Perhaps the scientist who invented the digital camera might be interested in this...

Doesn't anyone realise that digital data stored on magnetic or optical media is proving almost impossible to archive? I wouldn't mind guessing that the original paintings in the National Gallery will last a lot longer than the digital photos...

 |  IP: Logged

I believe it was more than four hundred hours of magnetically recorded video and multitrac audio had to be painstakingly played on rebuild and obsolete equipment, digitized, and enhanced to bring them back to at least CLOSE to thier orginal quality.

While it was necessary to use mag tape to record what was done, it sat in storage while its playback technology became unaccessible. And remember, MAG TAPE DEGRADES!!!

As for the new digital source, it is stored on the highest quality of recordable cd-r available, and placed in more than one location, in the case of catastrophy.

SOme digital preservation is really a good idea, but oil paintings? I can see using digital imaging to trace degradation, and for archiving purposes, but I hope that this step doesnt keep the curators from the necessary upkeep of these artistic treasures.

NOW TO FILM... there is some film that definately should be digitally stored, and hopefully lost forever... hint hint so called mr lucas...

I hope that number 2 is better than number 1, i know i usually feel better after a good number 2...

The only thing I can do to keep safe is by making redundant backups of all my data. Typically a backup means making at least 2 copies of the archival volume. Then we have our entire supply of data files copied redundantly and stored in different places (so we'll be safe in such an event that the shop burns down or is completely ransacked by burglary).

Archiving films on digital media is an even bigger problem. Video storage formats are usually data lossy in quality --a practice totally unprofessional for the still image archiving industry where RGB TIFF and CMYK TIFF are the standard. Scan resolutions are often too crude in nature to capture all the detail in a 35mm film frame. A 4-perf 35mm frame has roughly 12 million pixels worth of real detail on the negative (if not more). An 8-perf 35mm still camera image should be scanned at 4,000 X 6,000 pixels to be able to get much of the detail out of the frame (provided the film scanner has the optical hardware resolution to address that level, which few do). A 4K by 6K RGB TIFF file is 68MB, and at CMYK 91MB. It is kind of difficult to keep the integrity of files that large unless you burn a CD and then put it in a climate controlled vault.

When stored properly (cool, dry and vented), it's much longer than that! We're still watching great episodes of "I Love Lucy" shot almost half a century ago on 35mm FILM. Cable TV is full of the great shows from the 60's and 70's, most of which were shot and archived on FILM. Movies like "2001 A Space Odyssey" still amaze us on the big screen:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/technical/storage1.shtml
http://www.fpcfilm.com/US/en/motion/FPC/pro-tek/protek_main.html
http://www.fpcfilm.com/US/en/motion/FPC/pro-tek/pt_preserve.html
http://www.fpcfilm.com/US/en/motion/FPC/pro-tek/pt_vault.html

 |  IP: Logged

If I were to be really cynical I would point to the increasing turnover of businesses which specialise in 'continual format migration', i.e. copying magnetic media off obsolete formats at regular intervals. A carrier that is known to be reliable for several centuries would surely blow quite a hole in their market! OK, there is still the software issue (can you decode the data into images, sound or whatever once you've read it?), but this would solve half the problem.

quote:

---

Gordon said:

The amazing thing is that to this day 35mm film is the only world wide universal standard yet people are determined to throw that away

---

That is an excellent point. 35mm has been extraordinarily resilient. It's still an incredible format. Of course this doesn't mean that we shouldn't look to improve things if we can. But we should definitely not have so much haste to abandon such a wonderful format until we have a new format that is better in every conceivable way possible, or at least most ways.... the important ways.

Having a digital version of an oil painting would seem a bit counterproductive. Once it is digital it is no longer the original oil painting. People would literally be admiring a picture of the original in museums. It just wouldn't have the same impact. Maybe we can invent teleportation. Then we just save everthing that teleports to a digital file stored on a 1.4 meg "high density" floppy disk (who would ever need more than 1.4 Megs for anything?). Once the original painting is destroyed by wandering vagrants it would be easy to just rematerialize another!