On Wed, 25 Feb 1998 16:54:37 -0500 Filmmuseum wrote:
 
> I have to completely agree with Dr. Enticknap.
 
Why does everyone keep calling me doctor?  Even when (and if) I finish the PhD I
 have been
advised by friends never to use the title - apparently if you do, people start
 to ask you what cold
remedy to buy or if you'd take a look at their sprained ankle etc...
 
> Film preservation is most
> cost effective, preserved on chemically based tri-acetate or polyester film
> stock. Indeed, given the lack of shelf life of any and all digital media,
> video is best preserved on film. Film and TV archivists agree on this
> point.
 
The photocopy of a painting analogy has been used, I seem to remember, by
 certain writers on
the AMIA list to argue against archiving video by telerecording (UK)/kinescoping
 (US) it onto film.
Their preferred solution (and I get the impression that the most vigourous
 proponents of this
policy seem to be those involved in commercial videotape restoration) is
 continual format
migration.  I guess this means that the act of "preserving" involves a financial
 commitment to
keep copying the material across formats at regular intervals.  However, given
 that so many
analogue and digital video formats exist - many of the latter involving
 compression - I would have
thought that the act of copying between formats had the potential to "change"
 the image just as
much as telerecording/kinescoping it would be.  Do the latter and that will be
 the first and last
time any format migration is needed.
 
> Digitalization is still an extremely expensive proposition. Film archivists
> would love to use digital equipment to clean up surviving film master
> positives or to recolorize color films that have faded to magenta
> (generating a new film negative), but at the moment such restoration work
> is only available to the major film companies who can afford to sink 1/2 a
> million to one illion dollars per feature film into such a product.
 
Given that digital film scanners and recorders (e.g. Kodak's Cineon) were
 originally designed for
vfx work in the production industry, do you think the time is imminent when they
 will become cost
effective for archival purposes?  I would have thought that the companies who
 market these
things would have identified archives as a massive, untapped market.
 
Leo Enticknap
University of Exeter, UK
 
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