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Will old formats Apple in the future?
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[James Culbertson] “I’d be more concerned about the gradual disappearance of decks and particularly the shelf life of tapes. Similarly, at some point the i/o device makers will stop supporting analog i/o I would assume.
Get them into a digital format now, because I doubt you will have a usable tape in 10-20 years.”
This brings up a bigger issue (not one I am sure belongs in a FCPX Forum). The issue of archiving. With our move to digital and tapeless, how well is this going to bode for future preservation.
To illustrate my point–if you find a box of Grandma’s 50-year-old negatives or 8mm films in a drawer, you still have the ability to print or play them.
In the future, if our grandchildren find a 50-year-old USB thumbdrive with a bunch of .jpg or .mov files are they going to be able to extract them. I hope so, but have a feeling all but the most important digital images will be lost in the ether over time.
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[Clint Wardlow] “In the future, if our grandchildren find a 50-year-old USB thumbdrive with a bunch of .jpg or .mov files are they going to be able to extract them. I hope so, but have a feeling all but the most important digital images will be lost in the ether over time.”
Ironically, we archive all of our digital formats back to tape (LTO).
What you are describing is a problem with digital formats in general (not just image formats, but all files). A format is only as good as the operating system/application that can read it. If you need specialized software to read a format and that software isn’t around anymore, or perhaps the format is encrypted/encoded and the decoder has vanished, it might not be possible to retrieve that material.
I can pretty much guarantee that this world will not be going back to analog. Eventually it seems, all the film scanners will be busted and broken, and we won’t be able to restore those as easily either.
Here’s an awesome article about a huge media source that is having this very discussion right out in the open:
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/hbos-digital-transition
And the state of film:
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/film-fading-to-black
Jeremy
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[Chris Harlan] “Actually, I think you will find–if you take the time to consult vault managers–that tape has a far better shelf life than mechanical hard disks, and is still prized as the leading archival format, at least pre-Tsunami.”
I was talking about magnetic tape. I assume you are talking about film? And if not, what magnetic tape format (including LTO) isn’t toast after 20-30 years or so?
And yes, I know that HD’s can die at any time, but what alternative other than HD archive redundancy do we have at this time other than converting back to film stock?
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[Rafael Amador] “Time to start to put things in HDs. I’ve already started with my more than 200 MiniDV tapes.”
The problem I have with relying solely on hard drives is, that with the amount of data that they store, a hard drive crash could be a total disaster. With tape, it really sucks when one goes bad, but it is only an hour of footage.
As it stands now I try to keep my my files on at least two hard drives. A 1TB hard drive failure could eliminate hours of footage.
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[Brian Mulligan] “I ask you to please explain, how exactly does your post “further” the ongoing discussion in any way other than to add unwanted or unneeded noise and distraction?”
Certainly Brian, I’d be happy to answer
Since it’s crystal clear that Kevin’s assumption is false (the EOL of Apple Color is just one of many examples that proves the point), it’s only right to warn any unsuspecting readers that they should tread cautiously. Or would you wish even more unsuspecting customers blindly invest and wind up like Custer’s cavalry?
BTW, I can always use the lemming metaphor next time if you prefer. Or, do I have to explain that one to you as well?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Bringing “The Whale” to the Big Screen:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-2-MikeParfitandSuzanneChisholm/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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[James Culbertson] “I was talking about magnetic tape. I assume you are talking about film? And if not, what magnetic tape format (including LTO) isn’t toast after 20-30 years or so?
“So was I. Magnetic tape has a much longer average shelf life than a hard drive, which I think you will find, most vault managers will warn you will potentially fail within in a few years (as few as two) just sitting, unmoved, on a shelf. This observation is made without even factoring events like earthquakes, which, here in LA, are a common occurrence. I invite you to contact any major entertainment storage facility or studio vault and see if you get a different recommendation. I doubt you will. You will also find this opinion greatly seconded by many corporate IT leaders, who routinely backup and archive their networks on magnetic tape. I find, when it comes to program masters, that it is SOP with nearly all of my clients. Generally, everybody keeps both, with the tape as the safety. This may all change when/if EEPROM based SSD is ever as cheap as either tape or traditional hard drives.
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[Chris Harlan] “EEPROM”
Now there’s a term I haven’t heard in a while.
It seems to me, people assume SSDs are better. Better than HDDs.
But is that really the case? Does anyone know what the shelf life is of an SSD? Sitting untouched, without power for years?
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As a side note for those who are curious, Sony’s Tagajyo plant is back in production. If you never saw the damage, TVTechnology hosts a link to a good video report of it here:
https://tvtechnology.com/article/119938
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[David Roth Weiss] “Kevin’s assumption is false”
I probably shouldn’t correct you, but …
I believe my assumption was actually sarcastic.
(perhaps no better than being false)
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[James Culbertson] “And if not, what magnetic tape format (including LTO) isn’t toast after 20-30 years or so?”
Yeah, it will be toast.
A good thing (and what I think is rather unique) about LTO is that an archive standard of two generations is built right in to the spec. This means an LTO 5 drive must read an LTO 3 tape. This allows leap-frogging of different LTO versions, but it does mean that every few tape generations, you will need to update your whole tape library.
Still 20-30 years on the shelf is better than 2-5.
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