On Thu, 19 Feb 1998 18:14:45 -0500 Laurence Jarvik wrote:
 
> Sounds very interesting. Can Dr. Taves tell us the cost of digitizing vs.
> more conventional film transfer methods? Is there still a need for nitrate
> to safety transfers in the digital age?
 
I don't seem to have received Dr. Taves' original message, but here are my thoughts...
 
The cost of preserving a feature using conventional film transfer methods will vary according to 
the sort of film being dealt with.  A b/w silent film - assuming the source component is 
chemically stable and easily printable - will be a lot cheaper to preserve than a colour one shot on 
65mm and with all three digital sound formats.  I would say that between UK£10,000 and 
UK£50,000 would be a reasonable estimate.  Of course that assumes that it is simply a case of 
making preservation masters of original material, not undertaking restoration work.
 
I do not know what the comparable costs of digitising material would be, but I would argue that 
the key point here (as I have argued in an earlier posting) is not the act of digitising, but the long 
term storage of the resulting digits.  We are already hearing stories of CDs from the early 1980s 
having rotted into unplayability.  As readers of the AMIA list will no doubt be aware, serious 
questions are being discussed as to the longevity of digital videotape formats, and I don't think 
any prominent video archivist would put money on today's carriers lasting more than 2-3 decades. 
  Store your digitised film as a sort of glorified videotape and you will be facing all these issues.
 
Compared to that, a lot of properly stored nitrate film is still copyable one century later, and, 
although the stuff has not been in existence long enough to be totally sure, every indication is 
that today's polyester stock has a shelf-life measured in centuries.  Furthermore, there will not be 
any of the software problems associated with retrieving a digital format.
 
Thus the most important issue raised by digitisation is not the cost, but the implications of 
long-term storage on the two media.
 
Leo Enticknap
Univ. of Exeter, UK 
 
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