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Topic: ....And More Disc Rot

Paul Adsett
Film God

Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted April 04, 2016 11:00 PM

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Two Warner Bros titles tonight, from the same box set of Bette Davis Vol 3. Both played about half way through and then hung up, with the remaining half unplayable. I have not checked the other 4 titles in the set yet, but all discs have that coffee colored appearance of disc rot.
These discs are probably about 10 years old and many of the titles are now out of print. The discs have been stored vertically in an air conditioned environment.
Looks to me like a DVD collection is a pretty temporary thing.

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Paul Barker
Master Film Handler

Posts: 395
From: Lancashire, England
Registered: Jun 2014

posted April 05, 2016 03:10 AM

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no experience of it. i have many dvds from many years ago and everyone as good as when bought. all play perfectly.

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Mark Silvester
Master Film Handler

Posts: 282
From: England
Registered: Oct 2007

posted April 05, 2016 03:12 AM

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Hi Paul

sorry to hear of this - it must be a real pain.

I have to say I have never experienced it and have DVD's going back 14 years or so.

[Frown]

[Frown]

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Mark Silvester

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Andrew Woodcock
Film God

Posts: 7477
From: Manchester Uk
Registered: Aug 2012

posted April 05, 2016 05:24 AM

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It happens Mark! No doubting that. You've been lucky there so far then Mark.

My advice would be to rip all your treasured discs onto a huge and now inexpensive hard drive as back up.

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"C'mon Baggy..Get with the beat"

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Mathew James
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 740
From: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2014

posted April 05, 2016 06:54 AM

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10 years sounds about correct Paul, to my observations as well....
DVD's do not last forever. What has been an unknown was how long each media would last, depending on manufacturer and technology used to make both the disk material and the disk burning process.

Several months ago, when i started noticing this myself, I bought a WD My Passport 2 TB ext drive. They are Great little things that hold alot for me.
http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/kcenter/western-digital-2tb-my-passport-packaging.jpg

I've been using a combination of programs(like handbrake or ripbot or virtualdub for example) to try to digitize any CD/DVD's before they are completely gone......

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Cheers,
Matt 📽

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Mark Mander
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1236
From: Dunstable ,Bedfordshire.
Registered: Jan 2005

posted April 05, 2016 07:13 AM

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My Never Say Never Again dvd went the same way, I have a friend who works in the film archives and he mentioned discs breaking down, he said all those video tapes that got thrown away would out last them all, Mark

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Andrew Woodcock
Film God

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From: Manchester Uk
Registered: Aug 2012

posted April 05, 2016 07:13 AM

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I love the Western Digital "My Book" series of Hard drives.
I've always found them to be totally reliable and they served me very well in my DJ/VJ days by having the ability back then to store 4TB of music, music video and Karaoke files in their thousands, without any hiccups whatsoever. Highly recommended, and 4TB versions are cheap as chips now, unlike back then.

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"C'mon Baggy..Get with the beat"

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Paul Adsett
Film God

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From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted April 05, 2016 01:04 PM

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quote:
" he said all those video tapes that got thrown away would out last them all", Mark Mander

All my digital 8 tapes from the 1990's still play flawlessly, whereas two of my 8cm camcorder DVD'S from about 6 to 10 years ago show play back problems.

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Larry Arpin
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From: Sunland, CA, USA
Registered: Dec 2006

posted April 05, 2016 01:17 PM

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Paul-I'm wondering if it isn't the area you live in. Florida is close to the ocean on both sides and ocean air has a deteriorating effect on everything.

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Stuart Reid
Jedi Master Film Handler

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From: Worthing, West Sussex, UK
Registered: Feb 2009

posted April 05, 2016 01:22 PM

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You Vj'd too Andrew? I used OTSJuke/OTSAV for years, love showing music videos.

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Allan Broadfield
Master Film Handler

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From: Bromley, Kent
Registered: Nov 2010

posted April 05, 2016 02:04 PM

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I have many discs from way back, and I am puzzled by these comments, which have also included those regarding VHS tapes in the past, none of which I have experienced to have shown any signs of deterioration.
I don't think I live in a particularly pollution free area.
I do however, see badly faded prints often.

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Andrew Woodcock
Film God

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From: Manchester Uk
Registered: Aug 2012

posted April 05, 2016 02:06 PM

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Records, cd's,digital files, Video DVD from Promo Only, I loved it all Stuart!

Still do if I'm honest. [Big Grin]

[Big Grin]

[Big Grin]

[Wink]

Just too old now!! Ha ha. [Wink]

[Wink]

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"C'mon Baggy..Get with the beat"

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John Hourigan
Master Film Handler

Posts: 301
From: Colorado U.S.A.
Registered: Sep 2003

posted April 05, 2016 02:23 PM

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I've had much more problems with film prints fading badly (even when they're stored correctly), but no problems with DVDs malfunctioning. In fact, I've purchased pristine Blu Ray versions of titles that I have on film due to the ever-increasing print fade. (It's to the point now that I only purchase black and white film prints.)

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Mike Newell
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posted April 05, 2016 02:53 PM

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Never experienced this and know no one who has reported this issue. Could it be tropical climate problem. High humidity salt air etc. During recent wars in Middle East new technology failed because of temperatures and dust.

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Andrew Woodcock
Film God

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From: Manchester Uk
Registered: Aug 2012

posted April 05, 2016 03:32 PM

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You could buy 20 Blu Ray discs John for one good Super 8mm title. Therefore you don't need worry even if you do happen to find one in subsequent years that stops loading correctly for whatever reason.

However..to say only b/w film prints are worthy of purchase for fear of fade, at this stage of the game, is more than just a little drastic I'd have thought.

The later colour prints will be in perfect colour for many many decades to come yet, that's for sure.

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"C'mon Baggy..Get with the beat"

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Paul Adsett
Film God

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From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted April 05, 2016 11:21 PM

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I found this somewhat amusing discussion of 'disc rot' on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHYH1eTuJJk

After watching this I have concluded that the disc rot in my collection is caused by the magnetic field pulse from lightning, of which Orlando has about 5000 strikes in a typical summers afternoon thunderstorm. [Big Grin]

[Big Grin]

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Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade
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Mark Mander
Phenomenal Film Handler

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From: Dunstable ,Bedfordshire.
Registered: Jan 2005

posted April 06, 2016 03:19 AM

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That would explain it Paul!! My Bond dvd must have passed your house on the way to me hence it's decline [Eek!]

[Eek!]

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Dave Groves
Jedi Master Film Handler

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From: Southend on Sea, Essex, UK
Registered: Feb 2015

posted April 06, 2016 04:11 AM

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It's probably true that later colour prints are more stable but most of the titles available at a price I can afford are not what I'm interested in. The few really good titles seem to be deposited in long term collectors libraries. I have a large dvd collection and the only problem encountered so far is 'Ben Hur' that now seems to freeze. Sure it didn't before.

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Dave

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Brian Fretwell
Phenomenal Film Handler

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From: London, UK
Registered: Jun 2014

posted April 06, 2016 06:09 AM

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I remember that the BBC once tried to transfer VT to 16mm B&W film in a separate analogue system written by laser to guard against VT failure or colour film fade.. One side of the frame held the B&W signal and the adjacent one the chroma signal. It seems that the set-up for playback was too difficult to set up to make it reliable.

Then, of course, someone found they could recover the colour from a straight PAL film telerecording (kinescope) if the colour killer filter had not been used. B&W film seems to be the longest safe way to keep programmes.

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Stuart Reid
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posted April 06, 2016 07:48 AM

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Brian, I uploaded the Newsnight report into that very thing on YouTube when it aired: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjK-b4x9ZmQ&lc=z131epxrpknbwjgwn04cgdnpnnqchxi5f0c

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Osi Osgood
Film God

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From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005

posted April 07, 2016 11:52 AM

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I have no proof to back it up, but I'd swear that the early DVD films that were marketed by assorted companies had a "expiration date" as to how many times they could be played. I'm not the only one who has run into this. For instance, I have "Vertigo" on DVD, and it mysteriously stopped being able to be played, and I mean in any machine, whether DVD player of DVD player in PC's as well.

Now, I remember many years ago, when DVD and DIVX were being marketed (to see who would take over the video market), DVIX were widely known to only allow a certain number of plays and then the discs would be worthless.

I wonder if, without telling the consumer, that these companies did this with the early DVD releases?

I mean it happens with modern technology, like not telling the customer that these "smart" flat screen HDTV's have a camera on them and are watching us! I bet that a lot of people, if they knew that they're TV's were watching them, would have bought them!

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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

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Raleigh M. Christopher
Expert Film Handler

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From: New York, NY, USA
Registered: Jan 2016

posted April 14, 2016 05:00 PM

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Ah yes, but digital is the superior storage format for archival purposes!

/sarcasm

Digital is crap compared to real film (still or motion), vinyl LP's, real books with pages.

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Marshall Crist
Master Film Handler

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From: San Pedro, CA USA
Registered: Oct 2008

posted April 14, 2016 06:16 PM

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Osi, my VERTIGO died too, as did another Universal title, THE THING. Have heard that Uni had a lot of early discs pressed at a Mexican plant that had QC issues, resulting in many bad and short-lived discs. Also, their boxed sets were known to have playback issues due to crap encoding in an attempt to cram more content on the discs.

Other than the two above-mentioned discs, I can't think of any I've had die, and that is out of thousands. Knock wood.

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Mathew James
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From: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
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posted April 15, 2016 09:14 AM

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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 do not like to play russian roulette with media! I've worked in computer networking for over 25 years now, and my experience is that Disks do indeed rot...regardless of manufacturer....

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Cheers,
Matt 📽

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Andrew Woodcock
Film God

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From: Manchester Uk
Registered: Aug 2012

posted April 15, 2016 09:18 AM

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Good advice Mathew. I always back up anything of value to me on a very large Hard Drive, then sometimes onto one other if I feel I want to be doubly certain for items I really value.

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"C'mon Baggy..Get with the beat"

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