labeled "do not use!" After all the other elements were considered unusable, we finally checked those (in desperation), and they wound up being far better quality than anything else that had survived. This also happens a lot with classic analog albums archived on 1/4" tape.

Still, there are some pretty famous examples of Kodak film stocks going bad over time. George Lucas in particular has been very vocal about the chemical fading in his Star Wars films from the 1970s and early 1980s. So -- at least for a period of time -- Kodak was guilty about not telling their users the truth about how unstable and unreliable their color dyes were. Eventually, they got a handle on this and came out with long-term archival low-fade stocks, but you gotta worry about the number of films that are sitting in vaults, falling apart...

 

[Craig Parkes]

There have been a few occasions where the best surviving copy of an old 1950s or 1960s movie was in boxes labeled "do not use!" After all the other elements were considered unusable, we finally checked those (in desperation), and they wound up being far better quality than anything else that had survived. This also happens a lot with classic analog albums archived on 1/4" tape.

Still, there are some pretty famous examples of Kodak film stocks going bad over time. George Lucas in particular has been very vocal about the chemical fading in his Star Wars films from the 1970s and early 1980s. So -- at least for a period of time -- Kodak was guilty about not telling their users the truth about how unstable and unreliable their color dyes were. Eventually, they got a handle on this and came out with long-term archival low-fade stocks, but you gotta worry about the number of films that are sitting in vaults, falling apart...

Certainly, an issue that simply won't occur with digital. It'll either be there or it won't by and large.

Also, if you are worried simply about vision archival, and restoration/re-issuing, it's kind of hard to look past the fact that your average blu ray even with all the compression still CAN look better than most archival prints that get played in many respects.

The safest bet against something being lost forever is distribution, and lots of it.

In saying that I can envision in 500 years time some pretty interesting digital archaeology going on as well.

 

[Harald Schossmann]

That's a good point! History has shown that the best restorations of works believed to be long lost has come from private collectors. That's why lots of distribution is the best way of ensuring longevity.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

If only the sacked the idiots running the place... and actually watched there own marketing material.

I so feel sorry for the poeple of Rochester.
Upper management should be jailed for the crime of stupidity.

this time I fully agree with you