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Author
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Topic: ....And More Disc Rot
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Raleigh M. Christopher
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 130
From: New York, NY, USA
Registered: Jan 2016
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posted April 15, 2016 12:16 PM
quote:
I think we are mixing terminology a bit here in the discussion. I would like to correct some opinions hopefully....
1. To say Digital is c*^p compared real film etc...is just wrong information to pass along. If we mean comparing CD/DVD media to Film, then okay, we can have an opinion....but to use the term Digital as being worse is incorrect.
You can never get a better archival resource than Digital. By Digital, i mean real digital, 1's and 0's- ie. binary storage.
The idea is to convert ALL media to 1/0's....but the trick is to keep updating the storage source of these 1/0's. So for example, if you store on a harddrive(which is best)...make sure you always use Raid 1 to have a backup on the fly, and every so many years(say 10 for safety) you again copy the media to a new raid 1 system.
This you do as long as you live, and then pass the baton to the next fella...
Until the technology exists and continues to be able to make exact premium copies of film to film transfer, one should not think that film storage can be superior. Any media, whether cd, dvd, mag tape, film medias etc....will all degrade over time.
Please read here for some more facts-
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/cds-truth-cddvd-longevity-mold-rot/
I disagree with you. At least with film, you can hold it up to the light to see what is there. You can't do that with digital. There will be so much information that will be lost because it was only and ever stored on digital. Same with music. Even without an amp, if you spin a record with a stylus in the groove, you will hear the recording, just very softly. Can't do that with a CD or a digital file. Books are self explanatory. And lastly, digital, no matter how high the bit rate, can never literally capture it all. Never. That is the nature of digital. Lossy by nature (even if the human ear can't hear it).
Analog always wins. It's the true nature of sound and light waves in the world.
P.S. Store your negatives properly, you can still make prints. Put a vinyl record in a vault and forget it. No further work need be done to "pass it on to the next guy".
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Kenneth Horan
Film Handler
Posts: 51
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted April 15, 2016 12:59 PM
Very true Mr. Christopher. As I've said before, digital is not archival. Just because something is new does not make it better. This active archiving is not real archiving where you place the item in question in proper storage and forget it. With analog you don't need software, which becomes obsolete, to decode the binary which without this software is just gibberish. You also need an operating system to run this decoding software and a computer to run the operating system. Then you need a drive to actually run the archived element. All this becomes obsolete very fast. All this is costly and requires labor. It seems that the news and advertising media has sold the world on digital as the "be all, end all", but it simply is not. Hard drives fail all the time, digital corrupts, but media archived on film, picture and optical sound, lasts for decades…and longer as we've found out. Old Vitaphone discs have lasted decades. How long can today's digital sound recordings last unless they are archived onto analog disc or optically onto film.
Digital is a great tool, great for exhibition to the masses who can't tell the difference, but not for archival storage or exhibition to those who care.
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Ken Horan
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Mathew James
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 740
From: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2014
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posted April 15, 2016 10:24 PM
Thanx Andrew! You are wise to do that for sure!
One person put the facts nicely as follows:
"Mag tape tends to get brittle and shed particles after a few years. A cassette tape will show audible degradation after a decade or so, but a 1" two-track 15ips reel uses so much more material to record the signal that the fidelity will be excellent until the plastic carrier gets too brittle to go through the player. Likewise, U-Matic videotape will last longer than VHS.
Vinyl could hold up for centuries, especially if stored in a controlled atmosphere. Eventually it too will lose plasticizers and become brittle.
Paper, properly cared for, can last for millennia.
You could engrave stone with an audio or video signal if you're trying to preserve it for longer than that. The analog record album sent into space on the Voyager probe was gold-plated to help it retain its fidelity for a long long time.
However, no matter WHAT scheme you come up with, because the original signal is analog, it will degrade over time. Quantum fluctuations, oxidization, and cosmic rays will alter the recorded signal, and because it's analog, it's not possible to know with complete certainty what the signal should look like compared to what you have.
Now, neither digital nor analog can capture a signal with 100% accuracy. However, once you have stored something in digital form, the digital record can, in theory, be retained with 100% accuracy indefinitely, as long as it's regenerated before the degradation becomes too severe. "
The idea is to keep copying to new media to prevent loss...and when technology allows, you can re-create a film copy from the digital, and get all the lovely analog nuances again...
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Cheers,
Matt 📽
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Paul Adsett
Film God
Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted April 16, 2016 12:20 PM
Unfortunately you cannot convert commercial film DVD'S to video files, in order to rewrite them to a new disc. Even if you could, I do not have enough time in my life to rewrite about 3000 discs in my collection. I agree that the losses so far are small, less than 1% of my collection, but they are I am afraid the shape of things to come. And many of the titles that have failed are just no longer available. In fact a big chunk of my collection is no longer available, probably because the studios are opting for streaming video.
On the other hand, I have Pathescope 9.5mm film from the 1920's that still show perfectly.
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The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection,
Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade
Eumig S938 Stereo f1.0 Ektar
Panasonic PT-AE4000U digital pj
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Rob Young.
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1633
From: Cheshire, U.K.
Registered: Dec 2003
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posted May 10, 2016 12:27 AM
Just as an interesting aside to all this; we all may be critical of buying a new disc and being given access to UltraVoilet, etc., so that we can watch out latest movie purchase on our iPhone, but actually, there is a strong argument here that when we buy a particular movie, we are actually buying certain rights to it.
For example, I've bought, say, "Back To The Future" a multitude of times on different formats.
Now, if I buy it on new on blu-ray, I have an option to download different versions to my iPhone, Kindle, etc. via a code I get when I buy the physical disc.
And now it may get released on 4K.
So, instead of actually buying a physical thing, like a 16mm print, for example, can't I just pay Universal a set fee for life-time rights on home exhibition for a particular movie, forever, and with access to the latest quality version via, say, download of whatever quality is available...
My point is, as well as buying physical media, we are actually also buying rights to exhibit?
So, if your DVD fails, you actually should have re-dress against the distributor, despite the age of the actual media.
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