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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Kodak going broke?

Jeff Coatney said:
...as for my 20 year time frame, I offer up the examples of SyQuest & Zip. They were never meant to be archival, but the danger remains that when you have magnetic or optical media, you risk the reader/player not surviving the required storage time frame or being able to interface with contemporary technology even if it does.
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Neither Syquest nor Zip ever achieved the kind of market penetration necessary to define a format that can withstand the test of time. I think anyone who committed to either of those formats for archival purposes was just not thinking particularly long term.

I know that the best archiving scheme must face market forces, but the right system will have no problem gaining market share if it fulfills the requirements I have proposed earlier. I don't care what form it takes, as long as it solves the problem. I can see a very simple / low cost authoring system that can be had for around $5K in quantity and that has media costs of pennies per linear foot. Its a ripe market opportunity but it needs to be aggressively priced for rapid market saturation and capitalized by someone with a long term view. Someone like Kodak could make it happen. But it must take the form of an appliance that can be acquired by a post house or service bureau and the company should count on the bulk of their margins coming from the media and a one-time storage fee. If a low margin, high volume model could be developed, its feasable that such a system could be cost-effective enough to archive all the production assets, not just the finished version.
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Uhhhhhh.....

Didn't you just describe LTO? (I would say LTO5, but the LTO system is designed to be backwards compatible for at least 2 versions, so it's something of a moot point...)
 
M Most said:
Neither Syquest nor Zip ever achieved the kind of market penetration necessary to define a format that can withstand the test of time. I think anyone who committed to either of those formats for archival purposes was just not thinking particularly long term.



Uhhhhhh.....

Didn't you just describe LTO? (I would say LTO5, but the LTO system is designed to be backwards compatible for at least 2 versions, so it's something of a moot point...)
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Please read my posts before automatically refuting what you think I'm saying. I've been advocating a low cost, dedicated CYM (or RGB) separation system, not data archiving. Actual images on film as a robust complement to the data archiving we're all doing. LTO requires forward migration and management. This system would be "fire and forget".
 
David Mullen ASC said:
I don't think Red really has to "solve" the problem for their customers other than participate in any sort of industry-wide discussion about a universal non-proprietary storage format for resolution, luminance, color information, etc. I guess 4K (or higher) RGB DPX using ACES color space is something along those lines, though it maybe should be more like 16-bit linear rather than 10-bit Log for digital material recorded RAW.
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David,

I agree that it is not RED's problem to "solve", but I am talking about it in terms of replacing film. If R3D is a replacement for film then I do not believe it is good enough to say "we make the images and the contaier, it's up to someone else to figure out the problem of storage". This is the worst way to ensure that your format (R3D in this case) is the "go forward" for an industry or becomes a standard. If it is left to the open market then it might not be the best way to ensure that it becomes or remains a standard.

By this thinking one would have to assume that r3d is a ten year format. I don't agree. I think the best way to think of it is as a hundred year format that will improve over time. To do this, I belive RED not only has to be involved, but be "proactive" otherwise they put no more weight in their format than, P2, HDCAM, SR, PROREZ, etc. It's just another file format that comes and goes.

Its fine that the EPIC is the replacement CAMERA for 35mm or 65mm film. But the real question is how the data it collects (THE R3D file system) will be a replacement for 35mm or 65mm film. It is clearly two different streams of thinking.

We can all be in this thread standing over KODAK's coffin, but the second half of the puzzle has not been solved. KODAK has a medium (film) and standards associated with that medium. Color standards, resolution standards, storage standards, archival standards etc. This is part of the reason KODAK was taken seriously, so well respected and did what they did for so long.

It's my opinion that RED needs to be AT LEAST THIS BOLD and forward thinking with the r3d data file system technology and I think they not only need to do that for the industry but for their customers.

As Mike stated, DPX is the archive image container for warner brothers right now. Why? There is no reason that r3d can not be made into a standard, but it takes will and collaboration to do that.

David
 
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Oh noes, how will we ever find a functional DVD-drive in 30 years!? As we all know, functional zip drives are impossible to find.

In 30 years you give me an archival DVD and take 3 strips of film and I'll race you to getting it onto a computer.

CDs have been available for 30 years... it doesn't take sherlock holmes to find a functional CD Drive. You could buy a pallet of 1,000 CD drives from the 80s and almost certainly find one working drive, all for less than the price of a film scanner and less time than the restoration of a film. Furthermore you could probably make 100 copies of a film to archival Blu-Ray for the price of a 3 strip print. I would rather have 100 copies than 1. The chances that all 100 get corrupted in the same place is very very low.

And if we've somehow lost the ZIP or JP2k-lossless specs in 30 years then our largest concern will be the roving bands of raiders, not preserving the last known copy of Animal House. ;)

In 30 years we'll all have thumb drives that could hold 4k scans of every film ever made. You can't get much better redundancy than that. Which is why I always say this isn't a long term problem. We just need to wait for a decade or two and it'll be ridiculously easy to solve.
 
Not really. Can anyone think of a single mainstream storage medium which you couldn't find a working reader for?

8 Track, LP, Mini-Disc, Laserdisc, Beta... there is a long list of failed mediums but even those are trivial to find working drives for. I can't possibly imagine with the millions upon millions of units produced that you couldn't find a working LTO drive in 30 years.
 
Still I have to imagine some small company or science student in the future could make a device to read an optical disc, some mini universal optical disc reader. Look at the technology surrounding records, they have turntables that hook right into computers and many other devices so people can listen to their old records or even transfer them from analogue to digital.

The thing is yes there are moving parts yes the readers will break down, but we are only getting better and more efficient, I can't believe these things will be like when we lost how to make cement for centuries(?might need verification but it's been a long night). I have to imagine that even if they no longer exist you could find some niche store online that sells and builds throwback media readers, or just contract out a local school to make them for a terms science project.... I don't know.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
Not really. Can anyone think of a single mainstream storage medium which you couldn't find a working reader for?

8 Track, LP, Mini-Disc, Laserdisc, Beta... there is a long list of failed mediums but even those are trivial to find working drives for. I can't possibly imagine with the millions upon millions of units produced that you couldn't find a working LTO drive in 30 years.
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Can you get me an 8-Track tape player with a Thunderbolt connection? I need a driver for it that's compatible with my current OS while you're at it.

The drives you reference are not designed to last the time frame you describe. Even if you were to hermetically seal it, the idustrial lubricants that allow the capstan to spin will break down in viscosity over thirty years. Moving parts oxidize. The nylon and rubber drive belts dry rot, splay and harden. We cannot balance the survivability of the whole world's data on the shoulders of the LTO format. There must be a better solution and soon. I would think this would be a bit more serious a topic considering the global manufacturing delay that the tsunami caused when it took out a single factory.

Magnetic media is subject to magnetic field interference. There is no guarantee that LTO drives will still be manufactured in 30 years. I know there will be cameras and scanners of a sort.
 
Stephen Matthews said:
Still I have to imagine some small company or science student in the future could make a device to read an optical disc, some mini universal optical disc reader. Look at the technology surrounding records, they have turntables that hook right into computers and many other devices so people can listen to their old records or even transfer them from analogue to digital.

The thing is yes there are moving parts yes the readers will break down, but we are only getting better and more efficient, I can't believe these things will be like when we lost how to make cement for centuries(?might need verification but it's been a long night). I have to imagine that even if they no longer exist you could find some niche store online that sells and builds throwback media readers, or just contract out a local school to make them for a terms science project.... I don't know.
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You are seriously advocating that all the archived data being generated now on planet earth is at the mercy of some student building a drive as a science project?

BTW, The record you cited is far superior as an archival medium than magnetic tape. In 50 years, you could still scan the surface of the LP with an electron microscope and reconstruct the audio by transcoding the grooves to an audio waveform. If turntables and receivers are obsolete, you can still extract the content.

LTO is magnetic tape. I've seen 30 year old reel to reel tape completely fused into a big solid usless lump. Catastrophic loss.
 
It is really sad it's all coming to the end of the road for Kodak. A few years ago Kodak brought out a medium format digital back before the likes of Phase/Leaf etc and despite it's problems (overheating - nothing that could not be sorted out with a bit of tweaking) was by far and away the best digi back out there. They had a great new office with full pro digi back up. Stills guys were really starting to buy into it then they pulled the plug on the Pro Digital Team Back Up. We all felt really shafted. We all went to Phase. It was like their hearts were never in digital. To many film diehard dinosaurs at the top. By the time they realised, it was too late.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
Not really. Can anyone think of a single mainstream storage medium which you couldn't find a working reader for?

8 Track, LP, Mini-Disc, Laserdisc, Beta... there is a long list of failed mediums but even those are trivial to find working drives for. I can't possibly imagine with the millions upon millions of units produced that you couldn't find a working LTO drive in 30 years.
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All of those require electricity.

I can look at the contents/frames of a roll of film by holding it up to sunlight. That, in a basic way, makes it like paper. When discussing archival mediums you have to contemplate the fact that there might not he a way to "turn on" that archive.

An then you are SOL on ever understanding what is on the storage device.

This is data's primary problem.

David
 
Jeff Coatney said:
Kodak has no vision. An ironic statement, I know. But its true. They have a big fat market staring them in the face: Digital Media Archiving technologies. Its desperately needed. Its guaranteed to grow exponentially. And its guaranteed to be recession proof. They are sitting on the technology like a chimpanzee playing with a loaded gun- blissfully unaware of the power they need only reach out and grab. Let's see what they can do with it...
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In terms of volume, it's a niche at best - nothing like the scale that made them a major company.
 
David Battistella said:
There is no reason that r3d can not be made into a standard, but it takes will and collaboration to do that.
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It also takes willingness to open the standard. Red has never to my recollection shown any inclination to do that.

Out of all the formats mentioned here, the ones that have been cited as having stood the test of time, or at least a 30 year time frame, have been the ones that were either open standards or developed and supported by a consortium of companies. The ones that failed to meet that time frame are the ones that were done by one company "going it alone." Examples of the former would be DPX, film, VHS, 3 1/2 inch floppy, and CD. Examples of the latter would be SyQuest, Zip, Bernoulli, and numerous others. Which of these camps R3d eventually winds up in is up to Red.
 
the science student thing was kind of a joke... pointing out how easy it will be for anyone with slight knowledge of the field or where it came from (that it could possibly be the level of projects future student would make). Either way no one will go to that point you should transfer your data before that time, the project would be in the case of finding old drives or disc you want to read.

either way i think we are a long way off from a perfect digital storage solution, you want a universally useable adaptable readable device, that has no moving parts and massive amount of storage space.... don't we all, thing is it's not here nor will it be in time for people to be able to archive the data they are working with now.

So we are just talking about the next solution... oh and why would you need a thunderbolt connection for 8-track? you really need to transfer all those massive sizes of data real fast... come on now.

and there is a difference between industry standard archival, historical archival, and personal archival, cost is a factor here. though I still believe i could find a way to read a mini disc, or a hdDVD, or betamax (might be the hardest) in 30-50 years, might be tough but I think I could do it. I can't think of one old medium that can no longer be read, now I could be wrong but nothing comes to mind.

oh and most of these come with known shelf lives that you just transfer before it's up, and make sure you are storing them correctly, not perfect but remember cost and ease of use are very big factors.

p.s. I'm advocating for the M-disc but in a case like mini discs If stored properly and managed right could last a very long time, and building a laser reader or the likelihood of continual laser reader technology in the future is very likely in my opinion.
 
Kodak stock (financial not rolls) was way up today.
 
Michael Hastings said:
In terms of volume, it's a niche at best - nothing like the scale that made them a major company.
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I understand where you're coming from, but I see the archival market in a fundamentally different way. I see a huge market because the same 4K cameras that we're using now professionally are very soon going to be in the hands of parents shooting their kid's first birthday. One of the few things that will propel someone into a burning house is to save the family photos. I just don't see the cloud being able to store all that data.
 
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