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Digital Media Archiving Challenges Hollywood
HarryCaul writes "Movies are moving to digital, but what about long-term archiving of the master source materials? Turns out it's harder for digital media than for contemporary analog. Data is being lost, and studios have to learn to cope. Phil Feiner of the AMPAS sci-tech division says when he worked on studio feature films he 'found missing frames or corrupted data on 40% of the data tapes that came in from digital intermediate houses' How to deal with it? Regular migration from old media to new media. Grover Crisp, says Sony has put in a program of migrating every two to three years. Other studios are following suit, but what about indie features? Will we lose films like we lost the originals of the 20s?"
Archive final cut to 35mm film.
"Turns out it's harder for digital media than for contemporary analog"
The negatives of the original 'Wicker Man' movie were either burnt or buried under the M3 motorway. From what I remember, some of the original 'Babylon 5' negatives were eaten by rats. They're gone, nothing will ever bring them back, because they're analogue media which can't be copied without quality loss.
The problem is the whole idea of a 'master copy' of the movie on media that goes obsolete. The benefit of digital data is that it can be copied any number of times without quality loss, so build a big RAID system and stick the movies on there. Over time it will be upgraded but the digital data will remain... the only time you'll put the data on tape will be for backups, though even then you'd probably be better copying it to other RAID servers at remote sites.
Have you ever tried to get any non-blockbuster released more than 3 weeks ago? Definitely not on Bittorrent. Maybe ed2k. Torrents are for spreading very popular stuff fast.
The current trend in the archival industry is to convert everything to digital. Unfortunately scanning is often a destructive process. In my experience, I have scanned documents that were written over 200 years ago and were still legible. In order to scan these documents, we had to cut all the pages from the binding which effectively destroys the document. The data was then burned onto dvd-r and sent back to the company. If there is any problem with a single disk, there would be a permanent loss of over 100,000 documents.
DVD is fine for the consumer market, if the disc is damaged you can just buy another one. This is not the case with the film industry, once these original masters are gone, they are gone forever. Microfilm, however can last for generations. Even if there is some degradation in the film stock, you can recover almost all the original data. Film can be split into their primary colors onto different reels of microfilm and later be re-joined.
One of my duties in the scanning industry was to operate the microfilm scanner. In this case, these were documents, but any type of information could be theoretically stored. Current models are capable of scanning at least 600 dpi. One of the hardest things would be to rejoin the frames later on and make sure they are all in sync. The way a microfilm scanner works is that on traditional microfilm, there are small squares that mark each frame. The scanner scans continuously and the software searches for these squares known as blips and it will know where to capture the image. With the addition of medium blips for keyframes and large blips for chapters, you can be fairly certain that you will be able to retrieve all the information later. If there is a missing frame, you will only be missing 1 channel of color for that particular frame. This data can be digitally re-created later.
Unlike digital media, microfilm has been around for over 100 years. The images are stored optically rather than digitally so there is a minimal amount of equipment needed for retrieval. Reproduction of microfilm is relatively inexpensive and multiple copies can be produced from the master and can be stored in multiple off-site storage areas. If the master is digital, you can produce multiple copies that are all the same quality so there isn't a single original master. It may be possible to store the sound on microfilm as well. Software would have to be developed to encode and decode the data, but it is possible.
Who knows, maybe Sun can sell a bunch of 'Thumper' boxes to Hollyweird for preservation of the digital masters.
You have GOT to be kidding. I have had too many tapes fail because of drop-outs, runners, and breakage. Cassette tapes are horrible.
I have the feeling he's talking about half-inch or one inch analog tape masters, which are quite good, and last a long time with little (perceptible) loss if stored properly. If he'd meant cassettes, he'd have said "cassette tapes".
Compact cassette tapes have always been regarded as one of the first true bastard inventions of the copyright-obsessed recording industry. Mechanically balky enclosures, thin tape that stretches easily...you name it - it took ten years to truly catch on and was subjected to a slow death by CDs.
I'm involved in some preservation of history & documentation, and the issue is both huge, and far ranging, not just movies. Here are a few issues, beyond those already stated:
- volume of data. Not uncommon for people to go on a vacation, and come back with 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000 images on 2 or 4 gig SD chips off thier digital camera. Who has the time to catalog them all? When film cost you - oh, say for arguement a dollar a shot, most people were very careful what they took pictures of to begin with, and keep them safe after the fact. We do not see very much of that attitude today, so paradoxiaclly, the more images a person has, the more likely they are to be lost over time. When it becomes too big an issue to sort the chaff from the wheat, many people just walk away from the job.
- archival materials very rare. Most color films have dyes that fade, most papers today have acid in them and will degrade over time. The list goes on, as it is not just CD's or DVDs that degrade.
- war on terror. A lot of information that is or was public domain is or has been disappearing from public libraries, web sites, etc. For example - not that I ever want to look at them, but the blueprints for the Detriot-Windsor tunnel used to be in the public domain, but not anymore.
There are many more stories, but we are creating a huge, huge memory hole at this very point in time. Maybe now that hte issue has caught the attention of th emovie industry, something might be done about it. Maybe not. Maybe 10,000 years from now the only thing left of our society to prove we were here might be our left over waste form nuke reactors that is still hot.