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Preserving VHS Recordings For Another 20 Years?
efedora asks: "I have about 650 hours of VHS tape going back about 20 years (no, not my porn collection) and the tape is starting to deteriorate. What are the best options for preserving the contents? Quality is important but not critical, so long as it's close to the original. Very low labor cost/time and simple operation. are important. Is there an easy way to do this?"
"Some of the ideas I've had so far are:
- VHS to VHS tape with an analog 'clean up' box between the VHS machines. This would give me the same number of tapes but should last another 20 years. Quality will degrade.
- Burn DVD's direct from VHS tape. I have software that will do this. Expensive and the DVD's won't even hold a VHS tape if it's 2 hours long. Good quality with no degradation.
- Burn VCD's. I don't know of any simple direct-to-VCD software that will do this so there would be a large labor overhead. Good quality with some degradation. Cheap.
- VHS direct to cheap IDE drives. Good quality with no degradation. Relatively cheap. Probably could use the same technique as burn-to-dvd."
I've really found that getting a Pinacle Video-editting compatible card and software is helpful. I've converted the majority of my VHS collection to DVD for a relatively low price... WHich comes out to be less than I spent on all the VHS.
Buy an all-in-wonder card, hook up your VCR to the video in, and you're on your way.
You can pick up an 80 gig drive for very little money these days, so just divx the video up.
Should cost less than 200 bucks, maybe more if you really want to preserve every pixel of visual integrity.
The simplest solution is to take a video-in card, for example any of the All-In-Wonder series form ATI, and transfer it over to either VCD (since its likely you already have a CD-burner) or DVD (which is more universally readable in home theater players.
http://www.ati.com
"Stumble before you crawl"
You say quality is not critical. I would recommend using an mpeg4 codec (proberbly divx or xvid), if you capture at full vhs resolution (352x240) then you can store image quality that far surprises vcd (and your slightly degraded vhs) quality at about 300meg per hour. 650 hours of tape will bring you upto 195gig. How you store your data is really up to you, but I would recommend getting a couple of 200gig hard drives and keeping two copies for safety reasons.
You might want to read this article on capturing from vhs.
How about the recently made Ars Technica Guide to Capturing, Cleaning, & Compressing Video? It was made with exactly what you want to do in mind.
Plenty of compaines will put them on DVD for you and go thru the process of cleanup..
Sure its not cheap.. but your time is worth something and 650 hours of stuff would take forever...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Quality is important but not critical, so long as it's close to the original. Very low labor cost/time and simple operation. are important. Is there an easy way to do this?"
No. There is no way that you can copy 650 hours of VHS video simply, inexpensively, and with little labor. It's going to be time-consuming, expensive, and labor-intensive.
That said, making more VHS copies seems like a poor idea as they, too, will degrade and machines to play them will cease to be available long before 20 years is up (remember Beta, 8-track, U-matic, and Elcassette?)
You need to get them into the digital domain and, once there, moving them from format to format is relatively easy.
As the subject says. The card just doesn't work for more than 10 minutes. Value edition, feh.
Otherwise this is a really good idea, I thought about doing it myself. I was trying to record the simpsons but my whole system just froze up. Tried all the drivers, different video cards, not worth it.
My boss purchased a unit which has VHS and a DVD burner on it for around $600. Very high quality recordings too. He found it in an electronics catalog or something, he talks a lot though so I don't remember the specifics.
Nothing I'm sure Google can't help you with.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
burn to IDE if you value the stuff. hardrives aren't meant for backup. They stick if they're not used and won't give you anywhere near the 20 year life expectancy of vhs tapes.
DV capture device (sony dvmc-da2) and a couple 160-200gb hard drives. Should do the trick. (Does for me)
Store what you can that will fit onto DVD-RW now, and save the rest for later when larger capacity DVDs come out.
You can also get a used 35gb DLT drive off ebay and store DV onto that. Tapes are pretty cheap and DLT is pretty rugged.
Stick with well known formats that have a future.
DIVX, XVID etc.. could easily be forgotten in 20 years time, DVD and MPEG2 probably won't be.
Read the Forums on Doom9.org. They have allot of great information on how to capture video. Also any video card with VIVO or the ATI ALL IN WONDERS can capture video.
But seriously, nothing digital lasts long. Your (seriously now) best option is to engrave all your data into granite. I hear you can buy the stuff in bulk now.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Well I'm using a Pinnacle card to get everything off VHS and onto CD (you don't really need anything bigger, remember it's VHS). Edit out anything unnecessary (commercials), clean up defects (noise, color problems). I also was planning to do this years ago by having more than one copy to draw upon. Also I had all my VHS tapes stored properly (NOT in the cardboard sleeves they came in). Take your time to do it right, and you may still want to hang onto the tapes (personal choice).
grap some hauppage compatible card and start :D .. thats
dumping that shiznit to AVI, boyeee
what i'm doing soon
I don't know how great the quality of this device is, but you can get a Terapin VCD recorder. Has Audio/Video inputs as well as RF/coax input. Link to webstite:
http://www.terapintech.com/
Why not convert the whole mess to XviD and burn the XviDs to DVDs?
Username taken, please choose another one.
It's called "P2P" :-)
Seriously though, all the stuff you mentioned degrades, so you need to calculate what would be the easiest over time.
You could put everything on a RAID setup and just keep swapping disks when some inevitably fail. That would be expensive, but would probably involve the least amount of time.
On the other hand, when the DVDs eventually fail and you have to reburn everything (assuming you have backups), we'll probably have a system that can store everything on one disk.
Tough call, it depends too much on what'll be happening in the future.
My Sig: SEGV
Panasonic DVD Recorder .. I bought one of these bad boys at their original retail of $700... still well worth it. At $400, only a few months later, it's practically a steal. Media's still fairly expensive, about $3-$12 per disc, in singles.. though I haven't looked around too much for multi-packs.. I mostly have just been using 1 or 2 different DVD-RW discs with it...
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
if you capture 240 lines you are effectively throwing away half your vertical resolution.
"But, what *will* last 20 years?"
DNA
I used an ATI 8500 AIW and a Sony DVD burner to convert my home movies (only about 60 hours of vhs-c). One important lesson I learned was to go through the whole process for a couple of tapes before capturing them all. What looked good on the computer screen looked like crap on a TV. Tweaking a few capture settings made all the difference (most notably the field order, AIW seems to use B first).
It did take a good bit of time to clean up the lead-in/lead-out of all my videos, but was well worth the effort. Now I have all my old home movies on DVD, with chapters and menus. The software I used (Ulead DVD factory) even puts slideshows of all my digital pics on the DVD.
I have about 650 hours of VHS tape going back about 20 years (no, not my porn collection)
I have about 648 hours of porn and a single 20-year-old tape.
to ASCII, print it out, and then flip the pages.
1. Video capture card
2. Upload to Freenet for "safe" keeping
3. ???
4. Profit
Between the VCR and the capture card, second deck, etc, make sure you use a time base corrector. Don't trust the TBC supposedly built in to the VCR or capture card, get an external unit. Otherwise, audio sync problems will haunt you forever.
The broadcast video processor (also from b&h) is also useful for this application. I like to put it before the TBC.
Regards,
Mark
markrages@mlug.missouri.edu
If you want to stay on VHS tapes. You need to buy a couple of new vcr's and sick them away. You won't be able to find parts or anyone to repair them in the near future. Manufactures don't repair vcr anymore exchange defective unit for warranty period. if it breaks out of warranty buy a new one you will spend less than a repair if you can find parts. Most manufacturers are trying to get rid of there vcr stock. In my humble opinion transfer to DVD These will be around for a long time and the media is a lot more stable. If you transfered to an IDE drive and it crashed you could loose some Irreplaceable movies.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.
yes, convert to digtal by all means,
but try to use a decent vhs deck,
preferably one with timebase correction,
unless your cheap capture card can handle it.
macrovision is another potentional problem
if any of these were purchased after mv
became popular (ie not 20 years ago) so
this won't be a problem. Home made tapes
won't have mv protection of course.
Anyone out there had mv copying problems?
capture it to disk encoded with something lossless (huffyuv springs to mind) then archive using DivX 5 Pro CBR encoding. Set DivX to 1-pass, quality-based encoding; set the quantizer to 2 or 3. You should definitely be able to fit a video on a DVD this way.
I've found VirtualDub to be nice for DivX compression, but VegasVideo has a vastly better interface for 95% of users.. also, the standard compression profiles in VV are OK for non-space-critical applications (eg. burning to DVD) and should replicate your VHS source with no noticeable degradation.
If you want to take a bit more time and care with your tapes, you might want to create some SVCD sets by running the huffyuv-encoded source through TMPGenc.
Oooh... Giant Flip-book!
Michael Loves Me!
I think you would be pleasantly surprised to hear that the Open Source developer community could help you out here. By making your library Open Source they would guarantee that your video would survive in some shape or form for years to come.
The Open Source developer community in turn would be able to vicariously experience your past and create a closer bond with you.
Only when we defeat DVD protection can be unlock the stranglehold that Universal has on forced previews on purchased movies.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
I've had this long-standing theory that you could play a video multiple times, and merge them to get a higher-quality signal. Obviously, VHS has it limits, but in theory, with the right magic, you could filter out some noise and stuff?
One time I saw something on a TV show where detectives took a video from a store CCTV system that was almost COMPLETELY unusable. They took it to some experts (at NASA, actually, IIRC), who were able to work out a formula for the horrible noise almost completely obscuring the video, and get pretty good quality video from it.
Now I realize the original post here wanted a *quick* way to to do, so taking his home cassettes to NASA isn't quite what he wants. But what I'd like to know is... Is there stuff out there that can do what I've described (play a video multiple times and take the best parts from each), or is this just some insane, impossible idea I dreamed up?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Try getting rid of it all. Do you really need every Star Trek and Quantum Leap episode on tape?
>>> Burn VCD's. I don't know of any simple direct-to-VCD software that will do this so there would be a large labor overhead. Good quality with some degradation. Cheap. >> VHS direct to cheap IDE drives. Good quality with no degradation. Relatively cheap. Probably could use the same technique as burn-to-dvd." Remember during high use you'll probably only get 5 years of use out of an IDE drive. But as a storage, "once in a while" usage thing you should be okay. I'd recommend a few HUGE drives (200+ GB) just because lugging a bunch of IDE drives around would suck. This would probably also be your best movie quality option.
I agree with the DVD idea. get one of these http://www.dvdrecorder.philips.com/
hook it up to your VCR. Most people are suggesting stupid solutions with Video cards and Video editing software which end up costing around the 600$ mark anyway so for this extra ease of use you cant go wrong. Hey and its Phillips a cool electronics company.
There is no god
If you truly do have 650 hours of VHS tape, you seriously need to cut that down. I mean really, how much of that will you actually watch in the next decade? You need to stop living in the past and get rid of some of it. Of course, this means you might have to actually watch a bit of it to decide what is worth keeping and what is just taking up space. Personal videos (i.e. family, weddings, etc) are probably worth keeping. Recordings of old TV shows are probably safe to get rid of unless they happen to be exceptional episodes. I think you should seriously consider what tapes you really want to keep and which ones can be thrown away. It will make your job that much easier in the end.
P.S. Please send me any porn you are considering throwing away.
whichever way you choose you should watch out for the MPAA :P
Andrew Carlssin, good to hear from you!
Bitchslapped. Neat.
Don't some pipe the VCR output into a (for example) Sony DV camcorder then from there into the computer for processing?
If you picked low labour and time, try a ReplayTV. Hook up your vcr to your replay, click record on the replay, start vcr playback, come back 2 hours later. Then get DvArchive and stream the recorded show off the Replay onto your pc. The stream is an MPG2 format. Use VideoLan Client to view the stream. Archive as desired.
Have fun!
The fastest and easiest way would be to use a DVD recording deck. I have a Samsung (Panasonic) unit that works just like a VCR. Decent quality too, much better than your VHS tape and it's very fast and easy!
It's obvious that the vhs tape manufacturers purposely did this. They made bad media for the obvious reason of making you spend more and they didn't offer a patch. I'd sue them and make them give you new copies /joke
I've consulted for video applications for a while now, and I found the best solution is:
* Relatively fast PC - Athlon XP1800+ or faster roughly.
* Decent video in card - ATI All-In-Wonder Card (even the non-Radeon AIWs are good for this).
* Good DVD Burner - Pioneer DVR-105 or DVR-A05 that burns DVD-R. Don't worry about the +/- debate, -R media is cheaper and has virtually the same compatibility as +R.
* Easy software - Sonic MyDVD is great software that you can capture from and burn to DVD in one app. Plus, if you buy the A05 above it usually comes with this software in a bundle.
* (the trick) Solid long-lasting archival media - Mitsui Gold Archive DVD-R for longevity.
I cannot stress the last one enough. It's so easy to get a great system only to flounder on the choice of media because the goal is to keep the videos. The best DVD-R media generally are Mitsui, Verbatim, and TDK. I wouldn't trust anything else. Just capture in 640x480, and you can burn up to two hours at a time. If you want to get really fancy, you can delve into more advanced software, cut bitrates to get additional time, and do ultra slick menus.
Blue laser DVD burners will be readilly available and probably cost about the same amount as the current DVD burners. This gives you two options:
1) You could buy the standard DVD Burner for around a $100(??) and use something such as the All-in-Wonder (~4.7 gigs per disc)
or
2)You could buy the blue laser burner for around $350(??) and use the same capture device (~24 gigs per disc)
I should mention that this is the simplest turn-key solution. It's not necessarily the BEST solution, but for the average schmoe who doesn't want to recreate broadcast archives, it's good.
Also, get a reasonably fast hard drive. 7200RPM with a decent capacity, preferrably dedicated for capture.
represent a several thousand dollar investment.
Write them to DVD. Buy the blanks in lots of 100
so you can shop for a good price.
Ten years from now you may not be able to get annother DVD player for your disks so plan on buying a spare and after checking to see if it works carefully put it away.
You CAN store more than 2 hours of video on a DVD, just create the videos
in VCD format (MPEG-1 video), and store them on a DVD disk. This will give
you around 7 and a half hours of video per DVD.
As you are converting from VHS, the quality has probably already degraded to
the point where using a codec that captures the full PAL or NTSC signal is not
really warranted.
One of the new VIVO capable ATI or NVidia graphics cards will suffice for
capturing the video files (they usuaully come with simple video capture software).
Then I'd recommend using TMPG Enc http://www.tmpgenc.net/ to encode the files.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
seriously, no matter what you do, it will eventually turn to dust...
the only way to keep data safe would be to constantly keep massive RAID-4+ disk drives constantly checking and correcting mistakes as the disks degrade over time. only through active monitoring of the integrity of the data could you correct errors before they appear. and then spread redundant copies of this all over the known universe so that no planetary activity interferes.
what am i smoking...
oh... right...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
There are plenty of VHS to DVD companies out there, you just have to look for them. Using the search string VHS to DVD on Google, there were a couple companies that stood out:
Swift DVD
VHS to DVD
I'm not going to put all the search results here - that's what Google is for.
Have fun!
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
The above author may have just been kidding, but if the footage is interesting and you do post it up to a Freenet-like digital library, then your content may just be around for more than the lifespan of a VCR tape or yet another DV codec. Check out LOCKSS for more info.
Check out www.yesvideo.com. They will transfer the tape to DVD, and add chapter points. Chapters makes the content much more useful. If you value your time at much more than minimum wage, then they will be much more cost effective then you doing it yourself.
I've been archiving my Good Eats episodes from my Tivo to a 250 GB HD I purchased for @$120 (sale+rebate at Fry's). I'm not going to use the drive for other purposes, so it should be a relatively safe storage medium, and within a year or two when HD prices drop even more, I'll probably buy another drive and make a backup copy. If my interest in retaining the episodes persists, I'll move to new media as necessary, but probably always HD(or its future equivalent). My capture card is an All In Wonder Radeon 7500 (don't recall the price) and I edit with Pinnacle Studio 8 ($69 eBay).
Even on top hardware, artifacts (mostly skips) can develop in the recording and conversion process. You would effectively have to sit and watch all 650 hours to make sure everything was ripped and encoded properly. Also, audio sync can be a real bitch sometimes. I suggest you hire someone to shoot a gun in your face. That way, you won't have to worry about it.
"no, not my porn collection"
...or so I've heard.
Of course it isn't your porn collection. That's way to valuable to archive on VHS. Use something reliable, like thousands of CD's.
miniDV is a horrible option. Anyone who suggests that hasn't really worked with the format much. It's great for camcorders but not archival of this volume.
You DO need a good deck. I use an upper-end JVC S-VHS deck with integrated comb, genlock, and digital buffer to stabilize. The importance of a clean incoming signal CANNOT be overstated. Garbage in, garbage out and bandwidth wasted. S-Video is important because it delivers a far higher quality image. Composite video mushes parts of the signal together.
For the bulk of my straight archival I use an Athlon-based system with USB2 connected to an ADS USB Instant DVD MPEG-2 encoder and an iMic USB sounde device.
USB2 is important because you need lots of available bandwidth. The iMic uses the same AD/DA chip as some of teh pro Roland devices. Doing the sound grab outside the computer's case helps cut down on noise. (Yes, I use a USB extension and the iMic is "housed" near the VCR.
Some people prefer the Snazzi USB encoders. I found the ADS, factory refurbished, at TigerDirect for $150. hard to find a hardware capture at that price.
I've also got a Canon DV camcorder with passthrough and an ATi All-in-Wonder. Neither is a good solution. DV is HUGE compared to the quality of the source and any cheap capture card has poor performance. If you want to spend $1K for a Canopus, well, that's a different story...
For plain-vanilla VHS and S-VHS you're going to be just fine if you use CVD which is half DVD resolution and is compatible with the DVD spec.
Which leads to storage medium. You can burn CVDs to CDR if you want. It's cheap because, at least in the U.S., you can find CDRs for full rebate a lot and the drives also. Right now, if you're lucky, you'll find both at OfficeMax.com. Alternately, got to DVD.
Now, a word about bitrates: Your comment that a DVD can't hold 2 hours is incorrect. Sounds like you tried and captured at too high a data rate for your source.
If you're willing to re-compress, you can easily use various clean-up filters and get at least as good an image as you have on tape, putting 3.5-4 hours per disc in CVD format on a DVDR. That's not a typo. If you properly use filters the result of cleanup on onld VHS source can be better than the raw version. There are filters specifically to deal with the various colorswim and dropouts of magnetic tape.
For a list of links and info on hacking the ADS capture device:
utils@mindspring.com
A/V Utils for the Masses!!!
Curator of links at
http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft/
For info on the iMic:
http://griffintechnology.com
Actually, DVD+/-R's are substantially LESS compatible on modern home theaters than VCD/SVCD's.
The best option, IMO, is to capture everything and burn to SVCD. Granted, it'll take a while to encode everything into MPEG's, but the results will be worth it. I have SVCD's that I can't tell apart from the DVD's. The only bottleneck would be the capturing device.
A great way to do this, if you have a mini DV cam is to record onto mini DVD through the camera and then transfer it to your PC. DV tapes tend to rewrite really well...I've used one of my tapes about 10 times and I really can't tell any degredaiton.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
First you can easily fit 2 hours of video on a DVD-R. Remember, it's 4.7GB. You were considering VCD yet you could fit 6 hours of SVCD quality video on a single DVD-R!
Second, blank 1X DVD-R discs are 58cents in quantity 100. I picked up 200 Princo DVD-R blanks last month, they work fine in several DVD players I've tried.
[ I've really found that getting a Pinacle Video-editting compatible card and software is helpful. ]
Stay the hell away from Pinacle. Those with the ugly details can post them. In short, the drivers suck, and are not forward ported to newer Windows versions.
Here's what you do: Rip them all to a file format that has stood the test of time so far and will likely do so for another 20 years. Dump it all onto some 200GB hard drives (or however big you need). Make three copies. Put each drive in a separate small fire-proof safe. If you can get ahold of some lead and sheet metal to line them, all the better. If not, at least do shaped foam so they don't get jostled. Keep two on site. Use one when you need to, keep the other as a backup. Put the third in a remote location (like a safe deposit box or something), in case your house is swallowed up by the Earth or something. If you need access to the stuff a lot, make VCD/DVDs in addition to the three hard drive copies. Burn the VHS tapes in a bonfire in the yard. Be sure to tell your neighbors not to breathe.
There you go. Should last you a few years.
Oh, wait, you wanted cheap and non-labor-intensive? Sorry, can't help you there.
SIGFEH
- Comes out looking better due to Time code correction
- DVD will hold 2:20 at the next-to-best setting. I can't tell the difference, and some DVDs can't even deal with a higher bitrate.
- Record up to 6 hours at a time, then cut it into multiple files. Stick in the tape and walk away.
- Use the Hard drive to edit, pull out commercials, then burn to DVD.
Panasonic DMR-HS2. $800 online, $1000 retail. Only downsides are that you really can't do chapters, and that it'll drop in price."Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
"The Philips DVDR-985 will copy DVDs, VHS tapes, TV shows, VCDs, audio music CDs, and more onto DVD+R and DVD+RW discs. Then, it can be played back on DVD players and on your DVD-ROM [computer] drive.
With this DVD recorder, you can record using video-in (RCA), s-video, or firewire (lEEE1394) connections. It also has a built-in TV tuner for your convenience.
The most compatible of all recorders, the recorded discs (DVD+R and DVD+RW) can be played on more than 90% of all DVD players and on DVD-ROM computer drives. Also, with DVD+RW, you can erase the recorded disc and re-record onto it again for thousands of times.
There are four recording modes: DV quality (1hr ), DVD (2hr), S-Video (3hr), and VHS (4hr).
As an added feature, the DVDR-985 will also play play CD-R, CD-RW, SVCD, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD, and VCDs.
And like most stand-alone DVD recorders, the Philips DVDR-985 is as easy to use as a VCR."
Easy , just not as cheap as you would like to go, bout 700 bucks but i'm sure you can find a better deal as i spent only 4 seconds looking.
Whats better than clubbin' baby seals?... Absolutely nothin!!! -Zero Wing
As a library science student I have learned that there is not yet a reliable archival medium materials like this. About the only thing I can think of is film, but that's clearly not an option here. Continually changing formats and technology have made being a librarian very complicated. This stuff is fragile to boot, and its shelf life is dubious. An instructor said that he only expected his DVD to last five years.
Trying to show that VHS degrades as well and shift focus away from DVD delaminations?
If your content is non-personal, you may consider outsourcing. Companies like Vidipax (link withheld to avoid spam accusations) offer such services which would save you some time.
(Score:-1, Wrong)
Capture it to MPEG and then change the name to "N_Portman.MPG". It'll never disappear off of Kazaa.
"Derp de derp."
- Fast (e.g. fast to market)
- Cheap (e.g. low priced)
- Good (e.g. high performance)
Pick two.Observe the world, and you'll find this comes up again and again in nearly all dilemmas.
One simple rule for its versus it's
Do you really need all of those tapes? Maybe you do. But if it's just stuff you taped from TV or dubbed from rentals, it's probably not worth the effort needed to copy all 650 hours. I kept all of my VHS tapes when I moved 7 years ago. When I was ready to move again 2 years ago, I realized that I had not even touched most of the tapes and probably never would. I trashed about half of those tapes.
Point: don't archive just because you can.
-Any Dazzle products. Especially the DVC-80. The price is right but this piece of trash is so terrible that it does not even belong in the trash. The FireWire DV Bridge is decent, but it has severe problems with slightly unregulated power source. And the only thing worse than dazzle products is dazzle tech support.
-Pinnacle Products. Sometimes they work with excellent results. But they are very unpredictable, with often buggy software and whacked out compatibility problems. If you are starting out and don't have an existing video conversion infrastructure, avoid these things!
-Adaptec VideOh. It looks good in the surface but I have heard reports of these things acting in a very whacked out fashion.
So what do you get? Check out the card list at www.vcdhelp.com which has a huge list of products with many user ratings which tend to be quite reliable. The best products for converting your VHS to digital format in the lower price range that actually work tend to be the Matrox devices as well as the Canopus ADVC-100. From personal experience, I can say that the canopus (~US$300) kicks serious ass, and I have converted several VHS tapes to VCD with its help. The output from these into the computer can be sent to VCD, SVCD, DVD, etc.
Also check out rec.video.desktop which is a low-spam, well populated newsgroup with people who deal with this kind of stuff a lot. I read it regularly.
Being the laggard that I am, I still do not own a DVD player. I have decided that when ALL of the Mission Impossible episodes from every generation of this series are released in a boxed set of DVDs, I will buy a DVD player. Until then, I don't need a DVD player.
Oh, and by the way... those so called "Mission Impossible" movies with Tom Cruise in them? They suck.
but the media is 30 bucks a disk....
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
if you are ready to take chances on software format like MPEG-4 or some other highly compressive codec, then you can convert your collection to DVD quite cheaply. 650 video cassettes at 2 hours each is 1300 hours of video. Assuming 1 GBytes/hour (good enough for VHS quality), you need 1.3 TB space or about 300 DVD disks. At $1 a disk (in bulk market), the cost is $300. Add to it your labor and equipment. If you want to be more flexible, use standard DVD encoding, and you will need 650 disks. As for recording equipment, I would recommend stand alone equipment (costs 400-500), since they are easier to handle. Once done copying, buy a 300 disc DVD changer (costs 300-500) and enjoy.
1. watch all of your porn... er, vhs collection
2. create an oral narrative that captures the heroic and essential nature of your vhs collection
3. create a religion based upon this oral narrative that centers upon wise men who have committed your narrative to memory from father to son for generations
4. enjoy your porn collection in the afterlife as a demigod
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Hammurabi's law has been around for 7,000 years. This is a backup solution that will survive fire, flood, even a nuclear war.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
They're digital (the D in DV)... they either 'work' or 'don't work', I believe.
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
While I agree they did not exist in the time of the writing of the Constitution, technology advances over time, and so does the respective arms that exist.
The intent is to be on par with an oppressive government, so 'assault rifle' as you refer toom also falls under the amendment's protection.
Don't get me wrong, responsible use must also come in to play.. The right to keep and bear, does *not* mean you can use them in improper ways.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I recall seeing a TV news item on this as well.
As I recall the processing technique did contrast and edge definition enhancement based upon movement within the frame. Items that moved frame to frame became clearer and sharper. Stationary objects did not improve, making this ideal for surveillance cameras.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
The VCD Helper website claims that vcd burning decks are made in Hong Kong and of pathetic quality. Their advice is to go the DVD burner route instead.
You could get a Terapin VCD recorder. You just pop in a CD and press record and it will store 74 min to a CD in VCD format. Granted it will not do a 1 to 1 converting from a VHS tape but it is a simple solution that will last for a long time. You can pick a new one up on Ebat for about $220.
Go here to see the manufactures page : http://www.terapintech.com/fea_cdaudio.html
The problem with "converting it to DVD" is that what you probably REALLY mean is "converting it to DVD-R" ... and, say what you want, but I haven't actually seen much evidence that says a piece of DVD-R media is going to last any longer than a VHS tape. Those in the know say you want to be really careful about scratching it, and especially about exposing it to light.
... even the DVD-ROM drive on my old PowerBook G3 won't read it.
There's plenty of DVD players on the market that don't support it, besides
DVD-R is a nice development, but it's yet to prove itself as a viable archival format, IMHO.
Breakfast served all day!
I work on video editing machines all the time.
A basic run of the mill pinnacle card and computer sounds good on paper, until you end up waiting 8 or more hours for a 2 hour DVD for it to render out your video. And then another half hour for your DVD.
Unless you're wanting to invest $3-5K in a dedicated video editing system, skip the computer solution and get a Panasonic DVD Recorder. It's about $500 or less if you shop around, and you can plug it directly into a VCR. No fuss no mess. Just play VHS into it and record, and presto. DVD.
The pinnacle card solution will only bite you in the butt later on. I promise you... If I had a dime for every customer who walked in claiming "Pinnacle Studio 8 is (insert favorite derogatory term), help me!) I'd be rich.
If you need more help check the DVD Authoring Forums on www.creativecow.net
Good luck!
First off, use a good VHS player to get the best possible quality you can.
Then, capture to disk, maximum resolution. I recommend using HuffYUV (lossless lightweight codec).
Then, fire up Virtualdub and filter it. If it's degraded, the signal will have a lot of noise, just try working until you find something that looks good. I recommend using the smoother with noise filter and temporal filter to reduce flickering. This will not only improve the subjective quality but also reduce the storage requirements as well. If there's not enough real resolution in the signal (read: there won't be 640x480/720x576 on an old VHS tape), downscale. I very much doubt that you can manage to do this in real-time. Spend the time (or rather, let your computer spend some nights) getting the maximum quality out of the video.
Then, encode it to DivX, XviD, or any other MPEG4 compliant codec. Burn to DVD-R. This should get you many hours on a single DVD, though as far as I know only KISS has a player capable of playing them yet, but I also know several others are in the works.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Those in the know say you want to be really careful about scratching it, and especially about exposing it to light.
Doesn't that make it hard to use? Since you cannot expose it to light, and the reader MUST use LASER light?
So you have a good copy, but can only watch it a limited number of times?
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
A lot of people seem to be suggesting IDE hard drives and recordable DVDs. I don't have a DVD burner yet, but I can tell you for a fact that many of the cds that I burned on my old 2X cd burner 5 years ago are starting to deteriorate. Likewise, I have some old hard drives sitting around from the 386 days that I've tried to read from time to time. I've started to encounter serious problems with data loss from hard drives. I think the best long-term solution may truly be some sort of analog storage medium as it's more fault tolerant. I, for one, would much rather watch a somewhat grainy VHS copy than a corrupted DivX or Mpeg movie where there are serious color issues until the next keyframe. Lastly, addressing the question of brittleness in old tapes, one of my parents works for a major radio station that has recently digitally archived a bunch of old tapes. Apparently what the professionals do is put the tapes in an oven and then quickly transfer the data while the tape is still warm. This makes the tape more pliable and allows for one much better-quality transfer. You might want to read up on this technique.
max
If you already have a digital camcorder and a firewire port, the absolute EASIEST and best quality way, is to just plug the output cables into the camcorder output and plug the RCA cables into the output on the VCR... The "output" to RCA jacks work *BOTH* ways. So assuming you already have this digital camcorder and a firewire card, you can capture directly into the PC... piece of cake! Then it's up to you to decide if you want to burn to dvd, or vcd...or SVCD. I've found that you can convert it to SVCD and it looks perfect on a TV...and its not bad on a PC... But it's easily as good as the source at SVCD quality on TV.
Too Err Is Human. To really screw things up just run MSWindows!
biggest issue i see going from analog to digital(in any form) is dropped frames. I have recorded several VHS tapes to VCD, have gone through the TiVO before going to VCD. My Likko VDR2100 is very sensitive to signal quality, if there is a bunch of problems it will just puke(never had it puke since I process everything through tivo first). Tried doing some VHS videos to computer using a TV capture card with mixed results, some tapes went pretty well, others dropped significant amounts of frames(upwards of 90%). Tivo is much better at dealing with those situations but even tivo I tried 2 or 3 different tapes(one of which was about 8 years old) and got about 80-90% dropped frames.
I'd be shocked if you can recover 20 year old VHS tapes, if my 8-9 year old ones were useless(they hadn't been played in probably at least 6 years). if anything perhaps going from VHS->VHS then going to a digital medium if thats your thing would give better results since the newer VHS tape should be more stable.
So I have mostly given up on transferring old stuff from VHS to VCD and instead opted to re-record as much of it as I could. Nearly 1,000 VCDs burned in a bit over a year since I got the recorder. only 1 coaster sofar. I can then use transcode to encode the VCDs down to a low resolution/low bitrate in MPEG-4 which I can then watch on my Zaurus(@30fps).
My dad is doing this very thing. We don't have nearly as much as you do, but he's using a video capture card and converting them to DVD. Yeah, it's expensive and a pain in the arse, but my dad's a disabled (vietnam era) veteren, so it's not like he has anything better to do.
I record 1/2 hour of tv (greenacres!) and it comes to 700megs. Then use divx converter and get it to 233megs. Then just burn to cd.
Many good ideas here but I think we all act with suggestions like if the world is going to end tomorrow and this is the last chance you have to preserve your video collection. Let's see some facts.
*You want to be able to see your video in 20 years.
*You want a cheap, painless and effective strategy.
*The technology wont be the same in 20 years.
What I recommend is to put it on a digital media that will allow to preserve good quality and that is easy to access. DIVX on DVD or Hard disk are good choices. I don't recommend CD's because in my opinion to many CD's is a pain in the ass and in a couple of years you will deeply regret that choice. (Like it was for me when I did a clean up in my hundreds of 1.4 Floppy Disks of data.)
Then in the next 5 to 10 years you will see if DIVX or DVD technology will be in the way to be extinct. At that moment you will be able to easily decide how to transfer your videos to a new format and then maybe you will have better solutions that will last for very long or maybe you will simply transfer your data on another media for another 10 years. The most important is to keep a good quality (DIVX 200 meg/hour will be OK and take around 150 gig) and keep it on a media where it will be easy to access when you want to watch your stuff and will be easy to do the transfer when YOU WILL NEED to do the transfer.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Breakfast served all day!
punchcards!
He said he wants it to last 20 years. Princos aren't what you use if you want to keep the data very long. I suggest using dvd-rs also, but spend about $1.50 each for good quality media. That princo crap is garbage and will not last 20 years. Try brands like verbatim or tdk for more reliability. I myself have burnt hundreds of dvds and haven't had any problems with them as long as they are on decent media. However about a year ago when I first started burning I thought all blanks were the same and bought the cheap ones and now many of those dvds are no longer readable or skip in several places.
Philips had a very clever marketing scheme, involving a commercial. The device being pushed is a combonation VCR player/recorder and DVD burner in the same box...allowing you to seemlessly back up your VHS onto DVD media. It's optimized or compressed or something so one standard-length disk will fit a full length VHS.
I think the box itself is about $500. Possibly more. Plus the cost of media, obviously.
I thought the PDP-11 was about (or more than) 20 years old? I can't really see Linux going away, when things like Unix and X have been around for nearly this long already.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
To follow up on what someone earlier said, make SURE you run the output from your VCR through a good professional (or at least semi-pro) external time base corrector.
If you have a high end consumer video deck, it may have a built-in TBC -- disable it. These consumer TBCs work great on good-quality tapes but can actually mess up your image pretty badly on degraded tapes. Use a real, adjustable professional TBC.
Not only will it give you a stable signal for capture (preferably with a pro capture card rather than a consumer one), but it will actually make your videos look better when you view them!
That's hard to nail down to be honest. I wont lie and give you a solid statement, or an easy knee-jerk answer..
While I personally feel I should have the right to have even a nuclear device ( if I wanted too, though I don't. ) there is the issue of public safety for other to have one.
A gun when stored is safe. If its not, the damage caused is small.
A nuclear bomb isn't as safe by nature, and the damage would reach beyond ones home.. It's usage is not truly in concert with the idea of protecting ones home from invaders, as the constitution is geared too however, as its effects more 'wide spread'..
But where is the line? I'm not real sure. As I said technology does advance, and must be accounted for... even to that extent..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I would suggest using a stand-alone DVD recorder in this situation.
Capturing, encoding and burning using a PC would be tedious and time consuming to the extreme in this case. With a stand-alone DVD recorder the process would be as simple as hooking up the VHS machine to the DVD recorder (much like you were doing VHS-VHS dubs) and pressing the record button. Most DVD recorders have a recording quality setting that can be adjusted from 1 hour, 2 hour and 4 hours per 4.7gb DVDR disc.
Capture at 480 x 480 and your DVD player will stretch it to 740 x 480. For the audio, ac3enc is free.
People keep saying "don't use Format X, because nothing will read it in the future", and it's always crap. You can still get cylinder record players, 78 RPM record players, Betamax players, punchcard readers, player pianos, and Commodore Pet emulators. The computer I'm on right now will read .tex and .dvi files and still uncompress .Z files.
Just use whatever digital format is most convenient for you (preferably the least lossy). You'll always be able to find something to play it.
He speaks of the sun, devil man...devil man !!
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I've built a PC for use as a VCR which uses a ATI Radeon 8500DV video card. This card is nice for a varitey of reasons, but one of the main strenghts (for me) is that it comes with a connector supporting a variety of inputs and outputs.
By the way, you could basically do this with any decent/modern/1Ghz+ system & the aforementioned video card -Or one similar to it (The ATI 7500's a reputable alternative). But anyway...
In my case I've got a variety of peripherals tied into my 8500 via a Video Switcher (example: $50 ), and I run the output of this switcher through a signal enhancer (example: $50) before it's ran into the 8500's S-Video input.
One of the things connected via the switcher is a nice 4-head stereo VCR. By running the VCR through the enhancer, I can get quite good copies of video tapes.
Similarly, by running Showshifter (or another PVR / recording package -But Showshifter has some really nice DivX capabilities built in), I'm able to automatically encode the VCR's output as a stereo, high-quality DivX file in real time.
Or you could use any other video codec really. If it was something you wanted to edit, or preserve at high quality, you could record in a non-lossy codec, edit as needed in a video editor (Virtual Dub's a good place to start), and then encode down to a DivX (or again... Any codec. AVI, Mpeg, DivX, or even... Windows Media Format).
A side bonus of running the video switch through the enhancer is that a DVD player's output can be piped through and recorded as the enhancer removes the copy-protection. Not that I'd ever hook a DVD player up to my video switch to find this out (or to record a few rented DVD's for that matter), but one could do so if one wanted too.
Either way, the resulting video files can either be converted to VCD or SVCD (These both are burned onto regular CD's, with the former fitting slightly more, lower-resolution video on the CD than the latter. Both are also playable in the majority of modern DVD players), or DVD (self-explanatory) formats via programs such as Nero . I'm not an expert on the lifetime degredation of either CD or DVD media, but both are arguably going to be around and in good shape longer than some old VHS tapes.
Another option is to burn them as data files onto any of the aforementioned media, and set them up with an autorun software package so that your intended viewers can just pop it in a PC and go (another up and coming option here). Doing it this way offers the capability to save higher resolution video, but it also requires that your viewers view it either on a PC, or on a TV connected to a PC. There's some other pros and cons as well, but that's the basics from my point of view.
For archiving old VHS footage, I would reccomend recording the video via a method similar to what I've described above, and then outputting the footage as a regular old DVD. DVD's can support... what is it? 704x480 or something like that, and that's way higher than the 320x200 or whatever that standard TV broadcasts at (and this is likely the resolution you'd have on VHS tapes, I'm guessin'). This would ensure you wouldn't have to lose much if any quality, and the resulting footage will be viewable either on a consumer DVD player, or on a PC via a DVD drive, which are more or less standard these days.
Similarly, with 4x DVD burners hitting the "below $300" market, it's a good investment as you can back up your other data and videos when you're done archiving tapes. If that's not enough, you'll also be able to sample the
...is a regenerating medium. Something that you can "refresh" as many times as necessary. Then every ten years or so you just stick your Refreshable DVD's (for lack of a better name) into the Refreshacycle, which copies the contents, cleans the Refreshable DVD, and rewrites it again, good as new.
If you move between different codecs, you will lose quality. It would be wise to pick a codec that will be well supported in 20+ years. I'd recommend MPEG 2 since it's used in DVDs.
"The pinnacle card solution will only bite you in the butt later on. I promise you... If I had a dime for every customer who walked in claiming "Pinnacle Studio 8 is (insert favorite derogatory term), help me!) I'd be rich."
There's nothing really wrong with the hardware (I'm working on a driver). The software is ok for a beginner however professionals will prefer something like premiere, which will work with the firewire on the Pinnacle cards.
I concluded the cheapest solution was to buy a MiniDV camera, and copy my VHS tapes onto MiniDV tapes. Now the format is digital and can be copied to newer formats, in the future, with no loss of quality.
I don't believe home-burned DVDs will last. CDs and DVDs exposed to light will quickly deteriorate.
If you buy a DV-CAM 184-minute tape and use it in a "plain" DV recorder, it will magically become 4 and a half hours long. This is because one of the differences (in fact, the main difference) between DV and DV-CAM is the tape speed (this is to make DV-CAM more durable; the actual data is the same, you can copy between the two with no loss).
Not only is DV durable and (reasonably) affordable, it's also extremely easy to capture and manipulate (a DV capture card is very cheap compared to a decent analog capture card). The only expensive part is the recorder itself.
There is another option that might be cheaper, but I don't know how big the tapes are: Digital-8. The data is in the same format as DV; the main difference is usually in the quality of the equipment (ie, Digital-8 cameras usually have worse CCDs than DV cameras, etc.), but here that probably wouldn't matter much (the AD converter is probably worse than the ones on good DV decks, but I doubt it'll be noticeable with VHS).
RMN
~~~
While DVD-R hasn't been shown to be more durable than VHS, quality won't degrade and subsequent copies will be just as good. if the tapes are important, you can make multiple copies (or wait a few years until DVD-R disks are as cheap as dirt and CD-R). IDE is an option, but if a disk fails you lose a LOT of stuff. I wouldn't consider IDE as a long therm archival solution. Digital Tape(like for computer backups) may actually work better than IDE. VCD is ok, but it may be kinda ugly to convert. I assume youre' using windows but on linux(if you've got both), you could just write a shell script and then VCD may be your best option, especially VCD is about the same quality as VHS.
I won't compromise on media any more. If I'm just casually copying something for someone, I might have a spindle of cheapies, but you need archival-rated media if you want it to last any length of time.
Capture it to disk in your format of choice, then archive it off to SuperDLT ;) 200+GB per tape with about 20 year retention.. luvley :D
The DVD may not last longer than the VHS, but it won't degrade form generation to generation. A 5th generation VHS tape is almost unwatchable, but a 50th generation DVD is just as good as a 1st generation one. As for the problems with reading it, I think that most new hardware won't have a problem, and certainly the burner he uses to make them shouldn't have a problem reading them.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
Considering that prints of films from 1984 have been restored to close to their origional quality, this would be a good storage method. http://www.bfi.org.uk/collections/preservation/ind ex.html
and, say what you want, but I haven't actually seen much evidence that says a piece of DVD-R media is going to last any longer than a VHS tape.
Perhaps, but when the time comes to copy them into another format, it can be done much more quickly (VHS limits you to real-time) and with no future signal degradation.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
One of these will simply allow you to hook your VCR directly to the DVD recorder, hit record on the DVD recorder deck, and then play on the VCR. Simple and easy. These decks also record using the official DVD Forum format, so you won't have to worry about compatibility (all new players are required to play DVD-R).
Any type of PC (or Mac)-based system requires a much more significant time investment.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
whats with all the 'dont use divx, use mpeg' babble?! are there really slashdotters here that confuse the format of a file with it's file extension? People confuse a codec with a file format/compression spec? I love the 'popular codec' comment.. is this really the way people see technology such as vorbis? and the argument that no devices will be around to play it is crap.. get a KiSS dp-450 dvd player - it'll play your mpeg4 videos
http://www.kiss-technology.com/
Once you have it in digital form you can copy it as many times as you want as long as you have legible media. So save it in several ways. If you decide to store on CD and you can't store all of a VHS tape on one CD -- that does not matter. Sure, you'll have to insert a CD more frequently when viewing, but that is many minutes apart (and you could get a second CD drive). However, for archival purposes the number of CDs does not matter, as you later can merge the digital data back together perfectly. In 20 years you can copy from whatever media you're using at the time to whatever the newest is.
The only thing that matters at the moment is data loss during conversion. Use good cables and whatever VHS-to-digital converter gives you the quality that you want. Once it's digital the data you capture is safe (unless all copies damaged).
Whether you store it in "several ways" on multiple copies of the same type of media or several types of media does not matter unless something can damage all the copies on whatever media type(s) you are using.
At least one copy should be in a widely readable format. You can put it on several CDs in ext3 RAID format so it is redundantly saved -- but to view it you need a multiple-CD machine or copying all to disk. And you want to avoid digital historical restoration in case ext3 code is hard to find in 15 years (sure, you can copy bit-for-bit but can you still view it?).
Get a digital-to-film conversion machine. You can print all 650 hours of VHS on a format that will never suffer from a lack of proper equipment to view it with. Cheap, simple, effective, and long-lasting. HTH.
--sdem
I do some of this VHS to Digital conversion commercially, using a hardware analog to DV convertor that will do realtime encoding to 25mbs DV which gives 13GB/Hour at the best possible quality, which is far far far better than even high end video capture cards can do.
Once in DV format I use transcode to filter and encode to more or less any video format, usually MPEG4
With NTSC VHS conversions I can get 3-4 Hours of MPEG4 onto a 4.7GB DVDR
The hardware is not that expensive to get, the DV encoder is a datavideo DAC-100 (ebay for $200)
the pr0n collection must be 651 hours, then!
stuff |
When transfering the video you should use a TBC box or card. ( Time base corrector ) to restore the sync signals. It may reduce jitter in some cases. I wouldn't really suggest filtering the video in any other way, possibly some filtering if the source is noisy, but there's disadvantages to this method, it can cause artifiacts in the video. Try the M-filter series at: http://www.darvision.com/ if you think it would be helpful.
DVD disks are already starting to degrade in some cases, even though the recording layer is supposed to be pressed between, instead of on the top layer of the disk like CD-R's. I would suggest using a robust tape to store the video. Try DLT's. They're 1" wide, very robust, and because the mechanical reader is seperate, no stiction or other hard-drive related problems will occur.
I would reccomend using MPEG-2 format to be stored on the DLT's. It's an extremely popular format right now, and will likley be supported 20+ years from now.
Also, DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disk. Everyone, please don't forget. DVD != MPEG-2 in all cases!
Perhaps you have an alternative? I really don't know about any others, and they're the easiest to find in my area.
Just convert it all to DIVX and burn that to CD-R, these will last 50 years conservatively from the testing lab reports I have read and I just bought 100 CD-R's for $5. Each one holds between 2 and 3 hours of video and audio at VHS quality.
You can put about 160 hours at a time onto an 80GB drive and then burn out CD-R's once every 5 minutes with nearly any modern burner.
Or you can burn them to DVD-R, which is more expensive but will allow you to store about 12-15 hours per disk. This will fit a whole season of shows on a couple of disks, which is cool.
If they are original tapes, be sure to keep them, because you may need to prove that you did not pirate the content in the future. Who knows, maybe NTSC qualifies as an encryption device under the DMCA.
At first, I wrote off the idea of archiving video straight to IDE hard drives as "not viable" - simply because I thought of the fact that drives don't typically last more than 3 to 10 years.
On second thought though, that assumes a drive that sees regular use.
If you really used inexpensive IDE drives as though they were pieces of backup media - writing to them once and storing them away someplace safe (and at least somewhat climate controlled, like a bank safe deposit box), I'd bet they'd fire back up ok even after 15+ years of sitting in storage.
The question always becomes, will you still have computers using that standard by the time you need to review them? Nothing's certain, but I don't see why not. There are plenty of old 8088 systems (IBM XT and compatibles) that still boot up and function today, for example. You could even build a cheap PC just for this purpose and store it away someplace safe, along with the drives.
The *cheapest* fix, it seems to me, is just to xfer from your old VHS tape to fresh VHS tape (using the best quality tape possible), and get yourself another 20 some-odd years of storage of your movies.
My dad has 8mm tape of his father growing up, so about 70+ years old. We also have photos from my great grandmother that are over 100 years old. Celluid and silver halide prints are pretty damn good for archival purposes, something that none of the modern formats can really claim. Maybe having the VHS tapes transfered to some type of film might be a good solution.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'm asking this because I, too, am in the process of considering how to best convert my important VHS tapes into a digital format. I think that to be the most flexible I'd like to end up with both an MPEG-2 stream (stored on a hard drive or DVD-R) and a DVD video of each of my recordings. I figure that aughta be easy because a DVD is encoded in MPEG-2. But are they really losslessly interchangeable formats?
Good, cheap, and easy--pick any two.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
While a great suggestion, it's a bit involved. I actually played around with a number of similar hardware/software/codec solutions, etc. etc.
Timeflush.
Go get one of the Panasonic DVD recorders: go to the Panasonic site and select "DVD Recorders" [sorry for no link: I just quit smoking, so I'm more retarded than usual...]
I've used the DMR-E30. The nice thing is, depending on the model, you can choose between DVD-RAM and DVD-R (for archiving vs. universal playback), and some have internal hard drives, so you can author your archive DVDs accordingly.
I fell in love with the DMR-E30. I'm selling the box I had bought as a dedicated "convert all of my stuff to DVD" box and buying one of the Panasonic recorders instead.
BONUS: I have S-Video out on my laptop, so I go Video out to video in on the DMR: it's the lazy and quick way around converting WMV/MOV/AVI/MPEG/etc. ad nauseum over to a format that will play in most if not all DVD players.
- learn to swim.
Etch them into gold platters. They'll last really long that way.
_nfotxn
Here's a thought: RAID technology uses redundant hard drives to restore the original data even in the event of partial failure. Could the same idea be applied to DVDs? Could this fellow just make two or three DVDs containing precisely the same video and hope that a technology comes along in a few years that can resolve the errors that arise in the bits?
;-) )
Or does the DVD format make this difficult in some way? Built-in error correction might create a problem unless there was a way for software to circumvent it. (It would be nice if someone knew.
What makes you think that DVD's won't hold over 2 hours of program? They will actually hold a LOT MORE! Many of the new DVD recorders such as the Panasonic 'E30 and 'E50 will burn DVD's at different bit rates with variable quality. A VHS quality disk can hold about 6 hours or more. Check out the Panasonic web site.
...Since VHS is usually only 640x460 (or 704x480 on my V7700 card), full DVD resolution is kinda silly.
For longterm storage, record to DVD-R in Higher bitrate divx or other format, add the codec on the dvd, and be sure to always keep a machine around that can read the disks, and maybe transcribe them to the next format that comes along.
Two hours of video at decent resolution is about 2 gigs, with divx5, and as storage capability goes up, those 300 didsk become, maybe, one.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Certain Sony digital camcorders ('Digital-8')
use 8MM ('Hi-8') tapes for recording in
digital format. These camcorders also have
'analog video/audio' inputs, as well as Firewire
in/out.
Because the Sony camcorders move the tape
at 2X speed (to attain digital integrity) each
120-minute tape lasts 60 minutes.
You could use the above setup to inexpensively
convert your analog tapes to digital format, which
in storage, will greatly outlast analog VHS. You can
buy 'hi-8' 8MM tapes in bulk quite cheaply.
You can play the tapes from the Sony camera;
either to watch, or better, to make 'no or low
loss' VHS copies of your originals.
Once you have made the (digital) 8MM 'master' tape,
subsequent copies will not degrade generationally.
This also opens the possibility of using the
digital output (firewire) output of the camera
direct to your computer, for creation of optical
disc archives, or better, for editing of select
portions.
I have used the above method, the 'master tape'
idea works very well. One bonus is that the 8MM
tapes are quite small compared to VHS; much less
storage space required, perhaps even one 'fire-safe'
lockable 4-drawer filing cabinet. To make it really
good, seal the cabinet carefully, and then purge the
air from it and fill it with nitrogen gas. Install a
pressure meter, and you will have a useful 'eternal'
archive... (wrap it in lead foil, to cut down on
cosmic ray penetration!)
==vastgene==
Commit "war crimes" against a highly vocal, wealthy, self-pitying ethnic group. Then they'll archive your video collection for you in order to "prove" that you're "crazy."
Just say No.
Set the whole lot on fire and forget about it.
nt means in topic.
is what I'd do. You can get 200 gig drives for a couple hundred bucks now. With newer codecs you can probably store about 400 hours of video footage. Two or three drives would probably cover all you tape.
And if you keep the content 'fresh' by moving to newer storage mediums every so often, you don't have to worry about losing anything.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
This is the solution I use. I bought a Leadtek WinFast TV2000 PCI Video Capture card for $29.95. Then made a trip to Radio Shack for the necessary RCA cables. You'll need one male RCA to male RCA for the video and another dual male RCA to headphone jack for your sound card. The cables were about $15.00 for both. So, for less than $50 bucks, you have a solution in place for transferring VHS to a digital format. The cool thing about the Leadtek card is that it includes software that lets you choose the format you want to use. The options are MPEG-1, MPEG-2, NTSC VCD, PAL VCD, DVD, or AVI. It also syncs the audio for you, so you avoid that very time-consuming task of ripping video and audio separately and then having to synch them up again.
The main thing is getting the VHS tapes converted in some fashion to your hard drive. Then, you really have many choices on how to proceed. I bought a Plextor DVD+R/W drive because I wanted the maximum compatibility with home DVD players. DVD-R is OK, but not quite as reliable as DVD+R, in my experience.
But a DVD burner is not an absolute requirement if you decide to burn SVCD or VCDs. You can use regular CD-R's which play in most home DVD players. I choose DVD+R just to cut down on the number of discs necessary to transfer a standard VHS tape.
I would think that a good S-VHS deck with clean-up capabilties on playback, fed into a set-top DVD recording deck. I don't understand why DVD recording was ruled out by the submitter just because it wouldn't record more than two hours. I am sure the bandwidth can easily be adjusted on most decks, only the oldest ones weren't very flexible.
I know it would be time consuming, but not too labor intensive, lots of set top recorders (MD, CD, etc) are fairly easy to use and don't require a computer. The equipment isn't too expensive, I bet equipment cost would be about $650 - a dollar per hour of use. Blanks aren't too pricey anymore, I think good blanks can be had a dollar a piece.
I saw a blue laser DVD burner recently, it listed closer to $3500. Blue laser wont hit that price point for a few years at least.
>>Sig under construction
Why not buy a TIVO (or two) and mod them to the max. Then put them up on a shelf. A TIVO has composite video outs and, while not the best, they probably will not be going anywhere for a while. Then when the "new vcr" arrives then dub to it. At 650 hours with an average of 1.5 hours per DVD I think that comes to average 400 DVDs. At $1.50 per (bulk price) that comes to $600. GET TWO TIVOS. You won't have to worry about scratching them.
"Burn DVD's direct from VHS tape. I have software that will do this. Expensive and the DVD's won't even hold a VHS tape if it's 2 hours long. Good quality with no degradation."
You are so wrong. Most people tend to think DVD is like 720x480 MPEG-2 with high bit-rate. They are wrong, too.
If you degrade the resolution to 352x480 (as is possible with DVD Standard) and lower the bitrate you can easily get one VHS tape for one DVD disc. Your software and your DVD player should support this, because it is in the standard.
Considering, that your VHS has no more resolution anyway, this is IMHO the optimal situation. I will not go to lifetime of DVD-R discs, etc. because you can easily make identical copies (no D/A or A/D conversion) after you have one copy. Discs will probably be cheaper in the future, too.
Pffft. What a crowd. You're bad if you copyright. You're bad if you don't. There's no winning around here.
Most people are suggesting stupid solutions with Video cards and Video editing software
I agree.
Okay. I used to work in a TV station.
DVD is the big thing right now, but history has proven that formats with meteoric rises (as in, DVD went from nowhere to everywhere in four years) is that they have meteoric falls. Case in point: 8-Track tape.
Every day, someone builds a shorter wavelength blue laser, and someone else builds a better compression algorithm, or even a better copy-prevention scheme. How long until the DVD format is revamped or replaced? Will the new players play the old discs?
VHS was introduced in about 1977, and home VCRs didn't achieve anywhere near the market penetration of the DVD player for 15 years. CD players took almost 10 years to achieve ubiquity.
Here's what's done at TV stations. We store the tape carefully. That's it, that's all. Now, TV stations buy good tape and use good video formats (ie. no crap like VHS with its ridiculous tape wear). The average VTR in a TV station is in the range of $10,000.
The video is saved in a tape format which will be around in 20 years. You can still find an Ampex Quad machine to play nearly 50 year old tape; almost every large city will have at least one in a video production house or tape archive.
Local stations tend to run Betacam SP or Digital Betacam. The investment in video formats is huge, most TV stations will stick with whatever format they chose for years after it became obsolete.
As recently as 1993, I was carrying around an Ikegami camera and a 40 pound Sony BVU-110 3/4" VTR handing off my shoulder. The battery belt for the VTR and the sun gun was another 20 pounds. Meanwhile, the bigger stations in my area were all running around with single-piece Sony Betacam ENG setups.
Interestingly, there's one video format that you can take anywhere in the world, and any TV station or production house can use it: 3/4". Razor sharp analog pictures, very little generational loss, good and fast tape speed. It's Beta's big brother, but it's old now, so the tape and the machines can be found used all over the place.
Why not pick up a 3/4" deck? You don't need anything fancy, just make sure it will take the full-size (not just portable) 3/4" cassettes. The tape is cheap enough, the machine will last forever, and you won't be able to visibly see any image degredation from VHS. Hell, if the stuff was recorded 20 years ago, the VTRs at the TV station you were recording were probably 3/4". Look for a 25-year-old "U-Matic" machine, preferably from Sony (popular enough to be easy to service), top-loading is fine. Record a couple of DVDs to it - if it's working properly, most people could never tell the difference. Newer U-Matic SP machines are even better. Watch out for the machines which are player-only, and for the ENG machines which only take the small cassettes. (3/4" cassettes come in two physical sizes, but the full-size machines will play both sizes.)
Tape storage - this applies for all formats, including the lowly VHS:
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I didn't mention what was on the tapes. The tapes belong to a friend of mine who is obviously a golf nut.
They are complete recordings of every major professional golf tournament that was televised for the last 20 years. There are tapes of all 4 days of each tournament, all the commercials, interviews etc. For personal viewing only of course. Lots of great ideas here. This will take some thought.
I think personally you should look at it as a temporary solution only, currently I dont think any of the media is exactly right for what you want. You are probably best putting it onto something that will last for a few more years till the next advance in media which is more suited to the capacity of data you wish to store.
It wouldnt be prudant to encode the video in any of the popular codecs around i.e xvid, divx as others have already mentioned. the best choice is mpeg-2 but either way actually they are all somewhat temporary solutions, should just be careful how much you are willing to spend as you may want to do this all again in like 4 or 5 yrs time.
I would just use Divx and IDE harddrives. Even if there is a danger of older HDs being unreadable, you can easily see that day coming, and they'll be by far the easiest to move forward. Just copy it :)
Plus, with the rate that HDs increase in size, in 10 years you'll easily be able to put all the same stuff on 1 HD if needed. I believe that currently, magentic storage is the least volatile.
I wonder how this entire conversation would be different if the VHS tapes had copyright enforcement like everyone's making now under DMCA. Most of the preservation techniques discussed here sound like they're "fair use", but in the future will they even be possible?
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
why 20 years ?
Because that's how long it takes for patents to run out and for technologies to become no longer profitable.
Will I retire or break 10K?
No degradation until the cheap drives crash.
My father had these films, several "epics" in the TV world, in print format, from his years with a Michigan based outdoor show. They are well-kept for now, but need to be archived, to save the film from being put through the transport over and over again.
db
Cig:
ôô
Actually I have access to a number of U-Matic decks; and where I'm finishing up my internship
I have access to Beta decks, too, but it doesn't mean that they are widely available to the general public or that Beta is a viable archiving format.
Storage is a problem, DVD, CDROM, IDE may not be available even in the near future. Try finding an 8.5inch floppy drive to play back those nifty Commodore 64 games your saved on an old Pet one or even a proprietary 5.25 one. As another example try to get an XT harddrve to work on a PC with PCI slots, try to get one to work on a PC that still has 16 bit ISA slots.
Software is also an issue, will the code that plays the file run in the future? Will it even compile? Will the file format have current code to view it?
I have code I cannot run from Linux's beginning because I don't code and can't pay to have someone work it over, bit rot is alive and well.
But I can play that C64 stuff if I can get it off those 8.5inch floppies because of the emulators available.
I don't see CD's as an option, nor any sort of tape format currently available due to hardware obsolesence.
A data warehousing company paid to preserve the files for 20 years may be a better option. Better would be two of them.
VHS, CD, SVCD, DVD, IDE, SCSI will probably die soon. Try to find an RCA video disc player, try finding a current VHS player that won't destroy a tape.
Rather depressing, so.
Pick three, burn the CD's with enough quality to satisfy, generate the files for storage, and buy a good quality USB hard drive enclosure and an IDE drive (maxtor's reduced component IDE for high reliability comes to mind), get a good laptop and have them professionally packaged in nitrogen for long term storage, store the batteries seperate (Have the internal backup one removed). The laptop should have a CD/DVD and USB port. I don't assume you'd store 650 hours worth of video on the internal harddrive, and I don't trust those smaller drives.
While you are at it preserve the OS+player software in an acceptable format so that it can be booted in emulation. Where Linux or MS depends on your preference and whether you think one or the other will work.
I assume that there will still be a Linux solution for total x86 emulation of this if nothing else, x86 code will die off in the near future so emulation may be the only way to run it if that hardware you squirelled away died.
I could go on, having three options is my choice, the three you choose is up to you. The hardware option is an extreme case but I can fumble up a laptop that will work for a little money.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
You might find you can do things such as pipe your data stream through a script which formats for a CD, waits for the CD to be inserted, fills and ejects the CD... and if you have several machines with CD writers you could have several writes going at once with the proper scripts.
A little prep could leave you with only having to change tapes (if your tools can detect end of tape/signal) and CDs (or whatever media you use).
Most of the suggestions I saw are to put the video on to some sort of rotational media. Disk drives, or DVD are the two most common offerings.
There's one thing I think that history has show us is that rotational media go obsolete quite quickly, and when they do the technologies to play them quickly disappear from the marketplace. If you go this route, you will also need to archive the entire playing system, not just the media. In that vein, the TiVo idea is perhaps your best bet. Ex: if you performed this project 15 years ago, you would likely have used MFM or RLL drives, now you can't buy them, their controllers or cables, and I don't think modern hardware or OSes would even know what to do with them.
Tape has a much longer life-span in the consumer marketplace. Without too much difficulty, one can still purchase an open reel tape deck, an 8 track or cassette player. Try finding a phonograph that plays 78rpm records though. It's damned near impossible.
I fear CDs and DVDs will get the same treatment. Once the next thing replaces them, their players will disappear from the market. and locating one in 15 years may prove difficult. For instance, once we get enough bandwidth, video on demand may get us to all toss out our DVD players and disks.
I think the best compromise you can make is to use MiniDV. Especially if you have a compatible camcorder or deck already.
The benefits are:
1. No problems dealing with time-code transcoding or creep
2. No audio sync problems
3. Digital storage on tape. Later generations will not suffer degradation
4. Easily imported to computer for duplication or storage on other media (back to VHS for example)
5. If similar to other tape formats, will endure longer than most rotational media of its generation
6. You can fit two hours of VHS tape on to an 80 minute MiniDV if you use EP; which on MOST devices yields no degradation of video or audio. I personally have not encountered any more dropouts from EP than from SP on any of four devices I've used.
I might even import the video from MiniDV to computer, perform some enhancements (sharpness, color, contrast) then write it back out to MiniDV. Then write back out to VHS so you can watch the video on a regular basis. You don't want to use your digital master tape for regular viewing.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
I dont know how you would go about doing it, but you could burn the stuff to DVD-R then go somewhere that has some type of DVD Pressing machine. Those always last longer and are more scracth resistant to any burned dvd.
think of the movie posters turning blue in the window of the video store
I've always wondered why all glass windows don't block UV light. It'd be a nice feature, as it would prevent your furniture and carpet from fading. Besides I can't really think of any reason why someone would want UV to get through.
It's got to be a fairly cheap process or EVERY pair of sunglasses I've ever bought wouldn't always be labeled "blocks 99% of UV".
I'd like to convert all my CDR burns to DVD-R, but if CDR doesn't have this problem, then I might think twice.
Might as well get a 5400 RPM beast HD or two.
::shrugs::
You get about a 2:1 savings over HuffYUV and the still frames look almost as good as most people's desktop backgrounds at a decent datarate.
Unfortunately neither solution are worthwhile options for someone who is considering buying the same monetary quantity of hard disks as he would have VHS cassettes. VHS casettes can be had for one cent a minute in bulk. Hard disks are 1GB to the dollar, which gets you 100-400 seconds per dollar, or 1-4 seconds per cent; not close to 60 seconds per cent.
But then, hard drives are cool. If they're kept in storage, they don't degrade.
BTW, a strongly suggested purchase in addition to other tech toys:
Removable hard drive trays
Makes life 10 times easier.
Cheers!
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
I load up iMovie, start the VHS player, and import the entire tape to disk. I then cut out the unwanted portions, save the project, and then use QuickTimePro with the Toast VCD program to compress the project into mpeg. I save all the mpegs in one directory, and store them either to another HD or CDROM. The entire process takes a while, but I let it compress overnight while I sleep. I've done about 40 tapes for far in about a month, in my spare time.
I have copied several children's tapes (I own a few) to digital format, bring my iBook around with me wherever I go with my son, and I can play Thomas the Train or Elmo on the go!
The entire experience has been without any sort of a problem - everything just works, and works really well. Enjoy, and good luck!
I assume no one is working on Linux drivers for the Pinnacle A/D video with breakout box. The company (C-Cube Microsystems) which made the E4 appears to have been bought by LSI logic and it dead ends there. Anyone have any specs on this chip? The rest of the chips appear to already have Linux drivers.
and let it ride a bit more man. Im talking about the recent audio trend and mp3's. 5 years ago i bet somebody was trying to convert their whole collection of cd's to mp3. now its a no brainer, and you can store the WHOLE collection on a drive and its quick. and if you want to spend a day and back the WHOLE collection up to DVD then you can. Next year you can back the whole collection up to a media format in an hour. etc. Wait another year for storage to increase, then definitely go digital. every 2 or 3 years move the digital collection to the current digital storage/video format. 5 years from now your whole collection will be riding around in your wallet on a smart card and if youre worried about the format, you can update/re-archive the whole collection in an hour. So again, its been 20 years, another 1 to 2 wont hurt. do it then, it will be easy.
Honestly, if you have 650 hours of material do you REALLY want to archive 27 days worth of 24/7 viewing for some poor sap to have to wade through? The old saying goes that 90% of everything is bullsh*t. Go through your collection and start archiving the 65 hours that is WORTH keeping. Or even better, be more specific about the content of your video collection.
Now I am converting to DVD-R using an eVGA.com Geforece4 MX 440 card to capture and Video Factory to edit. I then take the AVIs and burn in my choice of program, depending on if I want menus or fancy additions. Sonic MyDVD has a nice feature to capture direct from VHS and burn to DVD as a "one step" operation, but that only works if the program will recognize your video capture device - and their list is very short.
For home movies, you can lower the quality and increase the time to two hours without a serious loss of quality, unless you are talking about very good home movies.
I've gotten so much satisfaction out of conversions, I am now capturing 8mm home movies to DVD-R!
BAVC recently released an instructional dvd about video tape preservation.
From what I calculate, 650 hours of tape will translate to 1300 gigs of data using standard video to mpeg translators such as those used for DVD to IDE. This would result in 7 200gig drives for a cost of $1400 at the present time.(market depending) Plus your time, which sounds like you are quite willing to do. With the video on IDE drives you can transfer them to any other media at a later date with no (or minimum) degradation.
Obviously you missed the tags.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Digitize em all using the best quality for the space you can afford on several cheap HDDs. 5-10 years from now digital storage of video will be like things are now with MP3s. You'll be able to keep everything on a small memory-stick or similar devices. Another 5-10 years, if terrorism hasn't killed us, there will be even better solutions.
I'd suggest that you copy your vhs originals to a harddrive and then make copies back to vhs for day to day use. That way you have the convience of what you're used to but can continue to produce copies without further degradation.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
You are right about having to do a transfer anyway. Me I prefer to keep my thing on a DVD because there are no mechanical parts to fail on it.
I seriously doubt VHS recorded on a 20 year old VCR is going to output a picture sharper than DVD quality.
Yes, 720x540 will perfectly reproduce a perfect, noise free NTSC signal. But NOT VHS. Even today's VHS recorders probably only output a usable resolution of 500x400 give or take. I say usable, meaning, that you would extract more pixels than that from it, but it would not increase the clarity of sample.
I am seeing all these messages saying, use MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 because DivX won't be around in 5 years, but MPEG-1 and 2 are standards, blah blah blah.
.avi's, instead of putting them inside a proper .mp4 container (which is based on QuickTime, and FULLY documented)
...And in the end, isn't this the point of having open standards in the first place?
I put this to you: DivX 5.03, 3ivx D4 and above, XviD, Apple MPEG-4 and most of the other MPEG-4 variants are actually fully MPEG-4 compliant, and MPEG-4 is as much of a standard as MPEG-1 or 2 is. MS-MPEG is another thing all together, as is DivX 3.11. Avoid these.
The worst part of this MPEG-4 hodge podge is that everybody stuffs them into
Basically if it's MPEG-4 compliant, there will be some way to play it in the future, as surely as you can play MPEG-1 or 2.
I think we all know that there will be better formats in the future. No question about it and the wait won't be long.
The question of format type for software (MPEG 2/4, DiVX, whatever), is a good point, but starting with the most lossless format possible will help maintain maximum quality with any needed conversions later.
Besides, your average MPEG2, even at a medium bitrate, is overkill for old VHS material. We're not talking about anything more than 240 lines of resolution (on a good day), after all.
Ah, but what about the media itself? Well... So what if that DVD-R doesn't store beyond 5-10 years? If the digital transfer process has been done at a point where the VHS is still viable, this won't matter much. A few years after the transfer, go ahead and copy your DVD-R
s to your new Blu-Ray discs. You should be able to fit about 10 DVD-Rs each, if I remember correctly.
Then 10 years later transfer ALL of it to Holocube or whatever.
I do video archiving for the school I work for, and this is my stated plan. We use DVD-R because it's cheap, and when properly stored should last until the 'Next Big Thing'.
I would be more worried about VHS analog degradation than digital format obsolesence for one reason: time of transfer. How long will it take to transfer a two hour VHS tape? Yup. 2 hours. How many tapes does this guy have? How long will this take? How long should he wait - this material is DYING in front of him!
How long will it take to copy a DVD? Hmmm. Depends on what year you're talking about doesn't it? 10 years from now, you'll probably be able to copy your entire library of material in mere minutes! You can have copies of the copies; no loss in quality, plenty of redundancy.
That's a very real advantage. With analog there is continual loss (more if the tapes are actually played). the longer you wait to convert the material, the more video will be distorted. With digital, it's already converted and then it's just a factor of time for file copying.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Well, each bit either works or doesn't, but you could have various bits fail disrupting the picture.
I have a friend who just purchased a karaoke business from someone. With the business came a few hundred older Laserdiscs (yes, the analog ones, mostly Pioneer). We are planning a project to convert these to DVD-R (those LD's are heavy!).
Now it may be true that the videos themselves are cheap, cheezy, and sometimes involve no more than a poolside camera and a couple of babes, BUT... Video is infinately more interesting to look at than CD+G. And there is a certain amount of nostalgia involved.
I wish the original poster luck as this is an arduous process!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I am in the process of migrating data from Exabyte onto DLT-IV and DVD-R.
I don't care if DVD-R is no-longer popular in 5 years, I'll still have spare DVD drives and there'll be blue laser DVDs or whatever.
It's a largely hands-off process (pop a tape in the drive every time it pops open) and keep feeding it DLT tapes. And each time I go through this cycle, my last archive always fits onto a small number of the next generation media. And the descendants are *exactly* the same as the stuff I put on QIC many years ago.
The trick is not to end up with a removalist carton of tpes that haven't been exercised for 5 years and a grotty, worn out drive (but that's an issue for analogue tape too)
But yeah, this is totally useless if the DRM of Windows 2020 won't let you view un-signed videos or they dropped support for QuickTime in 2010.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Whilst others have suggested priningout to paper, may I suggest vellum or parchment? It's much more robust, contains less acid and doesn't burn well.
Of course finding a vast amount of sheets may be a little difficult, and I'm not sure how your average inkjet prints on such stuff, but these are minor problems.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I thought glass windows did block most UV. That's why you get hot when sunbathing in your car, but you don't tend to get a tan. Or is it just windshields that do this?
DVD is nor recordable. Sure, DVD-R and DVD-RW units exist, including some PVR/burner combos but they're expensive lousy replacements for VHS which people routinely used to record 4-6 hours of crappy quality crap onto a single tape.
The PVR will meet people's future recording needs and cause an unfortunate demise of any average consumer to save/archive things they record as VHS goes the way of the dodo.
the industry doesn't want to allow another convenient recording technology to ever exist. they will do that by making it unnecessary for most people (controlled PVRs) so that physical permanent recording devices will be expensive and seen as unnecessary.
DVD is here to stay. all future players will support the format (same with CD audio). but don't think of it as a replacement for VHS. its just a successful laser disk because its not clunky.
VHS -> TV-in -> DivX -> CD-R
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
To transfer, I use Terratec Cameo Convert (some $300) and Ulead DVD Movie factory ($50 online) to capture, encode and burn. For tune-up, if I want to remove silly black borders, I occasionally use TMPGEnc.
Only problem is that the Cameo Convert is quite sensitive to framedrops - when it happens, it's fairly ugly. I make sure to clean my VCR to minimize this.
With the above combo, it's an assembly line job.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
Why not just DIVX them? MPlayer captures from the TV card and turns it into an AVI stream. Then you burn your crap on CD's...
I wouldn't bet on it. Some types of capacitors degrade over time, especially if they are not used. Lubricants can migrate or turn to sludge. Electrical connections can corrode. A typical hard disk is designed for a 5-year service life. My experience is that electronics equipment pulled out of long-term storage has a high failure rate.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It looks like this task will be laborious no matter what way you approach it...
;)
You can copy VHS tapes fairly easily if you have 2 VCR's.
If you connect them both to your television - and tune them both in to
separate channels - you can then play your original VHS on one of them (VCR1),
and with the other (VCR2), insert a blank VHS. You then start recording VCR1's
channel with VCR2. One thing to note: The VCR's *may* have to be identical,
I'm not 100% sure. Borrow a friends first and check!
Perhaps this is common knowledge, I don't know. I do know that it worked
wonders when I rented the latest movie from the video shop though
But of course, as many people have already said, in 20 years time it may be
fairly hard to find a VHS player - and again, in 20 years time your copied
tapes may have become deteriorated. Seeing that DVD is a relatively new
format, you might be inclined to copy your VHS tapes on to DVD and addressing
this issue again when DVD's start getting pushed to the back of the shelf.
Good luck.
Just some precisions from the resident astrophysicist :-)
1.) Yes, true, UV damages dies.
2.) The solar spectrum is a blackbody curve that peaks in the green, visible; incandesceng light will typically peak in the red, visible--so yes the sun will send more UV.
3.) Most hard UV is absorbed by the atmosphere, we only get UV-A, UV-B, UV-C on earth, which are closest to visible light;this is why UV telescopes are in space.
4.) Some windows are specifically designed to stop UV, but most windows will let UV through (most of it anyways).
yours ever, fz.
From a physics point of view, I'd be very wary about baking tapes. Certainly don't do it at home.
Let's not forget that tapes are a magnetic medium. All magnetic media have a temperature (the Curie point) at which they will suddenly demagnetize. Now I don't know what that temperature is for tapes, but it's often not that high.
Additionally information on magnetic media degrades faster at a higher temperature. This is because the way information is stored is basically as an alternating sequence of magnetic domains (areas of the same polarity). With time, large domains grow at the expense of small domains, basically smoothing out the information. Turning up the heat just makes this happen faster.
You can't beat entropy.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
After 10 years or so, does Flash memory merely lose its contents, or its ability to store data?
It's a sobering thought that many electronic devices made today contain firmware in Flash (ironically enough for easy upgradability and a longer useful life), and are likely to be junk within a decade or two. Don't bother putting your high-end digital camera or DVD player in your will.
You need to get them into the digital domain and, once there, moving them from format to format is relatively easy.
To a point. Re-encoding from one lossy codec to another is probably a bad idea.
A while ago, there were warning signs posted at computer swap-meets in Australia, cautioning buyers about a batch of counterfeit Princo CD-Rs. These apparently looked like the originals except they didn't have the "Compact Disc" logo, and they tended to degrade very rapidly (within months).
I had very good luck getting 97% pure isopropanol from the first pharmacy I entered. I needed it to clean the head of a 'floppy tape' drive (may it rest in hell) as per instruction manual. I paid, uh, the equivalent of, $1 or $1.50 for 30 ml.
More than 97% pure and it'll draw water from the air and degrade to that.
All In wonder!
> "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
Jesus didn't speak English. Is that supposed to be funny somehow?
You should feel dirty, because you cannot escape the FILTH of your FAILURE! Your FAILURE has forever dirtied this thread!
YOU FAIL IT!
Not meaning to troll or bait flames, but why are you asking Slashdot readers instead of making some phone calls to the nearest video transfer shops?
Get with it man!
Baking tapes is old school warezizing. Where do you think the analogy of Burning CDs came from?
In the beginning, people baked tapes, now they burn DVDs.
Its not like this guy is going to be in a comma for the next 20 years. He will be around to see the changes in hardware and software and be able to convert whatever digital format he uses to a new technology before all traces our ancient 2003 technology is gone forever.
Because MPEG-2 is an open standard, it's guaranteed that if you convert to DVD, it'll be around forever. (With occasional lossless maintenance required).
Blu-ray becomes big and DVD obsolete? Copy the data to a Blu-Ray disc. MPEG-2 decoders will be around for ages. (FYI, even the "obsolete" codecs like Intel Indeo are still maintained and kept in Windows Media Player, etc.) Blu-Ray becomes obsolete? Copy the data again - It's lossless.
DVD isn't expensive - It's slightly over $1/disc these days. (I wouldn't go for the sub-$1 discs, they're crap. But Ritek G03s are $1.15 or so per disc in quantity and are excellent discs. Samsung BeAll is around $1.40-1.50/disc.)
You can fit a 2-hour movie on DVD if you drop the bitrate a bit. 99% chance that the source quality (20-year-old VHS) is bad enough that you won't be able to tell the difference at even half the bitrate.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
VCDs are 352x240 (non-interlaced), so you are not getting the same quality as your input VHS tape (this post has more details). DVD is a better choice.
Xesdeeni
In 20 years your average $99 flatbed scanner from Staples Express will be able to do a bit-perfect scan of a DVD.
An exposed, optical media has advantages in being able to be read by a whole class of devices that aren't going away, but instead are just going to get better.
I am working on the restoration of old 16mm films circa 1947. We are putting the films on DVD-R for immediate use and MiniDV for long term storage.
20 years from now we can reasonably expect any video transfer lab to support the MiniDV format and the films can be transfered to the digital format de jour!
Cost: Video Camera / MiniDV ~ $600, Tapes are about $5 each (1 hour).
Quality: Broadcast quality for under $10,000!
I have an ATI All In Wonder Radeon 7500 AGP 64meg. If you're not familiar with this product, it's a video and tv card in one. Has cable, svideo, and rca inputs. Use their tv/digital vcr software. Set recording to "video cd" to get mpegs that you can just drop on a video cd with Nero cd burning software. For video tapes with Macrovision, there exists a patch that allows their digital vcr to record anyway. If you already have a different hardware getup together, try looking through vcdhelp.com for tools and whatnot.
Noone else has mentioned it yet, but if you have the cash, and regardless of what other method you choose to re-archive your tapes, purchase a time base corrector!
It'll really help clean up the audio synch for some of those older tapes with less than perfect quality.
I do video transfers to DVD ($20/hr of footage, 4 Chapter stops, post processing and cleanup extra, but I work cheap!), and most often my customers will bring me these truly ancient VHS tapes. (I consider myself lucky when I get SVHS, and I could probably count on one hand the number of times I was able to sucessfully track down a master...)
Prior to investing in a TBC, I'd often find myself having to recapture some areas of tape again and again to get a decent Synch between the audio and the video. I'd end up with foreign film effect, where the mouth movements didn't synch with the audio.
Now, while the quality of the video isn't noticeably better, I do save myself a lot of editing time, getting everything to synch up. For me, time is money. Assuming you're not getting paid for it, time is liesure, (or if these are home videos as I suspect, and you're a family man, time is family time) and even more important. Unless your original videos are in exceedingly good shape, a TBC at even minimum wage rates should pay for itself in time and effort.
Google search for TBCs
If there's a castle floating upside down in the sky, then there's a castle floating upside down in the sky.
The problem is that Divx probaly won't be around in 20 years, and you are losing quality. encode them in mpeg 1 format and burn that to a DVD-rom.
For the longest time she lamented how the masters for the TRON soundtrack were stored on junk. All of a sudden, the soundtrack was re-mastered and re-released on CD! She baked 'em. She had some experienced people give her the info, BUT if your media is already "destroyed" and unplayable- What do you have to lose?!
here is a link to her tape restoration page
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Archive to mylar tape using a high-speed tape punch.
This may have been mentioned before, so forgive me if I didn't pick it up...
If you want a easy way of updating your VHS collection, why not go for the Panasonic or Sony VHS/DVD recorder. It's a bit expensive, couple hundred under a thousand I believe, but it's real easy.
The deck comes with a VHS slot and DVD slot. Just place your VHS and a blank DVD-R, set for record and boom, there you have it, your VHS on a DVD-R media. I figured this would be a plus, b/c you won't have to deal with video editing tools, upgrading your computer to be powerful enough to do video editing and to burn DVDs (needs Intel 800mhz+). This takes the whole computer out of your solution. Besides, it's relatively easy.
When it comes down to it, you want it quick and dirty and records straight out. Go for the panasonic or sony vhs/dvd recorder. You'll start backing up your VHS before you even finish setting up the DVD burner on your computer.
I don't you do :-)
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
I don't honestly have the archivial figures, but i'd imagine that it would indeed be a solid 10 years. I remember sys-admins often reccomended DVD-r over CD-r as the cost of 10 year archival media for CD-r was 5 year, where DVD-r was 10, but I honesty don't know for sure.
But I do know this... You can copy DVD without (much) loss, and this process can be automated to duplicate faster then real time. While I presently don't know of a resorce for a multi-disk DVD-r drive, it's clear that the cost to create one would be lower then any other, "taped" standard.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
if you've got 650 hours NOT in your porn collection, how much do you have IN your porn collection?
Many Christian denominations teach that the Bible is the true and unvarnished word of God/Jesus. Some (not all, not even most) of the memebrs of these denominations are too clueless to realize that the English translation of the Bible that they read is not the original, that the Bible was not written in English. Some of these people combine their ignorance with zealotry, and make boneheaded statements like "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
I have encountered this twice already (once indirectly). Former Texas Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson has been quoted as saying something similar, "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for the Children of Texas" when vetoing some legistlation (probably involving the Spanish language in some way).
I assume the sig line was included as a combination of frustration at that kind of person, humor that someone can be so stupid, and pointing out to others that people exist who think this way.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
-
It's "Philips", not "Phillips", unless you mean Phillips Petroleum
-
It's a light bulb company that bought, and is gradually destroying, some cool electronics companies.
Their entire semiconductors division is imploding. In a cyclical industry, this cash-rich company has decreed that the division will not post a loss for any quarter. Their european-style management creates a social climate wherein all but frontline management personnel are immune to cuts. As a result, they are running fully 1/3 management at last count - that's right, 1 management person for every two producers. To meet their salary cost cut goals, they are now laying off fully booked engineers.I had already seen incomprehensible decisions, which they are now being forced to compensate for at great expense and weak return, but cutting the profit centers to prevent loss says it all. I can infer only that they are intentionally disposing of their highest-tech division.
I would store this on as many different formats as possible(that you can afford at least)... CDR/W, DVD-R/Ws, hard drives, tape backups etc. When stored in a data format (not as a DVD video standard) you could also use parchive parity files, PARs for short. Just go on google/favorite search engine and look for SmartPAR, the best one out there imo. While it will take a good deal more space, just as any parity RAID would. The time you want this to last the more likely something will happen to damage some of the files... The only problem with this is if there aren't any supporting programs for this format in the future, and the copy in archive also gets corrupted, your SOL. I guess you would just wanna put many copies of it all over the backup mediums. You just gotta hope future computers will also still support 32-bit windows 9x/NT programs...
Really currently it sounds like from the rest of the posts here, that there is no life time storage format. Everything has it's faults... You're just gonna have to wait another 10-20 years, and do this same processes over. By then, I would hope you would have more options...
> There's plenty of DVD players on the market that don't support it
All modern DVD players support it and you can spend as little or as much as you want to buy one. I just replaced my Toshiba DVD player I got in 1998 for $300, which doesn't play ANYTHING but commercial DVDs. I replaced it with a $49.99 special from Sears that offers more features and plays almost anything I can throw at it. I gave away my old DVD player to a friend who doesn't have one yet.
Sears, Walmart, Best Buy... They all have $50 DVD players. I liked Sears because their 2-year replacement plan was only $7 compared to Best Buy, where it was $30 for a $50 player! Plus, the one at Sears (Koss brand) was modern looking - some of the cheap players look like prototypes from World War 2 (Koss and Norcent make some decent looking ones, though).
You do NOT want to get a non-Radeon AIW. Why? They are almost unsupported by now.
At least get a current model (the 8500LE is cheap) to get the current drivers. Less hassle, less bugs(yes, ATI has improved lately on that) and the 8500 works in Linux!(from what I know)
Try once capturing at VCD spec(352x240 MPEG1) and see if the quality is good for you. At about 1 MBPs, it is cheap to store, whatever your media is. After that, keep the resolution, but change the bitrate and/or encoder(MPEG2 and MPEG4 are standardized, thus better for archiving)
At 640x480, you are wasting resources(see other posts for explanations)
Good luck! It is the project of a year at least, by the weekends(IMHO)
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
All the discussions about formats. The issue is that if he converts to DVD-R he will have digitised the data and it will be a lot easier to convert again in 10-20 years if there is degradation of the media or changes in standards/formats.
The real question is why is this person backing up anyways? I can understand if they are backing up 650 hours of family movies or archiving footage shot for a feature film that has been in the works as a life-long project, but 650 hours of movies taped off of T.V. just doesn't seem worth it. I'm just going to list off some points that seem worthy of bringing up.
1. If an average movie is 2 hours, there are about 325 movies to be backed up. Taking into account that a lot of the footage was probably taped on an EP speed, there has to be stuff that is so poor in quality that making a DVD of an EP tape would be worthlesss anyways.
2. Who is this person backing up for? I can see if you want to preserve entire seasons of T.V. series that you may enjoy and pass them onto your family for viewing, but ultimately, backing up 650 hours of tape, just for the sake of it sounds rediculous. My dad has about 500 video tapes in his basement of T.V. shows and movies taped off of T.V. and I would never tell him to back this up because these tapes are viewing copies of movies. I consider them the paperback books of our time. Who cares if they deteriorate, I'll rent a movie if I want to see it.
3. Family movies. This is the only reason I would recommend backing something up. Someone will always be interested in seeing a family vacation or wedding 100 years from now because it adds to the history of mankind. Unless you're a film or T.V. historian, nobody is going to be interested in viewing Joe American's DVD transfer from VHS of Jaws or Buffy the Vampire Slayer 100 years from now when they can view the mind chip version they just rented or bought. Let the professionals deal with preservation and use your personal collection as a reference to inspire viewing new films or television shows. Personal VHS film collections are the paperback books into a better understanding of the overall picture.
Ill note this is pretty easy to demonstrate too. I had a south facing window in my office for a while (I have since moved offices) and was playing iwth light reflection. I had a prism and a few other things. Basically, we hat ethe overhead lkighting and leave it off, but I needed some light, so I figured, why not harness the sun?
So I took some cdrs that I didn't need and threw them on my window sill.
Damn did they ever change color quick. Went from dark green to bright pink over the course of a month or so. I still have them now on my window sill. They reflect light just fine but, ill be damned if there is any intelligable data still on them.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
While any form of media backup is better then none, why settle for one standard?
.25cents / disk (roughly 39 cents per gig)
Everyone here seems to be speaking of analog video tape, and DVD/CD media, but no one seem to have brought up good old fassioned 4mm/8mm backup tape. The figures I get quoted for 4mm tape (unknown accuracy) 100 backups and a shelf life of 30 years (10 years tested).
Assuming VCD, the downloads lately have been about 430megs/42min of video... so roughly 615megs/hr.. this would be 440gigs of data.
A DDS-4 4mm tape will store roughly 20gigs of data uncompressed @ $10 per tape, or roughly 33 hours per tape, 22 tapes for 440gigs.
Media cost about $220, drive cost... $414.
Media cost about 50cents per gig
Compair to cheepo DVD @ roughly $2.00 per disk
42cents per gig
Or CD media @ roughly
------
Why would one even consider spending more money on 4mm tape for example? With 4mm tape at least you have the physical equilivent of 4 4.7meg DVDs per tape or the equilivent of 31cds. You have the ability 5 / 10 years down the road to copy your data to another format by swaping out what is presently roughly 22 tapes to another decent realativly low cost archival format.
More data per unit = less swapping = less time to convert over to the next backup.
VCD was used as a convienent example, your this figure will go up or down depending on the choice of encoding.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Heat
Most of the suggestions here require ~$500 DVD burners, expensive capture hardware or locating ancient uber-vhs decks which probably aren't that easy to find service for.
I suggest an mid range used PC ~500mhz, coupled with a cd-burner and a $90 CDN TV Tuner card. I use the ATI TV Wonder PCI, which can be found for much less on Ebay... either way nearly every Tuner card i've come across is supported by BTTV, although I've had small luck with Gatos which is designed for ATI All-In-Wonder cards.
So for software, we're looking at:
Linux (i use Debian with 2.4.18)
Compile BTTV and TV Tuner support in your kernel or modules if needed
Nuppelvideo - great *ZERO* frame dropping capture software which will result in huge, quality, 640x480, raw, stereo clips.
Transcode which will convert your Nuppelvideo files into any format you choose, I prefer DivX 5, which squashes your clips down to size suitable for 700mb discs. No DVD needed.
If you're still wondering why we're using a TV tuner card, it's that fact that almost all of them have S-Video/Composite/Stero inputs, so you can capture from most sources... incl. VHS, Beta, whatever.
The quality is great IMHO, for the small amount of $$ and the ease of transfer once you have a handle on the software. There are load of resources out there, much of the DVD ripping FAQs mirror all the audio/video sync/editing info you'll need to master this process.
To top it all off, if you use an avi file format, like DivX uses, you can use VirtualDub, free software that allows you to chop up clips, join them and fix repair/mix audio features on your clips. Just make sure you choose Direct Stream Copy so the clips are "spliced" (very quick) and not processed (hours zzzzzzzz).
All of this with free software, a few bucks, your old computer... does it get any better?
Heck, all you need to do is to change a digit here and there. Apart from the usual deranged mathematicians or an idiot savants, it's not like anybody would notice or care. Sure, some of the more righteous civilisations might try to censor or outlaw parts of pi on moral grounds if they found out, but defining pi to 3 or 4 by law or religous dogma tends to be self-defeating and never last..
Hogwash. Some of these DVD-Rs will get scratched. Some of them will have manufacturing defects. Hardware and software glitches will corrupt data. No matter how careful you are, nothing lasts forever. And I don't think this guy is keen on watching eight hours of video a day for three months every time he makes a new generation of backups, just to make sure that no new errors were introduced.
Movix helps you build a really lightweight linux distro on a cd or dvd for the purpose of autobooting and displaying multimedia content. It uses standard linux tools like mplayer.
So, just put the codec on the dvd along with the content. As long as you can find an x86 compatible machine or an emulator, you can access the content. Put the cd or dvd in the machine and boot from it. You shouldn't have to know or care that it is running linux; just watch your movie.
Caveat - I don't really know anything about Movix more than what I listed here. I just happened to read about it yesterday from the list of highest activity projects on sourceforge.
If you can hold on just another 5 years, you'll probably be able to transfer the video to holocubes.. or was that iso-linear crystals ? :-)
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Let me put it this way... What if I told you that I had 13 years' worth of old Sunday newspapers in my garage, and that I was looking not to get rid of them, but to preserve them indefinitely? Don't you think it would be better just to clip the important articles and recycle the rest?
I just can't imagine that all 650 hours are really THAT important, unless this involves your livelihood or something. May I ask what is on these tapes?
/. is all nice and dandy, but if you want opinion from people who are real computer AV maniacs, go ask the Arstechnica Audio/Visual Club at http://arstechnica.infopop.net/ . You should also read the FAQ at http://faq.arstechnica.com/?s=1
:wq
Heat? I don't think so. The vast majority of solar electromagnetic energy is above the ultraviolet wavelengths. See this (ultraviolet is between 0.001 and 0.4 microns).
Yes it IS available, here is only 1 news article out of many google results:
v d. reut/
;)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/03/04/blue.d
ask your local retailer for the model
Probably too late for someone actually reading this comment but...
I read not long ago that the Library of Congress chose to stay analog for the archival of sound recording, because they haven't found ANY digital format and media that they think will still be usable in a distant future.
Analog reel-to-reel recordings from 50 years ago are still usable (think Elvis 30 #1), compared to DAT recordings from 10 years ago that are completely lost due to poor media. Hey, 78rpm disks and wax recordings from 70-80 years ago are still good!
So, I say copy your VHS tapes to 3/4" video, pretty cheap and it'll last for 20-30 years...
Try it! Library of Babel
Under Linux, mjpegtools/yuvdenoise. Several frames are averaged together in an exponential-decay manner, command-line adjustable. There is motion-detection adjustable up to a distance of 24 pixels. If you extract single frames from the resultant video, yuvdenoise can make the difference between unacceptable and acceptable noise levels. The biggest problem I've noticed is that color lag occasionally makes red blotches in light flesh areas. Overall, I'm pleased.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
> Besides I can't really think of any reason why
> someone would want UV to get through.
Direct sunlight kills many (most) of microorganisms. I think that it's the UV part of it doing the job. Don't know whether it's worth having faded surfaces though..
-vp
. . . 99% of DVD players also play VCDs.
I wish. I lend (S)VCDs to people or bring stuff to their houses, and half the time it turns out they've managed to find a DVD player that can't handle that format. I wanted to send my folks some videos, so I made sure they had an SVCD-compatible player: I bought them one.
Check the compatibility list at dvdrhelp.com.
Other items: Mylar is a polyester, afaik.
"Degredation": From the verb "to degrede"?
Chromium dioxide is CrO[sub]2. It's valence, not double processing. Very basic chemistry.
Enby in Waltham
Enby in Waltham
Uh, I think he's talking about analog degredation. Digital images don't degrade when you copy them.
-Stu
Actually, I have an old GE DVD player(1999) that would not play Anything on CD-Rs(Audio or VCD). I just tried a DVD+R burnt with Nero and compiled with DVDshrink and it worked great. So far I have yet to find a player that will not accept them. At 2$ PER disk and very little recoding time they are far easier than backing up a DVD with VCDs. I'll never go back to VCDs now. Good luck.
Science is the Real TRUTH!
(context: hiring wage-slaves to record data in a monument à la ancient Egypt)
I'm wondering more about how you can hire slaves
Do you claim that "hire slaves" is an oxymoron? In a bear market with high unemployment, how is somebody who lives on minimum wage anything but a slave? At least he has a job.
Try this: Lend your slave's family a large sum of money, and then pay your slave just enough to cover the interest. This may not fall under the USA ban on "involuntary servitude" because the slave's family can always exit the agreement by send its credit rating to hell.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It seems that you could send intermittent frames, some in groups of adjacent frames.
A good idea, refined: I'd assume that printing one frame of each shot would be sufficient to identify the copyrighted work.
Will I retire or break 10K?
My 1983 computer was a VAX 11/780. UC Berkeley got their first one in the spring of 1979, IIRC, and went to work porting the Unix to it using 32V (it was a 32-bit machine with virtual memory after all) and V7 and some PDP-11 BSD stuff. I didn't have a Unix account when I was there, just IBM mainframes and the (?5150?) micro that ran APL. My undergrad work had been mostly on IBM mainframes like 360's.
I used a PDP-11/20 in 1972, and an 11/45 in 73-74. It was at the University of Delaware, and my high school time-shared on it using a Model 33 Teletype, the ASR kind with the paper-tape punch, and the modem that could do 110 baud if you set the switch to "fast". (Otherwise, it was 75 baud, which is roughly 75 Words Per Minute, but only a couple of the kids could type that fast.) They were running RSTS-11 operating system on it, which let us program in BASIC. I also used some kind of HP machine running BASIC, I think a Model 1000 or 2000. The university lab had their previous timesharing machine sitting in the corner, a PDP-8 that had a "DECSYSTEM 10" label covering the PDP-8 label.)
As far as reading old media from that era goes, forget reading DECTAPE (think of using a cassette tape as a floppy...) The best way to read paper-tape is probably an optical scanner - I tried to buy an paper-tape reader/punch in ~1985 or so and DEC referred me to their "Traditional Products Group", who didn't have one lying in the back anywhere. My VAX had 9-track tape, which could run at 6250 DPI or 1600 DPI. My department also owned an older 800/1600 DPI drive, which a few years later was the last on e in our building. DIsks were RM05 removable packs - 14" multiplatter things the size of a tupperware cake container. They held 250MB, and cost about $1000 for the media, and about $35K for the drive. And all of this stuff ran on 3-phase power:-) The console / bootstrap controller for the VAX was an LSI-11 microprocessor implementation of the PDP-11, which had an 8-inch floppy. A few years later somebody sent us some data in RT-11 (RSX-11?) format on one of those, and we were able to read it. People would also send us data in various weird formats (VMS backup format, or raw binary on tapes), and sometimes it would be a struggle to read it; depends a lot on the quality of documentation, which was often poor. Somewhere in my attic I've got a Sun shoebox tape drive which may be able to read some Sun cartridge tapes, but I wouldn't bet on it.
The only medium that's got any chance of surviving a long time is "copy your old data onto new media every couple of years and keep any format documentation you can find" and take advantage of Moore's Law and folks who write emulators. That $1000 that bought a 250GB removable cartridge in 1983 will get you a terabyte of IDE today, and it doesn't need the $35K drive. Or you can spend ~$35 for a CD-R drive and get 700-MB CD-R media for about 25 cents. (That's a factor of 12000, or about 2**13.5, so that's about 18 months per doubling for the media, and a bit slower for the drives ...) Seek time hasn't changed as much - I think the RM-05s were 85ms, which is probably similar to CDs, while the IDE are about 8ms. I don't remember if a single RM05 could fill a 2MB/s MASSBUS or not - if so, that's about a 10x CD :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
--Also, DO NOT do the whole 650 hours at once! Make a couple of test-cases and play them back. That way if you don't like the results you can tweak or switch to a different method.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
It seems like SVCD compatibility seems to correlate more with brand than date of manufacture. When I've looked over the compatibility list, it seems like some brands have a ton of models supporting the format, while others don't go near it.
I bought a JVC player within the last couple of years that plays (S)VCD, albeit a little choppily under certain circumstances (I think I've narrowed it down to overly high bitrate, poor-quality CDRs, or too-high burn speed). A few months ago I picked up a Sony progressive-scan player that plays SVCDs flawlessly.
I'm surprised the DivX advocates still haven't figured this out over the last three years: DivX (and any non-field-aware format, like VCD) is completely inadequate for archiving anything that started life as video. I'll explain:
Video (I'll use NTSC numbers here) is interlaced, which means that there are two images in every frame: one in the odd scanlines, and another 1/60th of a second later in the even scanlines. This means there are 60 different images per second in captured 720x480 video. When you play back an interlaced format on a progressive device, you get combing -- you can see the individual lines of each image if there's high motion. It looks like ragged "teeth" on the edges of moving objects. So the common answer is to deinterlace by either blending the fields together or throwing one field away, right?
Wrong: What the DivX fanboys conveniently ignore is that doing so throws away half of the images. In other words, motion quality is halved. To put this in computer game terms, you are taking something that runs at 60fps and converting it to 30fps -- I don't think any gamer would agree that throwing away framerate is desirable. Any video source recorded directly to videotape, like documentaries made for TV, newscasts, live sporting events, etc., will have a noticable drop in motion quality if encoded to a non-field-aware format like DivX, VCD, etc.
MPEG-2 is a field-aware format: It was specifically designed to hold 480 lines (again, NTSC numbers here) divided into two fields. DivX and VCD are not field-aware. (The newest DivX 5.0x may be but all of the information being disemminated on using DivX doesn't take this into account.) Because of this, DivX's only legitimate archival use is preserving letterboxed movies stored at 24fps (really 23.976). Any other use and you're butchering the footage to the point where people will look at the TV funny and note how it looks "computer-ish".
If you don't have a DVD burner yet, wait one more year when they'll be as cheap as CD burners. If you can't wait and just have to get something burned to CD, then at least prepare your MPEG-2 assets as either SVCD at 480x480, or "CVCD" (proper term is Half-D1 MPEG-2) at 352x480. Both will play in modern DVD players and you should easily be able to get at least 30-45 minutes of high quality on a CD (up to an hour if encoding 352x480 using a high quality multi-pass encoder like Cinema Craft or TMPEGEnc).
Yes I fully understand the amendment in its entirety.
By definition a militia is: An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers.
There for, being an ordinary citizen, I am a member of the militia, and therefore the right to keep and bear are extended to me personally.
The entire concept of the amendment was to allow private citizens the ability to defend itself from governmental oppression, and private attack. Anything less is perverting the entire concept of the Constitution of *individual* freedoms and rights.
But alas, you are hiding behind anonymous to avoid direct discussion, a typical behavior I've noticed of 'anti' 2nd amendment types.
And yes this his rather OT to the orginal discussion...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just a bit. :o)
A few years back, someone mistook my home email for a Nina Hagen mailing list.
thanks for noticing.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Bingo!
A friend of mine also overheard someone say that exact line, in complete seriousness.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
[Disclaimer: For the purposes of this post, I am writing with the assumption that the New Testament is correct in its presentation of the events it portrays. This does not mean that I believe this, nor does this disclaimer mean that I don't believe this.]
What I think is also funny along those lines, is the people who consider the passages quoting Jesus in the New Testament to be his raw, unvarnished words. Even leaving English out of it, going to the Greek version that most denominations consider canon, it has all his quotes in Greek.
Now, Greek was a popular language in Roman Palestine. After the Roman empire split, the portion that contained Palestine had Greek as its official language. The chances are good that Jesus knew Greek, and spoke Greek when talking to Pontius Pilate. On the other hand, Aramaic was the common tongue which most natives of Palestine spoke at the time, and Hebrew was the language which Jesus, as a Jew, would have been used to for religious teachings. The chances of Jesus conversing privately with his disciples in Greek are slim. If he gave his sermons in Greek, the less educated of his listeners would be unable to understand him.
Therefore, some, probably most, of the canonical quotes of Jesus are actually translations, and not his unvarnished words.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Who needs a computer?
:-)
a ts
I've the same problem.
I've got masses of 20 year old VHS and Video 8 footage of valuable interviews of Doctor Who (the BBC TV show) stars and the like.
I spoke to the Doctor Who Restoration Team who *really* know how to restore or archive old video material.
http://www.restoration-team.co.uk/
Their advice to me was to record the material, using a Timebase Corrector device onto DV tape. But not the standard domestic DV tapes you see in the shops. Use the DVCAM format.
http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-tech.html#DVform
DVCAM tape have a bigger track width on the tape so have more of a chance of keeping the data over time.
DVCAM is used by the professional Video industry so they'll keep the recording/playback machines for decades.
DVCAM can be used with standard miniDV tapes so you'll get 40mins per tape or if you use a standard sized DVCAM tape you'll get up to 180mins (SP).
DV tape has a life of around 10 years.
But when you need to make a copy you just need to make a straight tape to tape copy. No loss of quality as it's digital.
Any professional editing company will do all of this for you.
Stuart http://stuarthalliday.com/