Where has all the AV content gone? How do we preserve it for the future?

1. Where has all the AV content gone? How do we preserve it for the future? Jim Lindner Media Matters

2. Our Audio Visual Heritage • How we will be understood by history will in part be based on what materials they have to study. • We are in the early years of a technology evolution that will certainly take hundreds of years, maybe thousands. • What is at risk are the documents of our time.

3. What are these Documents? • Feature, Documentary, Independent Film • Network, Independent, Art Television • Industrial / Educational Film and Video • Audio from Network to Soundtrack to Field Recordings and Oral Histories • Community Recordings • Home Recordings

4. Where has the content gone? • We Have Lost Much More then most people suspect • All but a small fraction of the films of the silent film era are lost forever • Essentially all of television “pre history” is lost • E.G. Broadcasts of J.L. Baird • TV Before Tape – All lost except what was a kine or news film and has survived • TV After Tape – A huge amount has been lost • 1958 – 1978 3000 news shows remain versus 11,000 Days

5. Where has all the content gone? • Landfill – space, cost, not “needed” anymore • Erasure – intentionally to save money and unintentionally • Into brown cardboard boxes after the edit sessions, unlabeled, sitting in warehouses or worse • Closets, Attics, Basements

6. Where has all the content gone? Some of what is left has found its way to an archive.

7. How Much of it survives? • No one really knows - but there are estimates….. • CBC – 300,000 tapes • BBC – 600,000 hours • MTV – 1.2 Million hours • UNESCO estimate – • 200 million hours of culturally important archives at risk

8. What do the Records in Archives look like? •  For the most part our A/V heritage is :A mixture of analog and digital formats including…

9. A Vast Array of Media Types and Formats • Film and Film Elements • Nitrate – Acetates – Polyester - Mixtures (Magnetic Full Coat) • Audio • Disc, Cylinder, Vinyl, Wire (steel), Polyester (PET), Acetate, CD-R • Video – Polyester (PET)

10. Media is EXTREMELY FRAGILE • Nitrate Highly Combustible • Acetates – Vinegar Syndrome • Binder issues – Sticky Shed • Laminates – Delaminate

11. Media is Subject to Disasters Natural….. • Chemical Deterioration • Physical/Mechanical Damage • Natural Disasters

12. … and Man Made • War • Theft • Loss • Bad Economic Times • Format Obsolescence • Technological Evolution

13. “Digital” Media is subject to many of the same perils • Format Type may be irrelevant in some situations

14. Storage as a file adds many levels of complexity that did not exist with Analog Media • File Format Compatibility • Application Level Compatibility • Operating System Compatibility • Firmware / BIOS Level Compatibility • Hardware / Controller Level Compatibility

15. How?

16. What about the Content in the File? • Content Management • Few standards across collections – no union catalog • Let me see all the films that have Ford cars • Description of Sounds and Pictures with words • Primitive Searching tools

17. No real LONG term strategy: • Best Practice Environmental Control • Short term postponement of the inevitable • No single media type lasts forever • No single format / technology lasts forever • No single location lasts forever.

18. How long do we store the stuff anyhow – how long is forever? • Manufacturers think 90 days – well OK – 10 Years • We have paper documents for hundreds of years • We have clay tablets for thousands of years • We have cave paintings for many thousands of years

19. Can we realistically reformat forever? • Consider the resources required to reformat every 25 years, physical space for each object, cost for media   • Consider the environmental cost to produce all that media • Is it desirable even if you did?

20. What we are doing is not working very well! We need to rethink and try some new things… Can the past help us with the future?

23. The First Television was Mechanical! • Mechanical television existed for quite some time – some systems scanning horizontally others vertically. John Logie Baird generally is given credit for the first working mechanical television system – as well as developing the first way of RECORDING his television signals.

24. This is what it looked like

25. This is what it took to record TV…

26. Magnetic Recording

27. Magnetic Recording • In The Beginning: • Initial market was for for TIME SHIFTING – Not for Editing or anything else • No thought given to other markets or applications • It did not take very long before other uses were found for video recording and the manufacturers responded with new product

28. Magnetic Recording • Different Markets / Different Needs • Broadcast – High Quality, High Cost, Low Quantity of Machines Sold, Flexibility • Industrial / Educational – Medium Quality, Medium Cost, Higher Volume of Machines Sold, Simplicity • These Markets were later segmented Further and new markets like consumers came into being

29. Magnetic Recording • Broadcast

30. Magnetic Recording • Broadcast

31. Magnetic Recording

33. Magnetic Recording

34. Videotape Recording • Military

35. Videotape Recording • Industrial / Educational

44. Maybe we can predict that… • Change and new formats have always been a part of our AV Heritage and we need to think in those terms. • Innovation will continue - and perhaps the best we can do is not mess it up for the next generation of innovation • It will continue to get smaller, better and cheaper…. and

45. There WILL be more of it!

46. Here is the good news - it is getting cheaper and easier to store it!

47. Economic Viability of storage as FILES versus Videotape • In Canberra – Today June 6 • Using Sony Stock • 1 Digital Betacam Tape costs $27.08, Records 1 hour, Obsolete Format ? • 1 LTO3 Datatape costs $60.52

48. Economic Viability of storage as FILES versus Videotape • Using MPEG2 50 Mbit or MJPEG 2000 • 1 hour of content requires 25 – 30 Gigabytes using MJPEG2000 (24 using MPEG2) • 1 LTO3 tape stores 400 Gigabytes • 400 / 25 = 16 • 1 LTO3 tape stores 16 Hours

49. Cost to store 1 hour of content • LTO = $60.52 / 16 Cost = $3.78 Per Hour • Digital Betacam = $27.08 • Videotape is 7.16 TIMES more expensive!!!!! – storing the exact same quality.

50. How Much Will Storage Cost, What about small collections? • 350 Hour Collection • 350 x 30 Gigabytes each hour = • 10,500 Gigabytes (10.5 Terabytes) • Media Cost @ $.15 per Gigabyte = $1575 • 27 LTO Tapes (versus 700 Umatic) • 2333 DVD’s….