Archival Quality: 20 Year Old CDs Disintegrates In Denmark.

[downix]

tried to read a Commodore 64 floppy lately? How about a Sinclair audiotape? an Altair paperpunch?

[wahiba]

Why is there a need to 'archive' digital data?

Is the world going to end tomorrow?

Are all power supplies going to shut down?

Hopefully not.

Digital data just needs to keep passing around from the current storage medium to the next.

Punch tape to magnetic, magnetic to optical, optical to ??????? and so life goes on.

Passing information on is one of the great ways to store it. As an example. Early monochrome video recordings on Dr Who and the like were lost, wiped by the BBC. However, because copies had been sent to foerign parts, where it turned out they had been kept the episodes were retrieved.

So, the best way to keep data is to stick on a central server system where it is always being swapped around various storage mediums and so can last indefinitely.

An argument for reducing copyright times to the life of the author, or less in the case of corporate ownership.

An example, Pathe newsreels are now, I think, freely available. They will be around for a long long time.

As a final shot. No doubt an archival CD can be made. It just won't cost 10 c/p/etc in Tescos, Morrisons, Wallies mart et al.

[Angus]

Doctor Who...

THe 60's episodes that exist are all on....16mm B&W film!!!!

The foreign sales were telerecorded (US=kinescope) from VT and in all cases the 50 fields per second is reduced to 25, often the system was not set up well by the engineers leading to poor quality film transfers...or the VT was falling apart even within a few months of original broadcast leading to serious picture faults (ever seen the original VHS release of Tomb of the Cybermen????)

Only in this century have a group of volunteers who love the material been able to come up with computer aided techniques to restore the picture and sound to anywhere close to the original transmission quality. And still over 100 episodes remain missing, several colour episodes exist only in monochrome...the situation for other old BBC programmes is generally worse because they don't enjoy the huge fan base Doctor Who does.

It is far better if the original medium remains archivable...every copy means something can go wrong - even with digital data noise can get into the system anywhere copper or even fiber optic cable is used and data can be lost with each generation.

[mattias]

wait a minute, something's rotting in the state of denmark, and nobody sees the obvious connection? i suddenly feel very small in the hands of life imitating art...

/matt

[downix]

Passing information on is one of the great ways to store it. As an example. Early monochrome video recordings on Dr Who and the like were lost, wiped by the BBC. However, because copies had been sent to foerign parts, where it turned out they had been kept the episodes were retrieved.

Common misperception, but somewhat false. The episodes of Dr. Who were stored on 16mm film for offshore distribution, not on videotape. BBC had to deal with a multitude of broadcast standards, so they decided that film was the preferred method of shipping an episode across the globe. Their foresight allowed Dr. Who to be enjoyed by children around the world, in dozens of languages. The film was ordered burned by one manager due to age, as they felt that the tape was the primary copy. However, then the tapes were erased by another group within the BBC, as the tapes were classified as short-term storage with the film as long-term archival. One hand not talking to the other, and episodes vanished. Almost every recovered episode of Dr. Who has been found on 16mm film, not on tape.

[ColinSmith]

I appreciate that there could be a big loss in digital photos and videos among the CD / DVD home users could leave gathering dust in the attic, but when it comes to really archiving images digital will win surely out in the end - all you're arguing over is how the balance of cost / convenience alters over various timescales.

Ok, for digital maybe you have to make 10 copies, and read them and re-archive to a new medium every 5 years, but if you're willing to invest that effort you will have an exact copy of the original after however many years you want to keep going for.

With film you're limited to 100-200 years maximum before having to downgrade with a lossy copy, no?

[marc]

Why is there a need to 'archive' digital data?

Is the world going to end tomorrow?

Are all power supplies going to shut down?

Hopefully not.

Digital data just needs to keep passing around from the current storage medium to the next.

Punch tape to magnetic, magnetic to optical, optical to ??????? and so life goes on.

Passing information on is one of the great ways to store it. As an example. Early monochrome video recordings on Dr Who and the like were lost, wiped by the BBC. However, because copies had been sent to foerign parts, where it turned out they had been kept the episodes were retrieved.

So, the best way to keep data is to stick on a central server system where it is always being swapped around various storage mediums and so can last indefinitely.

An argument for reducing copyright times to the life of the author, or less in the case of corporate ownership.

An example, Pathe newsreels are now, I think, freely available. They will be around for a long long time.

As a final shot. No doubt an archival CD can be made. It just won't cost 10 c/p/etc in Tescos, Morrisons, Wallies mart et al.

That makes sense for commercial interests but for your own personal footatge, you want to shoot it once and trust that it will last without the further bother of having to continuously maintain it's existence through countless transfers. Especially if you are an independent filmmaker working at your own pace. Footage shot 20 years ago can be included in a newly finished project. My father shot some very nice footage during his time in Antarctica when he was in the Navy. He just stuck it in a tin and stashed it away. That is pretty much where it stayed since the early sixties with the exception of the few times that it was taken out for family viewings. It looks just like you would expect R8 Kodachrome to look- like it was shot yesterday!

[matt5791]

No compact disc has a lifespan of 100 years. If Fuji are saying that then either they are using technology supplied by space aliens or they're talking crap.

I said that Fuji claim their neg film will last 100 years if stored correctly, not their CDs (I didn't know they made CD's)

Matt

[Angus]

Fair enough then.

I expect Fuju make CDR-s, can't imagine they wouldn't be in on that market.

[S8 Booster]

http://www.fujifilmmediasource.com/specs/cdrspec.htm

apparently lasts:

[LONG LIFE, SUPERIOR ARCHIVING]
Fujifilm CD-R discs have superior longevity, offering over a million read passes without data degradation. And for archiving they are simply unsurpassed. CD-R provides an astonishing 70-100 years archiving capability.

or so

Then I am gone and there are about 100 more years to go on my "chrome" :-k

I think in the end the question will be: Are there budgets to put someone on backing up all current digital (amd analog) data from deterioating medias? I mean - in my original profession (power transmission) there was an unwritten law; "Precautionary Maintence - allways". Nowadays it is re-written into "Break Down Based Maintanence" (= none before break down) by Dumbo BlueSuits. No moeny for PM there. They have taken all the money and put the profits into their pockets rather than spening it on precautionary maintennace. Who get the bill? You and me - the consumers and the DBS boys sucks the cream in both cases. Key word: Service down - proftis up.

I am really curious to see next phase on this.


R

[mattias]

BUT WHAT ABOUT HAMLET?!? :-D

/matt

[S8 Booster]

No problem - it´s recycleable - unlimited.

R

[Splee]

tried to read a Commodore 64 floppy lately? How about a Sinclair audiotape? an Altair paperpunch?

I've recently acquired some Sinclair Microdrives - a typically eccentric Sinclair product, these bizarre crosses between cassettes and disks use an endless loop of tape to store 85K in little cartridges. Kind of a miniature 8-track for computers.

They rapidly developed a very poor reputation, but the 15-20 year old carts I've got have been pretty reliable, and have some quite cool games on them

However, this is far more down to luck than anything else, and in another 20 years time, I suspect they will be totally unreadable, probably more to the fact that the hardware required will be almost extinct.

This is already a problem - remember the BBC Domesday Project in British schools in the 80s, which produced a documentary of British life on LP-sized analogue laser discs? You needed a BBC Micro hooked up to a machine the size of a suitcase to look at them. This hardware was always scarce, but is now extremely so, and before long, unless someone converts them to DVD or something, they will be unreadable and this little "time capsule" will be lost.

Unlike the original Domesday Book, still readable after 900+ years!

Lee

[Angus]

Speaking of the BBC Domesday project, yes the hardware required was mostly quite common in British schools at the time - even quite a few thousand BBC computers sold to the general public. You also needed a large laserdisc player hooked up to the computer and a box of tricks to attach said player to the computer...all state of the art at the time, current techonolgy it was.

By the time the project was finished the laserdiscs were obsolete, and the computer hardware so scarce they had to search for a long time to find an example...make from scratch a device to attach it all to a modern PC and then convert the data to DVDs. Almost like electronic archeology...in just 15-20 years the hardware had become totally obsolete and the discs almost impossible to read.

[Splee]

By the time the project was finished the laserdiscs were obsolete, and the computer hardware so scarce they had to search for a long time to find an example...make from scratch a device to attach it all to a modern PC and then convert the data to DVDs. Almost like electronic archeology...in just 15-20 years the hardware had become totally obsolete and the discs almost impossible to read.

This is one of the reasons I am hesitant to dive into digital photography. Digital cameras may well last a long time, but they are not much use without a PC to extract and process the images. PCs don't last very long, and I can't help but feel that in 20 years' time, a typical PC will be so radically different to today's that it will be virtually impossible to use any hardware or software from the current era. This locks people into the vicious constant upgrade cycle.

On the other hand, I can "upgrade" my ancient film cameras every time a new emulsion comes out...

Lee