Is film archaic / about to die soon?

[Mitch Perkins]

"Well, all I can tell you about that is that I fe"

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A little joke, referring to, "How about a mystery novel with the very last page missing?"

Mitch

[Mitch Perkins]

The history of electronic formats tells us that they die very quickly, and a decade or two on it can be nigh on impossible to access your material.

[...]

However, since film projection is essentially optical and mechanical there's little to stop some mechanically minded bod from constructing a projector from scratch. Merely looking at the frames gives you all the information you need to know what you need to build....imagine looking at a faceless piece of videotape or the files on some solid state storage device and working out how to retrieve the information!!

Yep.

Mitch

[John_Pytlak]

It should be noted that consumer video formats, whether it be VHS, S-VHS, Hi-8 or a highly compressed digital format like Mini-DV, are "lossy". Assuming that you have to "migrate" the images or data on a 3 to 5 year basis, over a period of about 50 years, you are likely to make at least 10 iterations of "a copy of a copy". (At least if the consumer remembers and can afford to migrate the data on a regular basis )

We all know how bad a tenth-generation copy of a VHS tape would look, even under the best of conditions.

What kind of quality will a tenth-generation copy of a highly compressed consumer digital video format like Mini-DV maintain? How bad will the compression artifacts look? :?:

[Mitch Perkins]

It should be noted that consumer video formats, whether it be VHS, S-VHS, Hi-8 or a highly compressed digital format like Mini-DV are "lossy". Assuming that you have to "migrate" the images or data on a 3 to 5 year basis, over a period of about 50 years, you are likely to make at least 10 iterations of "a copy of a copy". (At least if the consumer remembers and can afford to migrate the data on a regular basis )

My point exactly - people are far more likely to let it slide than to religiously migrate to each new cash-grab format. Meanwhile the film sits in the box, ready for anything.

We all know how bad a tenth-generation copy of a VHS tape would look, even under the best of conditions.

What kind of quality will a tenth-generation copy of a highly compressed consumer digital video format like Mini-DV maintain? How bad will the compression artifacts look? :?:

Yes, and pity the poor soul who sets a tape down close to, say, a speaker magnet. The DVD requires no such unfortunate mistake; it's busy de-laminating itself just for kicks!

Mitch

[MovieStuff]

It should be noted that consumer video formats, whether it be VHS, S-VHS, Hi-8 or a highly compressed digital format like Mini-DV are "lossy". Assuming that you have to "migrate" the images or data on a 3 to 5 year basis, over a period of about 50 years, you are likely to make at least 10 iterations of "a copy of a copy". (At least if the consumer remembers and can afford to migrate the data on a regular basis )

My point exactly - people are far more likely to let it slide than to religiously migrate to each new cash-grab format. Meanwhile the film sits in the box, ready for anything.

We all know how bad a tenth-generation copy of a VHS tape would look, even under the best of conditions.

What kind of quality will a tenth-generation copy of a highly compressed consumer digital video format like Mini-DV maintain? How bad will the compression artifacts look? :?:

Yes, and pity the poor soul who sets a tape down close to, say, a speaker magnet. The DVD requires no such unfortunate mistake; it's busy de-laminating itself just for kicks!

No offense, John, but playing the corporate spin about the longevity of film while it's a sure bet that 99% of Kodak employees shoot nothing but digital in their everyday life is kind of funny. And why you guys prefer to speculate on what people might do with their home movies in the future while totally ignoring the obvious trend of what people are doing with their home movies right now is a mystery to me.

Whatever.

Obviously, if there is a way to read film in the future, then film has more information to extract if the film is still around. I have never argued against that point, so trying to make me seem like I am is kind of silly. Film has more information and lasts longer. No discussion needed. And while digital may not have as much information currently, it can be migrated easily, so the risk of data loss is far less than with film, which suffers data loss immediately during transfer using methods commonly available to the average consumer.

Whether there will be projectors of any kind 20-30 years in the future is anyone's guess but current trends say that they are not valued enough by consumers to use now, so future existence is unlikely. And if better quality isn't demanded by the consumers of the future, then I see little reason that businesses or consumers would seek out projectors at that time, either.

Film lost out to analog video, analog video lost out to digital and digital can be migrated so easily now that the only difference one will see in the future is how much better digital is then than now. But film will look only as good as current digital transfers will allow because that is the migrated version of the home movie they will reach for; not a roll of film to thread into a 100 year old movie projector, assuming they could even find one.

I share your belief that film is better. Unfortunately, you and I do not control market values or trends and consumers don't give a rat's ass about "better"; they just want it "good enough" and they want making copies to be easy. Film isn't and that is why associated technology will die out and digital will thrive.

Roger

[John_Pytlak]

If the images have VALUE, they will be transferred to whatever new display format is needed from the original film. You assume the average consumer does not value their images, so a tenth-generation lossy digital copy will be preferred to doing a new scan of the original film that has been stored properly. Maybe so, but I'll venture that when Warner Bros. want to release "Casablanca" for its hundreth anniversary in 2042 on holographic memory chips in "Ultra Definition" 8K resolution, they are going to go back to scan the 35mm film in their cold-storage archive, rather than a 50-year old telecine transfer that's been migrated through ten generations of digital copying.

Why was John Lowry's company hired to make new 4K scans of "I Love Lucy" from 35mm film, rather than just use an earlier video copy? Because it provided the best quality for the latest generation of DVDs and HD syndication that are likely to generate millions of dollars in new revenue.

[reflex]

Why was John Lowry's company hired to make new 4K scans of "I Love Lucy" from 35mm film, rather than just use an earlier video copy? Because it provided the best quality for the latest generation of DVDs and HD syndication that are likely to generate millions of dollars in new revenue.

Interesting that you should mention Lowry, because it points out how digital is likely to be the storage medium of choice for many old films. Their restoration of Star Wars resulted in an uncompressed 4K digital "master" that lives in the Lucasfilm valut and will probably be the de-facto source for future editions of the film.

The only problem with digital restoration of this nature is that it removes many of film's quirks -- the Lowry version of Casablanca has unnervingly perfect frame registration and every last speck of dust and frame damage has been removed, along with some tweaks to image contrast. The end result looks beautiful on DVD but doesn't equate to the pristine print that was shown at the film's premiere over 60 years ago.

I've watched Casablanca dozens of times on film and VHS, but this was the first time I was able to see the brush strokes on the title backgrounds. It was mildly unnerving and gives modern audiences unrealistic expectations about how old film should look.

It will be interesting to see whether the restored version of Star Wars maintains the grain and color palette of the original.

The difficult question: Which is better, the original or a "perfect" restoration?

[John_Pytlak]

It's likely there are also some laser recorded "film outs" of the Star Wars series kept in the archive too. 8) And if anything, the master positives and duplicate negatives used for the film release are usually considered archival "elements", and stored for future use.

But you bring up another advantage about keeping the original film. It provides the definitive "cut", without the digital manipulation that may be in violation of the filmmaker's original artistic intent.

[Angus]

It seems when looking at the desired quality, consumers value TV and movie material more than their own memories.

Not just Lucy...every DVD put out by the BBC is rigorously restored. They even pay a "restoration team" to perform miracles with Doctor Who, especially the earlier B&W episodes. People do seem to care, and if you look at http://www.restoration-team.co.uk you can see the difference is considerable. Where a title was released on VHS in the 80's and has more recently been remastered for DVD, the work done is sometimes staggering.

Perhaps the problem is that most people make shitty home movies in the first place. If it looks rubbish to begin with, why bother archiving it?

Even with analogue video I try to archive as best I can. I keep the original tapes, two replay machines..and have made two DVD copies in XP mode (1 hr per single layer disc) of every tape I hold to be of importance...but I know my Kodachrome will outlive me!

And whether the social archeologists build mechanical projectors or not...they can visually examine films and work out how to convert the images to the preferred storage/display format of the day.

[reflex]

They even pay a "restoration team" to perform miracles with Doctor Who, especially the earlier B&W episodes.

Wasn't part of the problem with Doctor Who that they discarded many of the originals? My understanding is that over 100 episodes are missing, and quite a few early episodes exist only because the BBC was able to recover a well worn print or U-Matic tape from some far-flung region of the planet. I imagine that those would require serious restoration work to bring them up to broadcast quality.

[Angus]

Some 100+ episodes are indeed missing. There's not much a restoration team can do with those.

The team actually got together in the early 90's in a successful attempt to mate high quality B&W 16mm telerecordings (kinescopes) of early 70's colour episodes with poor quality off-air NTSC Betamax recordings made just before the 2" master tapes were junked circa 1978.

They managed to mate the high quality B&W film with low band colour video signals to produce a fairly high quality PAL colour master...so successful were they that these became the official broadcast masters.

Their techniques have been further refined in the intervening 15 years.

They also take the 16mm telerecordings of 60's B&W episodes and restore them to broadcast quality.

Quite simply what they do is astounding. They can take a reasonable looking 25fps 16mm negative or print...scan it using the Spirit telecine, and have developed techniques to remove damage - both film scratches/damage and VT dropouts on the playback used for the telerecording.....and even restore the 50 video fields per second.

Comparison of an 80's VHS release with the DVD release shows not only the increased resolution and steadiness of the newer format...but the qualityof the image used in the master is amazing.

Clearly the DVD buyers care enough to make it worth the BBC's while to pay the team to perform all this work.

The BBC also, at considerable expense, developed its own algorithms for encoding PAL analogue video to MPEG for DVD use....and its noticable that BBC DVD's seem to have fewer compression artifacts than other officially released TV material.

I'd assume they do this because the punters care enough...after all, we all agree that DVD is better than VHS.

So the quesiton is...why do we care so little about our own images?

[timdrage]

Go out and buy some film tomorrow: If you're very careful, you just may be able to shoot a good movie and show it to an appreciative audience before (a) the film stock, (b) film as a medium (c) you, or (d) any combination of the above, die.

[reflex]

Thanks for the great Doctor Who comments, Angus. I had no idea the Beeb dedicated such effort to their shows. My sis-in-law recently mailed me a DVD version of the Lion, Witch & Wardrobe series from the late 1980s and I was quite impressed with its quality.

So the quesiton is...why do we care so little about our own images?

I suspect few people know what's possible with old film. Many invested money to get flickery low-rez VHS dubs made in the 1980s and they probably think the low quality is a fault of the film.

And, quite honestly, there's a lot of bad footage out there. It tends to lose meaning after a couple of generations, too -- it's hard to get enthused about film of your great great uncles unless you actually knew them.

[MovieStuff]

If the images have VALUE, they will be transferred to whatever new display format is needed from the original film.

But only if there is a new transfer method that is within financial reach of these people at that time and only if they see the need for it. You know as well as I do that less demand results in higher costs so home movie transfers aren't going to be any cheaper later than they are now, if they're available at all. All market indicators are that people care about convenience more than quality. They aren't having their transfers done now because they will look better than projecting them. They are having their films transferred to digital now because it is more convenient. What indicator predicts a change in that attitude for the future? I see none. Instead, I see people that are satisfied with less. How can you argue that they aren't when virtually the entire Kodak market for consumer film, which you rightfully consider superior, has been consumed by digital, which you consider inferior?

You assume the average consumer does not value their images,

I never said that at all. I said they value convenience over quality. Why else would they have switched from super 8 to video in the first place? But if they really valued superior imagery, then super 8 would still be the home movie format of choice and we would not even being having this discussion. There will be no quality alternatives for transfer in the future if the consumer base does not have a demand for it. I mean, is Kodak going to release an 8mm home film scanner any time soon? Next year? 10 years from now? You don't have to answer that but I think we all know that Kodak is investing heavily in digital, even as I type this. Again, how many Kodak employees shoot digital exclusively for their personal picture taking needs? I think that says a lot about lowered expectations of the consumers that drive market trends.

so a tenth-generation lossy digital copy will be preferred to doing a new scan of the original film that has been stored properly.

You are still thinking in analog terms. A tenth generation digital copy will bascially look just like the first compared to the marked difference between the original film and even the highest quality scan currently available, which no one can even afford.

Maybe so, but I'll venture that when Warner Bros. want to release "Casablanca" for its hundreth anniversary in 2042 on holographic memory chips in "Ultra Definition" 8K resolution, they are going to go back to scan the 35mm film in their cold-storage archive, rather than a 50-year old telecine transfer that's been migrated through ten generations of digital copying.

Why was John Lowry's company hired to make new 4K scans of "I Love Lucy" from 35mm film, rather than just use an earlier video copy? Because it provided the best quality for the latest generation of DVDs and HD syndication that are likely to generate millions of dollars in new revenue.

And all this relates to consumer super 8 home movies how?

Citing market trends for commercial film ventures has no relevance to the archiving problems faced by the average person with a box of super 8 home movies that doesn't have 4K scans in their budget this month.

Roger

[reflex]

All market indicators are that people care about convenience more than quality ... I see people that are satisfied with less.

People care about quality, but only if it is reasonably convenient and affordable. It's been that way since the dawn of filmmaking, or people would have flocked to 16mm cameras instead of cheap plastic Super 8 boxes from Sears. ;)

Video replaced film because it didn't require processing, the media was far less expensive, and most people had video machines in their homes. Consumers chose to accept the format's image quality because of its other benefits.