Looking Forward to Seeing This!

[Peter Moretti]

http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/sony-restores-lawrence-of-arabia-in-4k

Also, finally some mentioning problems with rescanning a film negative. The whole archive advantage of film is the most absurd thing I've heard smart people advocate.

 

[Robert Hart]

As with much analogue recording of sound or vision, it may be deteriorated but there is often something recoverable. If a digital recording deteriorates beyond a certain point, that's it, gone entirely. Film archiving may not be perfect but it is a good hedge against a collapse of future technologies for any reason, natural disaster, critical resources such a rare earths consumed and reserved for essential services and military, affordability failure to invest in the succeeding generations of data migration, some idiot deciding "Do we really need to keep this? - No.".

Digital archiving does have a serously good upside, its affordable ability for multiple copying and dispersal so that all eggs are not in the one basket.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Also, finally some mentioning problems with rescanning a film negative. The whole archive advantage of film is the most absurd thing I've heard smart people advocate.

How much film have you shot or scanned in your career? How many digital archives more than 10 years old have you had to salvage? There are always issues with scanning old negatives, particularly with broken splices, sprocket damage, chemical stains, emulsion scratches, tears, fading, color "breathing," and so on. At least in the digital domain, you can clean these things up to the point where they're no longer a problem.

The great thing about film -- even a 50-year-old falling-apart masterpiece like Lawrence of Arabia -- is that you can almost always get something out of it five decades later. I have personally had digital archives less than ten years old be unrecoverable to the point of catastrophe. I've told this story before: I worked for Kodak's Cinesite division from 2002-2004, and we had a major project (a huge animated film whose title you would recognize) where the DTF backup tapes could not restore the project. As a result, many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work had to be redone from scratch. I know of more recent projects where similar disasters have happened, but only affected pieces of the work.

I again point to the Motion Picture Academy's Digital Dilemma paper, which specifically asks the question about how are we going to save digital features in 10, 15, or 20 years. We know how to save film; digital is much more ephemeral. The record labels are also struggling with the same thing, as their analog tapes and discs continue to deteriorate over time. But analog (and film) deteriorate gradually; with digital, often it's an "all or nothing" thing, where the data is either there, or it catastrophically disappears.

 

[Peter Moretti]

I've only shot film for stills. And I have run into some probelms with both old negatives and prints. And no, I've never had to salvage digital archives more than ten years old. But that's b/c nothing ever needed salvaging; everthing was there working fine.

I have data on floppy and Zip disks that I access on rare occasion. Never had a problem. I have a Compaq 486 33Mhz laptop. Every time I move, I power the thing up when the thought to throw it out flashes through my mind. Low and behold, I see Widnows 3.1 in all its elegance. I have a Mac 512K from 1985 that my mom recently plugged in; she says it's still working (is my mom lying, LOL!). I also have a Bruce Springsteen "Nebraska" CD from the same time, it still plays. Maybe I'm just exceedingly lucky?

I just finished reading the "The Digital Dilemma 2" and I have to say that I came across nothing compelling.

"Active Management of Digital Materials

Motion picture film is a direct-access medium. That is, filmed
images can be seen objectively by the human eye, requiring little
more than a light bulb and a lens for practical viewing. Digital
motion picture data is an indirect access medium – there are several technological layers between
the digital 0s and 1s that represent the images and the fully realized visible picture.

Motion picture film deterioration is easily managed with proper environmental controls,
simple inspection procedures and passive detectors that warn of possible chemical degradation.
By contrast, digital data of any type is subject to invisible failure mechanisms at many levels – the
actual recording media, the data reading and writing system in the digital storage device, the data
interface that connects the storage device to a computer, the computer network that connects
individual machines, and the many levels of software that control the overall system. Although
digital systems can be made to be highly reliable, they must be constantly monitored to detect
failures or conditions that may lead to failures, and preventive or corrective actions must be taken to
avoid data loss. Regular backup of digital data (copying to another storage medium and transporting
to a remote physical location) and verification of primary and backup data are examples of
active data management processes."

And I thought the Academy was biased when picking Oscar winners, LOL!

In all seriousness, if I believed that digital files only lasted for ten or so years, I'd be much more concerned about the longevity of medical records, target locations programmed into nuclear missles and tax returns than if some kid's thesis shot on a hacked GH-2 or "Katy Perry: Part of Me" 3-D will be any more viewable twenty years from now.