8mm Forum: ....And More Disc Rot

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Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on April 04, 2016, 11:00 PM:

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.

Posted by Paul Barker (Member # 4318) on April 05, 2016, 03:10 AM:

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

Posted by Mark Silvester (Member # 929) on April 05, 2016, 03:12 AM:

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]

Posted by Andrew Woodcock (Member # 3260) on April 05, 2016, 05:24 AM:

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.

Posted by Mathew James (Member # 4581) on April 05, 2016, 06:54 AM:

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......

Posted by Mark Mander (Member # 340) on April 05, 2016, 07:13 AM:

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

Posted by Andrew Woodcock (Member # 3260) on April 05, 2016, 07:13 AM:

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.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on April 05, 2016, 01:04 PM:

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.

Posted by Larry Arpin (Member # 744) on April 05, 2016, 01:17 PM:

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.

Posted by Stuart Reid (Member # 1460) on April 05, 2016, 01:22 PM:

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

Posted by Allan Broadfield (Member # 2298) on April 05, 2016, 02:04 PM:

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.

Posted by Andrew Woodcock (Member # 3260) on April 05, 2016, 02:06 PM:

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

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

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

Posted by John Hourigan (Member # 111) on April 05, 2016, 02:23 PM:

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.)

Posted by Mike Newell (Member # 23) on April 05, 2016, 02:53 PM:

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.

Posted by Andrew Woodcock (Member # 3260) on April 05, 2016, 03:32 PM:

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.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on April 05, 2016, 11:21 PM:

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]

Posted by Mark Mander (Member # 340) on April 06, 2016, 03:19 AM:

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

Posted by Dave Groves (Member # 4685) on April 06, 2016, 04:11 AM:

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.

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on April 06, 2016, 06:09 AM:

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.

Posted by Stuart Reid (Member # 1460) on April 06, 2016, 07:48 AM:

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

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on April 07, 2016, 11:52 AM:

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!

Posted by Raleigh M. Christopher (Member # 5209) on April 14, 2016, 05:00 PM:

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.

Posted by Marshall Crist (Member # 1312) on April 14, 2016, 06:16 PM:

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.

Posted by Mathew James (Member # 4581) on April 15, 2016, 09:14 AM:

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....

Posted by Andrew Woodcock (Member # 3260) on April 15, 2016, 09:18 AM:

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.

Posted by Steven J Kirk (Member # 1135) on April 15, 2016, 09:51 AM:

Any ideas on whether Blu-Ray discs should be any better? I know the spec is different and a lot more data is stored... I have had BD since 2008 so only a few years in.

Posted by Raleigh M. Christopher (Member # 5209) on 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".

Posted by Dominique De Bast (Member # 3798) on April 15, 2016, 12:49 PM:

I'm not sure long term that long term storage is the main concern of the "new technologies" conceptors. Although I didn't ask anything, I received by post a new tv converter box. The letter that is enclosed with the box says it will be an improvement and the fact that the films and programmes recorded on the old box will be lost forever seems not be a problem ("you have one month to Watch them"). I don't know what the others customers think but as far as I'm concerned, loosing my records is a big problem.

Posted by Kenneth Horan (Member # 3) on 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.

Posted by Raleigh M. Christopher (Member # 5209) on April 15, 2016, 01:29 PM:

Exactly. And the endurance of analog is based in analog's nature; it's simplicity.

Posted by Mathew James (Member # 4581) on 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...

Posted by Kenneth Horan (Member # 3) on April 16, 2016, 12:08 AM:

Let us just hope that before it's too late digital media (picture and sound) is recorded out to film for long term preservation. Otherwise it will be lost forever. Digital media is very fragile. A few bits of information gets corrupted and the entire file may be lost. Analog media is human readable and doesn't need the cost and manpower of active archiving. Analog media can be stored under proper conditions and last for decades. Let's look at this realistically, this active archiving of copying and recopying over and over again will probably not happen. Look what happened to the U.S. space program digital files. As I have said, digital is not archivable.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on 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.

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on April 16, 2016, 02:54 PM:

If digital files were kept uncompressed the loss of a few bits would be recoverable. It is more the "Lossy" compression of files that is the problem. Who hasn't had a copy of a JPEG that has for some reason got corrupt and segments of the picture are swapped and colour changed completely due to transmission errors between media. I know I had a few.

Of course no-one would never keep uncompressed HD video at 25 MByte plus per frame.

Also there is quite a bit of discussion on Roobarb's and DVD forum about the quality of duplication and lamination of Network DVD products over the years at the moment.

Posted by Ty Reynolds (Member # 5117) on April 16, 2016, 07:27 PM:

You can copy commercially-made DVD's to hard drive or disc using programs such as DVD Decrypter and DVDfab.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on May 05, 2016, 10:57 PM:

3 more useless discs tonight, all from the Joan Crawford collection volume 2, all from Warner Brothers Home Video, and all discs mastered in Mexico. Only 2 out of 5 still play OK, so no doubt the other two will soon be gone. Discs are about 10 years old and look flawless.
Nobody can tell me that this is not a real problem with DVD's.
[Frown]

Posted by John Hourigan (Member # 111) on May 09, 2016, 01:23 PM:

I have to agree with Larry Arpin on this one -- Paul, could it be the climate, corrosive sea air, etc.? I've seen those conditions wreak havoc on everything else --

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on May 09, 2016, 01:41 PM:

Paul, take your discs to a local home cinema demo shop.

Explain the problem.

Try them on basic, say, Panasonic Blu-ray players.

Nothing to lose and I'd be interested how you get on.

Posted by Bill Phelps (Member # 1431) on May 09, 2016, 01:53 PM:

I have had dvd's that won't play in some machines but that will play in others so maybe those discs will play in another player as Rob has suggested.

Bill [Smile]

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on May 09, 2016, 02:02 PM:

This is right, Bill, as sometimes fundamental codecs will change.

Paul, I know this may sound crazy right now, but do try your discs on a fully updated Blu-ray player.

Keep us posted.

Posted by Claus Harding (Member # 702) on May 09, 2016, 03:49 PM:

With regular DVDs, you can rip safety copies onto your hard drive or backup drive fairly easily. Then burn a player copy. Best to do it sooner rather than later. Blu-Rays require a tougher "de-cracking" of their codes for that to happen.

Claus.

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on 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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