[Marc Wielage[_2_]]

On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 18:23:14 -0700, Trevor wrote
(in article ):

How do you know pressed CD's using a gold relective layer won't outlast
analog tape? Then there are molecular manipulation storage techniques which
look fairly promising.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Last I checked, the Library of Congress still hasn't given their blessing to
digital backups for audio. They're still using 1/4" analog 15ips.

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections gets into archival discussions
quite frequently:

http://www.arsc-audio.org/

I would say long-term archival storage is one of the biggest challenges for
anybody that has large numbers of music, TV, or film performances. My fear
is that a lot of great movies, TV shows, and music is going to fall apart
before we can get it digitally archived to something stable, lossless, and
easily playable.

--MFW

[Mike Rivers]

On 4/5/2012 4:23 PM, Marc Wielage wrote:

Last I checked, the Library of Congress still hasn't given their blessing to
digital backups for audio. They're still using 1/4" analog 15ips.

Well, check again. They're building a digital archive (it'll
take another 50 years) and it's backed up and backed up and
backed up. The facility is darn safe, too. It's really quite
amazing, Next time you're in Culpepper VA you should take a
tour.

I would say long-term archival storage is one of the biggest challenges for
anybody that has large numbers of music, TV, or film performances.

Some, maybe, but not anybody. How many things do you have
that you really, really, care about? What would be the
effect on your life should you lose a recording or a TV
show? And do you even KNOW everything you have?

Anybody?

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not one of these "music is
temporary" people. I have some things that I enjoy listening
to several times over a decade. But I wouldn't cry if a CD
or DAT would no longer play. Not unless it was my job to
preserve it for eternity.


--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Scott Dorsey]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On 4/5/2012 4:23 PM, Marc Wielage wrote:

Last I checked, the Library of Congress still hasn't given their blessing to
digital backups for audio. They're still using 1/4" analog 15ips.

Well, check again. They're building a digital archive (it'll
take another 50 years) and it's backed up and backed up and
backed up. The facility is darn safe, too. It's really quite
amazing, Next time you're in Culpepper VA you should take a
tour.

But, they're not throwing away the originals or the safeties!

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not one of these "music is
temporary" people. I have some things that I enjoy listening
to several times over a decade. But I wouldn't cry if a CD
or DAT would no longer play. Not unless it was my job to
preserve it for eternity.

The one thing I learned as an intern from Mr. Fordham way back when I was
a young high schooler was this: "Never pass up an opportunity to bill the
customer for something." When a tape is unreadable, you cannot bill for it.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Mxsmanic]

Marc Wielage writes:

Last I checked, the Library of Congress still hasn't given their blessing to
digital backups for audio. They're still using 1/4" analog 15ips.

A digital backup is essentially no different from an analog backup in terms of
longevity if it is using the same recording medium. The only significant
difference is that analog recordings degrade gradually and continuously from
the time they are created, whereas digial recordings do not degrade at all
until the media has deteriorated enough physically, and then they suddenly
become totally unreadable.

Either way, you lose the recordings, eventually. The advantage of digital is
that you can copy those recordings losslessly to new media before they fail,
whereas copying analog recordings always carries over the accumulated
deterioration that they've amassed.

I would say long-term archival storage is one of the biggest challenges for
anybody that has large numbers of music, TV, or film performances. My fear
is that a lot of great movies, TV shows, and music is going to fall apart
before we can get it digitally archived to something stable, lossless, and
easily playable.

It has happened regularly in the past. Since digital and analog both depend on
physical media that are essentially analog in nature, digital will not prevent
the losses over the long term in most cases.

It would be better to simply accept the fact that you can't preserve
everything, not even digitally.

[Mxsmanic]

Mike Rivers writes:

Some, maybe, but not anybody. How many things do you have
that you really, really, care about? What would be the
effect on your life should you lose a recording or a TV
show? And do you even KNOW everything you have?

Exactly. There isn't much that I consider so important that it must be
preserved intact forever. I even throw stuff away when I get tired of the
overhead required to preserve it.

[Marc Wielage[_2_]]

On Fri, 6 Apr 2012 06:58:35 -0700, Mike Rivers wrote
(in article ):

Well, check again. They're building a digital archive (it'll
take another 50 years) and it's backed up and backed up and
backed up. The facility is darn safe, too. It's really quite
amazing, Next time you're in Culpepper VA you should take a
tour.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Yeah, I casually know Pat Kennedy, who is their resident film scanning tech
and colorist on staff in Virginia. Pat's a great guy who does exceptional
work, and I have no doubt they're doing everything they can to hang on to
what they've got.



Some, maybe, but not anybody. How many things do you have
that you really, really, care about? What would be the
effect on your life should you lose a recording or a TV
show? And do you even KNOW everything you have?
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Even getting the important Top 10 hit TV shows of (say) the last 30 years
digitally archived is on the back burner of many studios. Almost none of the
film shows are being done at 4K, with the exception of SEINFELD and a few
others. And the videotape shows are really, really falling apart quickly.



Now don't get me wrong. I'm not one of these "music is
temporary" people. I have some things that I enjoy listening
to several times over a decade. But I wouldn't cry if a CD
or DAT would no longer play. Not unless it was my job to
preserve it for eternity.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Nobody knows how many master tapes Universal lost in the studio fire three
years ago. Their official statement at the time was, "well, everything
important has already been released." But you have to wonder, what about all
the other stuff that wasn't considered important: B-sides, album tracks,
alternate takes, live performances... there's tons of stuff that isn't
necessarily "hit" material that deserves to be saved.

There are rumors that all of Bing Crosby's masters were lost, along with
Ricky Nelson and scores of others. Granted, the mastered CDs survive -- as
CDs -- but it's still sad if the analog master tapes are gone forever. And I
wouldn't consider, say, a 1984-1985 CD to sound as good as that tape could
ever sound, given the issues with A/D converters and digital recording in
that era.


--MFW

[Mike Rivers]

On 4/6/2012 10:39 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:

The one thing I learned as an intern from Mr. Fordham way back when I was
a young high schooler was this: "Never pass up an opportunity to bill the
customer for something." When a tape is unreadable, you cannot bill for it.

Ah, but you can bill him for backing it up, and do that
about every 5-10 years as long as he's interested in
preserving it.



--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Mike Rivers]

On 4/6/2012 12:01 PM, Mxsmanic wrote:

There isn't much that I consider so important that it must be
preserved intact forever. I even throw stuff away when I get tired of the
overhead required to preserve it.

These days, most of the stuff that I record gets deleted
before I even finish listening to it. Work for clients, of
course, is different, but I leave it to them to back it up
however they desire. I usually keep one copy but I don't
promise them anything. I record. I'm not an archivist.
That's not something for which I can evaluate my own work so
I don't want the responsibility.



--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Mike Rivers]

On 4/6/2012 5:12 PM, Marc Wielage wrote:

Nobody knows how many master tapes Universal lost in the studio fire three
years ago. Their official statement at the time was, "well, everything
important has already been released." But you have to wonder, what about all
the other stuff that wasn't considered important: B-sides, album tracks,
alternate takes, live performances... there's tons of stuff that isn't
necessarily "hit" material that deserves to be saved.

This is debatable, so let's let others debate it. I've
rarely heard a bootleg or a discovered track that I thought
was any more important than what was officially released.
Some people get paid a lot of money to decide what to
release and what to set aside. If they thought those
alternate takes were important enough to release it would
have been done. Now it's just a money maker.

I'm hearing a lot of alternate takes of bluegrass recordings
from the 1950s, mistakes and all. Some people eat that up,
but the version that was released, IMHO, was better and was
the one that the artist should have wanted his fans to hear,
not one that they didn't think was as good when they
recorded it. They're usually right.

There are rumors that all of Bing Crosby's masters were lost, along with
Ricky Nelson and scores of others. Granted, the mastered CDs survive -- as
CDs -- but it's still sad if the analog master tapes are gone forever.

Well, yeah, but unless some care was taken in the archiving,
the CDs are probably in better condition should someone want
to do a re-issue. Where the original master tapes are worth
having, or at least hearing, is when the CD master was badly
buggered (because they thought that was better at the time).
I have reservations about remixed material. Sure, we have
better sounding mixers today, but a remix isn't what the
artist approved (unless he's still alive and has an
opportunity to do so). Sometimes they work with the artist
and you really have a new product with no recording cost.
That's always good for the bottom line, and it makes
collectors happy.



--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Trevor]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
The one thing I learned as an intern from Mr. Fordham way back when I was
a young high schooler was this: "Never pass up an opportunity to bill the
customer for something." When a tape is unreadable, you cannot bill for
it.

Which is ONLY worthwhile as long as you can bill them more than your
maintenance cost. MANY companies don't even think simple storage costs can
ever be paid from possible future sales. And most of them are probably
right. It's only in the small number of cases they are wrong that people get
really annoyed.

Trevor.

[Trevor]

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
...
On 4/6/2012 10:39 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
The one thing I learned as an intern from Mr. Fordham way back when I was
a young high schooler was this: "Never pass up an opportunity to bill the
customer for something." When a tape is unreadable, you cannot bill for
it.

Ah, but you can bill him for backing it up, and do that about every 5-10
years as long as he's interested in preserving it.

That's probably about 5 minutes after you send the first maintenance bill!
:-)

Trevor.

[Scott Dorsey]

Nobody knows how many master tapes Universal lost in the studio fire three
years ago. Their official statement at the time was, "well, everything
important has already been released." But you have to wonder, what about all
the other stuff that wasn't considered important: B-sides, album tracks,
alternate takes, live performances... there's tons of stuff that isn't
necessarily "hit" material that deserves to be saved.

I talked to the film guys, and they said that no film negatives had been
lost, only prints. Unfortunately a lot of prints were lost and due to the
general decline in popularity of 35mm, I suspect many of them will not be
replaced.

I tried to book Questor Tapes in 35mm for a science fiction convention
this past fall and got that bit of bad news. No prints available.

There are rumors that all of Bing Crosby's masters were lost, along with
Ricky Nelson and scores of others. Granted, the mastered CDs survive -- as
CDs -- but it's still sad if the analog master tapes are gone forever. And I
wouldn't consider, say, a 1984-1985 CD to sound as good as that tape could
ever sound, given the issues with A/D converters and digital recording in
that era.

And that's a real tragedy.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Every time I come across this subject header, I think of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86UwtWmmkzo
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[William Sommerwerck]

I tried to book "The Questor Tapes" in 35mm for a science fiction
convention this past Fall and got that bit of bad news. No prints
available.

This was a made-for-TV movie. It's unlikely there were ever more than two or
three 35mm prints. It's entirely possible the camera and composite negatives
have been lost.

[Scott Dorsey]

William Sommerwerck wrote:
I tried to book "The Questor Tapes" in 35mm for a science fiction
convention this past Fall and got that bit of bad news. No prints
available.

This was a made-for-TV movie. It's unlikely there were ever more than two or
three 35mm prints. It's entirely possible the camera and composite negatives
have been lost.

I don't know if it got any theatrical distribution or not, but there was a
35mm print available from Universal five years back, and there is no longer
one.

Universal is very, very good about making older films available to repertory
houses and nonprofits. Even much of their early silent film stuff is
still available for rental at reasonable prices.

We ran a very ratty 16mm syndication print borrowed from a collector and
paid licensing when we weren't able to get it on 35, and it really is a
great film that deserves better.

Oh... also we ran Americathon a couple years ago.... the heads and tails
had been cut off the print to run it on a platter, but they had been cemented
back on. I haven't seen a cement splicer in a theatre since before estar
film came out... that thing was probably sitting around in a closet since
the seventies. But someone at Universal cared.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Mxsmanic]

Scott Dorsey writes:

I don't know if it got any theatrical distribution or not, but there was a
35mm print available from Universal five years back, and there is no longer
one.

On a hunch, I looked it up on YouTube, and the entire movie is there. No
telling how long it will remain before Universal objects to it. But it won't
be in their Content ID system, if there's no print to populate the Content ID
system from.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the only surviving copy of the film turned out to be
an unauthorized upload to YouTube?

[Marc Wielage[_2_]]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 07:25:23 -0700, Scott Dorsey wrote
(in article ):

I talked to the film guys, and they said that no film negatives had been
lost, only prints. Unfortunately a lot of prints were lost and due to the
general decline in popularity of 35mm, I suspect many of them will not be
replaced.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Ask them about the number of B&W finegrain prints that were lost. My fear is
that some of these prints that were destroyed may have been the only
remaining film copies, particularly for certain TV shows.




I tried to book Questor Tapes in 35mm for a science fiction convention
this past fall and got that bit of bad news. No prints available.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Very interesting story on how the studios are forcing most North American
theaters to switch to digital over the next year:

http://www.laweekly.com/2012-04-12/f...tal-Hollywood/


The problem with this is, if the studios don't want to make a print
available, and the film or TV show is not available as a digital file, it's
just not available, PERIOD. This will be a huge blow to small independent
theaters and cult film groups and conventions.

--MFW

[William Sommerwerck]

"Marc Wielage" wrote in message
.com...
On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 07:25:23 -0700, Scott Dorsey wrote
(in article ):

I talked to the film guys, and they said that no film negatives had been
lost, only prints. Unfortunately a lot of prints were lost and due to
the
general decline in popularity of 35mm, I suspect many of them will not
be replaced.

Ask them about the number of B&W finegrain prints that were lost. My
fear is that some of these prints that were destroyed may have been
the only remaining film copies, particularly for certain TV shows.

What's even worse to contemplate is that there /are/ remaining copies --
beaten-up 16mm syndication prints.

Although Paramount has some of the best Blu-ray transfers (and you can
actually /talk/ to home video customer service), their LVs were nothing to
write home about. "Hud" came from a low-contrast, low-resolution (probably
16mm) print. I sent it back.


Very interesting story on how the studios are forcing most North American
theaters to switch to digital over the next year:

http://www.laweekly.com/2012-04-12/f...ital-Hollywood

Unless I'm mistaken, movies are filmed on cellulose acetate materials -- not
celluloid (cellulose nitrate, actually).

"Elegant in its economy, for more than 100 years film has been the dominant
medium with [sic] which movies are shot, edited and viewed."

ECONOMY? 35mm color film is not exactly cheap. It cost much less to shoot
digitally. And if you want to digitally edit film, you have to scan the
negative first. This isn't required for digital shooting.

"A few months later, Nolan steps out of the editing bay to discuss his
purpose on that December evening. He says he wanted to remind his fellow
filmmakers what photochemical film can do. It is too easy to forget the
beauty and power of 35mm."

Hello? A digital image can be "graded" to look any way you want. It can be
made to look like any film stock that ever existed, or something altogether
different. * Movies shot on film are increasingly being transferred to
digital video for editing, compositing, and other post-production fiddling,
then returned to film. ** If you're going to do that -- why shoot on film in
the first place?

The economy of digital, at every step in the creation/editing/viewing
process is plain, as is the potentially great improvement in image quality.
But not all theaters can afford to switch to digital "right away". I doubt
studios will refuse to send them conventional prints, if it's the difference
between having the film play in that theater, and not. (However, the
article's conclusion that many small and "art house" theaters will go under
is all-too plausible.)

The ultimate possibility is that, if there's no one around to show classic
films from 35mm prints, and the studio doesn't care to make a BD (or
higher-resolution) transfer, it might decide to stop curating their older
films (ie, let them disintegrate) -- or destroy them outright. Why hang on
to inventory when there's no market for it?

"The constraints of film, however, force artists to master their craft. An
old-school cinematographer like Freddie Young, for instance, could shoot on
a film camera with no digital monitor to check his progress - and walk out
at the end with "Lawrence of Arabia"."

This is a naive, incomplete, and largely incorrect view. Video monitors have
been used for decades with conventional filming, if only to correctly frame
the image. NO cinematographer is going to judge what he's doing by a quick
glance at a monitor. The reason is that cinematographers -- despite their
designation -- are actually lighting directors. A good cinematographer
/understands/ how the lighting on the set will "translate" to what's seen in
the theater -- regardless of whether he's shooting on film or digital. Both
media require the same skill set.

We're so accustomed to the character of photographic film that the superior
technical quality of digital can seem downright "sterile". (There's an
obvious parallel with phonograph records and SACDs.) But digital can "look
like" pretty much anything the director wants. Is that bad? I don't know
whether "Hugo" was shot digitally or on film stock, but it's been "graded"
in a way that would be impossible with photographic film.


The problem with this is, if the studios don't want to make a print
available, and the film or TV show is not available as a digital file,
it's just not available, PERIOD. This will be a huge blow to small
independent theaters and cult film groups and conventions.

The only good thing about seeing the wretched "Cars 2" was the 4K
projection. It's the first time I saw a theatrical presentation that beat
home BD/plasma. It was nothing short of spectacular, even on a huge screen.


Film is not a truly archival medium. Nitrate film is notorious for turning
to dust, dissolving into goo, or spontaneously bursting into flames. (This
is why the original sound track of "Fantasia" no longer exists.) I asked
Marc why the DVD of "To Be or Not to Be" was inferior to the LV (some scenes
of the former were soft and low in contrast). He opined that, in the years
between the transfers, the source materials had deteriorated (or
disintegrated), and lower-quality elements had to be substituted. The fact
is that, it might take a long, long time, but /all/ motion pictures on film
will become unwatchable -- or disappear altogether.

Supposedly, at least 80% of all silent films have disappeared, and 50% of
sound films made before 1950 are gone (lost or disintegrated). *** Though
most of these are probably poor films from smaller studios, it doesn't
change the fact that film stock must eventually fade or fall to pieces.

Of course, digital isn't truly archival, either. My guess is that studios
will store films on multiple solid-state drives. These should last much
longer -- but we don't know what their true longevity is.

Historic error... Acetate film was not invented in 1948. It's at least a
decade older. Kodak introduced safety film for its first home-movie system,
as George Eastman didn't want consumers handling anything as unsafe as
nitrate film.


* A "Deep Space 9" episode that involved time travel to the "Trouble with
Tribbles" storyline used digital grading to make the newly shot scenes match
those borrowed from the original series.

** "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" was the first movie in which every scene
was run through post-production digital processing. A scene that was
supposed to take place in an Autumnal forest had been shot "when all the
trees and leaves are green", so the leaf color was changed.

*** Some films exist as a single print. "City of the Dead", a classic
British horror film ("Horror Hotel" in the US), is one such.

[Frank]

On Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:31:01 -0700, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article Uh-oh! Old CDs breaking down - Check your archives.,
"William Sommerwerck" wrote:

I don't know
whether "Hugo" was shot digitally or on film stock, but it's been "graded"
in a way that would be impossible with photographic film.

According to the article cited below, which originally appeared in the
January/February 2012 issue of Creative Cow magazine, it was shot
using Arri Alexa cameras (which are digital) and recorded to Sony
HDCAM SR magnetic tape (which is the highest quality digital video
tape format available).

Hugo and The Joy of Filmmaking - Creative COW
http://library.creativecow.net/artic...ne_30_HUGO.php

It isn't mentioned in the article, but the video tape recorder used
was probably the Sony SRW-1 / SRPC-1.

--
Frank, Independent Consultant, New York, NY
[Please remove 'nojunkmail.' from address to reply via e-mail.]
Read Frank's thoughts on HDV at http://www.humanvalues.net/hdv/
[also covers AVCHD (including AVCCAM & NXCAM) and XDCAM EX].

[[email protected]]

On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 10:25:23 AM UTC-4, Scott Dorsey wrote:

Nobody knows how many master tapes Universal lost in the studio fire three
years ago. Their official statement at the time was, "well, everything
important has already been released." But you have to wonder, what about all
the other stuff that wasn't considered important: B-sides, album tracks,
alternate takes, live performances... there's tons of stuff that isn't
necessarily "hit" material that deserves to be saved.

I talked to the film guys, and they said that no film negatives had been
lost, only prints. Unfortunately a lot of prints were lost and due to the
general decline in popularity of 35mm, I suspect many of them will not be
replaced.

I tried to book Questor Tapes in 35mm for a science fiction convention
this past fall and got that bit of bad news. No prints available.

There are rumors that all of Bing Crosby's masters were lost, along with
Ricky Nelson and scores of others. Granted, the mastered CDs survive -- as
CDs -- but it's still sad if the analog master tapes are gone forever. And I
wouldn't consider, say, a 1984-1985 CD to sound as good as that tape could
ever sound, given the issues with A/D converters and digital recording in
that era.

And that's a real tragedy.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
__________________
This might be of interest to you from the film side, altough I strongly suggest you NOT ATTEMPT TO ACCESS THIS SPECIFIC WEBSITE: secrethistoryofstarwars . com/savingstarwars. html Both Google and IE pop up a warning this site may harm your computer. It's too bad but this article a year ago was not harmful and was a good expose on the restorative process as awell as the controversy surrounding George Lucas's "Special Editions" of the 1990s and 2000s.

There are similar sites describing what has happened to the 1977 negatives and the long-as-Star-Wars-itself-saga to preserve for future generations what many of us born 1970 or earlier saw for the first time.

As for my CD collection, I would say at least half of it is over 20 years old as of 2012, but I have not noticed any problems - yet. I recently did a lot of rips in iTunes and my results were more than satisfactory: running 256mbs for mp3 and full - not joint - stereo!

-CC

-ChrisCoaster