[geeks] I haven't gotten into this yet but I need some advice

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 08:32:47PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 03:21:03PM -0400, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> 
> > I doubt we will ever see the day when we can't play back film.  Even if the
> > playback equipment for film stops existing, it is so easy to build new 
> > equipment.
> 
> Pity that the film itself won't last, and that when you duplicate from this
> quarter-century's film to the next, you lose data.  Then next time round
> you lose more.  Then more, and more, until at last you have a blurry smeary
> mess.

Yes, film duplication looses data.  I thought that modern films were supposed
to last.  I have a lot of extremely old 8mm film in good condition, maintaining
what I'm guessing is the original image quality, and it spent a significant 
amount of time in bad environments (attic, non-climate controlled storage
locker, etc).  By extremely old, I really only mean 30+ years, not century. 
If you go bad far enough, the film wasn't at all chemically stable, which I'm
sure you know.  Kodak has been heard saying that their current film will 
easily last 100+ years.
 
> > I personally think archival quality CD-Rs are going to be around for a long,
> > long time.  Unlike many other things that have bit the dirt, CD-Rs have a
> > huge mass acceptance.
> 
> The archivals people did some tests with CD-Rs.  They're crap.  They also
> take up a great deal more cubic inches per gigabyte than hard disks.  But
> I'm talking about archiving stuff for the next century, not for the next
> decade.

Well, I doubt that Mrs. Weiss really cares about the next century, although I'm
sure she cares about 30+ years from now at a minimum.
 
> > The thing I like about good CD-Rs is they don't fade like magnetic media does.
> 
> Errm, just leave one out in the light.  It fades, quite literally :-)  But
> yeah, I know what you mean.  That's because CD-R is digital.  A spot is
> either burnt or not.  Mag-tape is analogue, even if you've superimposed a
> digital data format on it.

Kodak sells CD-Rs that they say will last 100 years.  Obviously this has only
been simulated, not actually tested.
 
If we really are talking about data for the next century or 3, then we really
should probably be talking metal, stone, and paper.  Paper would be the most
convienient, but care needs to be taken to use the right materials.  Archiving
video to paper is easy enough, although you will loose a lot of dynamic range.
Just print a frame per page.  Including the audio is a bit trickier.  Perhaps
raw PCM in hex, but will people remeber what PCM is?  We could go the old
film route and use a picture of the wave form I guess.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd