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Ask Slashdot: Video Storage For Time Capsule?

Posted by timothy on from the what-would-vint-cerf-do? dept.

New submitter dwywit, anticipating World Backup Day, writes I've been asked to film this year's ANZAC services in my town. This is a big one, as it's the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign, and dear to our hearts here in Oz. The organisers have asked me to provide a camera-to-projector setup for remote viewing (they're expecting big crowds this year), and a recording of the parade and various services throughout the morning. Copies will go to the local and state library as a record of the day, but they would also like a copy to go into a time capsule. I have two issues to solve: 1. a storage medium capable of lasting 50 or 100 years and still be readable, and 2. a wrapper/codec that will be available and usable when the capsule is opened. I have the feeling that a conversion to film might be the only way to satisfy both requirements — it's easy enough to build a projector, or even re-scan the images for viewing. Has anyone got a viable alternative? Cloud storage isn't an option — this is going underground in a stainless steel container. See also this similar question from 2008; how have the options changed in the meantime?

22 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Film! by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just looking at the subject I was going to say very high grade film. It seems like you came to the same conclusion. You already have the reasons down.

    The reason is that it will be obvious to anyone that sees it what it is and how to "decode" it. You can't say the same of any codec or digital representation. You could provide instructions about how the digital encoding works and still fail.

    I guess you could provide digital media and a way to play it, but that still seems to be a roll of dice on whether it will work. However someone can take a reel of film, put it under a magnifying glass, and SEE images.

    Just $.02

    1. Re:Film! by primebase · · Score: 5, Informative

      Polyester-based film stock specifically, with an optical soundtrack printed right on it. Dead simple to view or engineer a playback device for, from scratch if necessary. I believe it is what the Library of Congress is using these days.

      http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/07078/preserve.html

    2. Re:Film! by CastrTroy · · Score: 2

      You can get pretty cheap and pretty small computers, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to put both a film copy and a digital copy into the time capsule. Put a Raspberry Pi or something similar in there win an OS the boots up and auto plays the movie on an SD Card. If it doesn't work, you haven't lost much. If it turns out that they still have HDMI in 50 to 100 years when they open it, they will be able to play the video instantly. Some people say that SD cards degrade after a few years, even without writing to them. There's probably better storage solutions. But I still think that computers are cheap enough that you should look for a solution so that the video can be shown right away. Maybe even an entire laptop with an archival quality CD in the drive that boots and plays the video. Take out the battery and hope that they can still hook it up to a power source.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    3. Re:Film! by brokenin2 · · Score: 2

      If you're going to put an Raspberry Pi in there, you might as well put a small cheap LCD on it just in case they don't have HDMI.. There are some pretty cheap options, and they they'll hopefully only have to apply power (include the AC adapter).

      Include an M-disc with the video in a lot of common formats also as a backup..

    4. Re:Film! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Three black and white strips with real silver emulsion -- clearly labeled "red filter" "green filter" "blue filter" -- black and white film lasts much longer than dye based color film.

    5. Re:Film! by ClickOnThis · · Score: 2

      Polyester-based film stock specifically, with an optical soundtrack printed right on it. Dead simple to view or engineer a playback device for, from scratch if necessary. I believe it is what the Library of Congress is using these days.

      http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/07078/preserve.html

      Good post. However I must point out that the LoC is not the same as a time capsule. The latter does not have the advantage of active monitoring and maintenance of the health and environment of the archive. You need a medium that can survive for 50 to 100 years undisturbed (i.e., neglected) in an uncontrolled environment.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    6. Re:Film! by ClickOnThis · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why RGB? I thought everything non-digital used CYMK?

      Light-projection is additive, so RGB. Printing on paper is subtractive, so CMYK. More details here.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    7. Re:Film! by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      Power should be easy - electricity has been around for a couple of centuries, so all you really need to do is provide a break out cable and say "Ground" and "+5V @ 1A". (We've used volts forever). This is especially easy since volts and amps are based on fundamental constants so even if in 50 years they went to dabblequads and quibblewhats, it's a trivial matter to convert between the two units.

      And yeah, ye olde analog media is best. Film or even printed paper can be easily preserved, and it's really easy to restore if it deteriorates.

      This media is somewhat easy to handle and restore, so as long as human intelligence doesn't dwindle over the next 40 years, it should be fine.

      If you want to store it digitally, don't use any encoded format - you'ld basically want to store it in something like the equivalent of film - as uncompressed bitmaps stored separately in sequentially numbered files. So if they're able to read the data off it, each frame is by itself (so deterioration doesn't disrupt the frame boundaries) and converting RGB to whatever their display technology is would be a trivial exercise. The problem with encoded formats is data loss - they're robust in that they use sync bytes to regain sync, but you can lose a lot of video data simply by losing the wrong bits. Also, encoded formats, if they're way obsolete, will be very difficult to decode - imagine pulling it out and now someone has to go and write a codec from the documentation you included.

      A simple frame-based bitmap means each frame can be individually decoded, the documentation is simple and you can look at it with a hex editor and see if it "looks right". And that's after decoding enough to get at the data on the disc or hard drive.

    8. Re:Film! by TheCastro1689 · · Score: 2

      They've pulled mostly usable film out of hellish enviornments, as long as it doesn't catch fire it'll be mostly usable.

    9. Re:Film! by Blaskowicz · · Score: 2

      I assume the capsule is buried in the ground (perhaps TFA would tell me), that would probably be stable enough. Else, I'd look for a place people have been making cheese for centuries before active environment control systems.

    10. Re:Film! by TWX · · Score: 2

      I was simply pointing out something that could cause a problem if it's not researched. The more advanced the software running on the device, the greater likelihood for problems if something like some kind of security feature of the OS gets made because of a significant date mismatch.

      You don't want to be the equivalent of that old Plymouth that was put into a time capsule in the late '50s, that no one considered the groundwater level fluctuation along with seasonal flooding and the car ended up a rusted hulk of junk.

      The more refined, active, and complicated the thing stored, the less likely that it'll come through storage in an acceptable fashion. Electronic components fail (capacitor failure, tin whiskers), media delaminates or rots (CDs coming apart, "laser rot" in Laserdiscs), and means of playback get to be hard to find (old 16 frame-per-second film playing poorly on modern 24 frame-per-second projectors). There's a reason that despite putting it into the best environment for long-term storage, NASA used gold records with simple playback instructions for the Voyager Greetings from Earth messages. They wanted to use a simple medium that would still function essentially forever and be playable with something that someone could build themselves.

      The first commercially successful optical video playback medium is the Laserdisc. It debuted in 1978. Properly stored discs that are 36 years old will still play in the final generation of Laserdisc players from the late Noughties. Those players in-turn will probably function for another 20-30 years if they're lightly used on a regular basis and maintained as needed. I expect that it will still be possible to find a Blu-Ray player fifty years from now, and that there will be some means of taking its output and turning it into something playable on a modern-of-the-time television. Hell, it might actually be easier to output over component video and reassemble through whatever is current.

      A hundred years is going to be more of a crapshoot. We're still using analog radio and we still have records and reel-to-reel isn't completely dead, but I don't expect demand for spectrum will be conducive to analog radio or analog storage sources for that long, and video will be a lot worse.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  2. Flip Book! by NEDHead · · Score: 4, Funny

    No projector required, only a thumb!

    1. Re:Flip Book! by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      No projector required, only a thumb

      I'm from the future; we don't have thumbs anymore, you insensitive clod!

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:Flip Book! by Jhon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We'll have giant thumbs used for typing on itsy bitsy screens.

  3. Why not do multiple forms? by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    You have very good reasons for doing film, that is a great idea.

    But why not do more than one form of media storage? Put the video on a blue-ray disc, a DVD, and a CD, and a hard drive (be sure to read up on the best ways to burn these media for long term storage).

    Encode it in MPEG or something simple that there's already open code for, perhaps include paper in the capsule with C code printed out for a decoder.

    Even if some forms fail partly if there are multiple options present with the same content, it increases changes you can restore the full video.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Why not do multiple forms? by jandjmh · · Score: 2

      Um, no, that was not why the Rosetta stone was valuable. It was one lump of rock, "encoded" by chiseling symbols. It was not multiple forms of storage. It is more analogous to a single CD with the same song encoded as linear PCM, mp3 and OGG. So what made the Rosetta stone valuable was that it was the same content written with three coding systems -ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script, and Greek script. It was only valuable because the Greef and Demotic were decodable, and by comparison scholars learned to read ancient Egyptian. That allowed other ancient Egyptian texts to be read, whereas previously that knowledge had been lost.

  4. Name it uniquely by hawguy · · Score: 4, Funny

    When you upload it to your computer, give it a unique filename (a GUID would be good), then leave a note in the time capsule instructing them to ask the NSA to recover a copy of the file from their archives.

  5. Paper Prints! by RevWaldo · · Score: 2

    This actually worked! In the early days of film the Library of Congress had each frame of entire films printed onto paper to establish copyright. These prints survived while the original films disintegrated, and subsequently (albeit laboriously) were transferred back onto film.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

    .

    --
    Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
  6. Time Capsule by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

    Put the video on an Apple Time Capsule and put it inside the Time Capsule.

    I don't care if it works or not, just do it to confuse the people who will be digging it up in 50 or 100 years.

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  7. Like Voyager's golden record? by sbaker · · Score: 2

    100 years isn't so long. They people who open the container will almost certainly be able to read instructions - and probably have reasonable technology to access the contents. But maybe they don't care enough to go to a lot of trouble to do it? It's very likely that the images you store will still be easily accessible in the future.

    If you don't think they'll go to very much trouble - then you should provide them with the means to replay the data as well as the data itself. There are plenty of small video players (like a cheap digital camera or an MP3 player with video capability) - so long as you pack them appropriately and protect them from crazy temperature variations, they should last a long time in storage and still work at the end. Provide written instructions on what power requirements the machine has - and what buttons to push to access the content.

    But quite honestly - there is unlikely to be anything in the data you provide that won't be accessible by then.

    I would stick with physical objects that would be of historical interest, personal items - a snapshot of the times when the capsule was buried.

    Maybe it would be worth trying to find people who've opened capsules like this - and ask them what was found to be most valuable from the contents?

        -- Steve

    --
    www.sjbaker.org
  8. It's low-tech, but... by ninjagin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... how about some flip-books?

    --
    .. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
  9. Update by dwywit · · Score: 2

    While I was waiting to see if this would make the front page, I called a post-production business based at the Village Roadshow studios on the Gold Coast http://www.movieworldstudios.c...
    and asked them about a transfer from video to film.

    No-one does it in Australia. Lots of people doing film to video, but apparently I would need to send it to Technicolor in Thailand for a video-to-film transfer. And it would cost a lot more than the budget for the event. They suggested storage on multiple formats from Kodak Gold discs to USB memory sticks, using open-source codecs, with the codec whitepaper included.

    There's always the cheap film-to-video method - project your film on a screen and point a video camera at it, but do it in reverse, i.e. point a film camera at my LCD monitor. I've got a super 8 camera, but it's silent, so the audio would have to be recorded separately.

    I also got a look at the capsule - it's got about 1 or perhaps 2 cubic feet of storage, so it's not going to cope with more than a few minutes of film reels, having to compete with whatever else goes in. I'll add a DVD and a USB stick with some instructions.

    As it's not going to be a surprise for those who open the capsule (copies of footage are going to the state library and anyone who wants a copy on DVD), I think I'll contact the National Film & Sound Archive http://www.nfsa.gov.au/ and ask them to store a copy, then include a nice letter in the capsule: "Would you like to see a movie of this? Ask at the Qld State Library or the National Film & Sound Archive."

    Heh - captcha is "paranoia"

    --
    They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom