Film preservation -- the digital crisis

[Dementeleus]

To start with, here's a solid article by The Dissolve on the basics of the ongoing problem of how to archive digitally:

 

http://thedissolve.com/features/exposition/429-film-preservation-20/

 

Then, as a follow-up, read this comment from the same article:

 

http://thedissolve.com/features/exposition/429-film-preservation-20/#comment-1258473348

 

Digital as a way of shooting/presenting a movie? Very solid, competitive with film in some ways and surpassing it in others. Digital as an archival method? Unknown, at best, and very troublesome overall.

[The Futurist]

Photo chemical has a lot of issues as well regarding preservation there is no miracle solution I think.

[The Panda]

That was a very intriguing read, and presents very important (and generally unknown) problems looming in society, not just for film, but for our archives of this age in general.

[BadAtGender]

That was a very intriguing read, and presents very important (and generally unknown) problems looming in society, not just for film, but for our archives of this age in general.

 

Yeah. We're culturally trained to expect that anything to do with computers and such is pretty permanent. I mean, Google practically has the entire internet backed up and you can still go see the original Space Jam website from 1996, so it's not like any of that goes anywhere. But the technology itself is particularly transient. Modern flash memory, which is making a headway into replacing magnetic hard drives (mostly because it's significantly faster and not prone to mechanical failure) is likely only good for a couple thousand read/write cycles. That's fine for most people over the lifetime of a product, but most products we use have life cycles of less than the five year obsolescence window of a tape drive. My laptop is over three years old and feels pretty creaky. My phone is a just bit over two years old and it feels ancient.

 

I wish there was a good solution, but it'll probably take a catastrophe of some sort in order to spur economic interests into updating things.

 

Good article, Tele. Thanks for the link.

Edited February 25, 2014 by DamienRoc

[The Panda]

Yeah. We're culturally trained to expect that anything to do with computers and such is pretty permanent. I mean, Google practically has the entire internet backed up and you can still go see the original Space Jam website from 1996, so it's not like any of that goes anywhere. But the technology itself is particularly transient. Modern flash memory, which is making a headway into replacing magnetic hard drives (mostly because it's significantly faster and not prone to mechanical failure) is likely only good for a couple thousand read/write cycles. That's fine for most people over the lifetime of a product, but most products we use have life cycles of less than the five year obsolescence window of a tape drive. My laptop is over three years old and feels pretty creaky. My phone is a just bit over two years old and it feels ancient.

 

I wish there was a good solution, but it'll probably take a catastrophe of some sort in order to spur economic interests into updating things.

 

Good article, Tele. Thanks for the link.

 

It also has to do with the fact at how fast technology comes out nowadays, pretty soon we'll start getting two new iphones a year.

[Dementeleus]

Photo chemical has a lot of issues as well regarding preservation there is no miracle solution I think.

There's no miracle solution but film -- by far -- is the best current option. Needless to say, things are going to be very interesting over the next few years.

[lab276]

The drives that read the tapes are also subject to obsolescence. Since 2000, new generations of LTO technology have been released every two years or so—new tapes and new drives—and they’re only backward-compatible for two generations.

I don't understand this, surely these old players could be made again in the future.

[Dementeleus]

I don't understand this, surely these old players could be made again in the future.

But by whom? It's essentially the equivalent of asking Sony to start manufacturing Betamax decks again. (Assuming that the companies are still in existence.)

[lab276]

But by whom? It's essentially the equivalent of asking Sony to start manufacturing Betamax decks again. (Assuming that the companies are still in existence.)

I was just thinking some guy in his garage or something.But wouldn't the studios save a good amount of money by not updating and then just asking them to make players that will work with what they have?

[BadAtGender]

This wasn't mentioned, but there's also the issue of digital file formats not being usable at some point in the future. Even if you have the technology to read the physical media AND that media hasn't degraded, you need to have a computer that can process the information. There is plenty of old computer storage media lying around that we have no way to read anymore, simply because, even if we have the drives, there's no way to hook them up to a modern machine that can understand the information on them. So we're left with useless bits on magnetic tape or a floppy or something.

 

So the problem with the constant churn of new magnetic tape drives is that even if you have the media (and it doesn't decay) and you have a player for them, there's absolutely no guarantee you'll have a computer that can do anything with them several years down the line.

 

And, um, you can't just keep an old computer around for that purpose, because it'll still run into the same interface problems. I could keep an Tandy 1000 around for whatever reason and even use it to read the disks I might have, but there's no easy way for me to get that information onto my new Macbook Pro.

[Dementeleus]

That might work for the short term, but the problem is that these devices aren't exclusive to the film industry. The tech world in general uses them and their needs are different than the studios'. I've heard of archivists literally storing compatible LTO machines along with the data tapes... But even then, after awhile the connection cables the LTOs use will be obsolete and then you'd need to archive a whole computer along with everything else. There's no easy way out right now.

[BadAtGender]

To be fair, stable long-term storage is an issue that the computing industry has been working on for years. It just doesn't seem like there are any solutions that are going to show up in the immediate future. They could be invented in the next few years, but probably won't be commercially viable for several more thereafter.

[Magic]

Most of the films coming out these days aren't worth preserving and will be forgotten about in three months anyway. 

[Jack Nevada]

Most of the films coming out these days aren't worth preserving and will be forgotten about in three months anyway.

That's the way it's always been.

[The Stingray]

Most of the films coming out these days aren't worth preserving and will be forgotten about in three months anyway. 

lol. Don't even know how to respond to this, but that's an incredibly shortsighted view.

[Magic]

lol. Don't even know how to respond to this, but that's an incredibly shortsighted view.

 

Oh don't you worry, most films have sucked for a while now and will continue to suck a long way into the future. 

[The Stingray]

Oh don't you worry, most films have sucked for a while now and will continue to suck a long way into the future. 

 

Is that you speaking, or Rust?

[The Panda]

What I was wondering is why they don't just store the home video version (DVD, Bluray, or 3D BluRay) save a player or a computer that can read them and then update them (say the next Bluray) when they come out, because honestly Bluray won't be totally replaced for a long time (even if a higher quality player comes out in the future). It's not necessarily the best way to preserve thing but it seems like an option.But again that seems to simple and so it's probably been thought of and discredited for whatever reason.Also, don't preserve every single film, preserve the critical and financial hits.

[Dementeleus]

What I was wondering is why they don't just store the home video version (DVD, Bluray, or 3D BluRay) save a player or a computer that can read them and then update them (say the next Bluray) when they come out, because honestly Bluray won't be totally replaced for a long time (even if a higher quality player comes out in the future). It's not necessarily the best way to preserve thing but it seems like an option.But again that seems to simple and so it's probably been thought of and discredited for whatever reason.

 

Bluray isn't a good archival format, for a number of reasons: it's only 1080p, so it's well beneath the resolution of almost all high-quality film or 4K cinema; it's significantly compressed (compared to an uncompressed original); and it doesn't contain the audio stems necessary in case you ever need to go in and clean up or adjust the audio. Remember, for many movies, it's not just the final version that's archived: it's also the dailies, raw audio files, etc, so that if and when you want to do a restoration, you have the original elements necessary to do so. IIRC (from another article), the space needed to archive a digital movie properly is around 50 terabytes (the movie itself, various elements that were used to create the final product, plus backups in case of drive failure).

[BadAtGender]

Also, don't preserve every single film, preserve the critical and financial hits.

 

Besides the trickiness of determining what threshold you apply for what should be saved or not, this is a really bad idea. For one thing, something could be a critical and commercial failure at the time of its release and then later be regarded in a new light. We'd want to have a copy of such films well after the fact in case that happens.

 

But moreso, archiving isn't a critical choice, it's a historical one: we want to have as complete a record of, well, everything so that in generations to come there's a clearer picture of the society and culture that created the movies. Even seemingly vapid and forgettable films could provide some interesting insight, despite possible problems.