Thank you for your reply, Dr Leo Enticknap.  Re: Nitrate -- when I was
doing my film the National Archives lost material I had requested due to a
nitrate fire. It took months and months before I could get any of my order
and much of it was completely gone. Not so great.  Yet clearly some digital
archives must exist for computer data. How is it preserved and what are the
costs? I was told that in fact long term storage of digital data is not so
impossible and that technology is improving every day. In which case, what
is the cost/benefit analysis here of the different approaches. Only 2-3
decades is an enternity in computer time. Think about the personal computer
one was using in 1978 and compare to today's models.
 
>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
>
>----
>Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
>http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite
 
Laurence Jarvik
<[log in to unmask]>
 
----
Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite