Film and Video Archiving
Saving media, memories, and memory
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With the immediacy of YouTube and Google Video, a hot topic today continues to be how to preserve your old video. Picture your film or video library. What do you store in there? Beta and ¾ inch tapes from the 80s? Optical media from the 90s? Maybe even some 16mm or 35mm film from the 60s and 70s? Any audio reels or stills? Do you even know what you have in there and why you are saving it? Now what if it was gone tomorrow?
Film, videotape, negatives, masters, raw footage, camera originals, backups on ¾ inch and beta – all have been slowly degrading since the moment you put them up on that shelf. And they will continue to degrade until you have nothing left. There’s no avoiding it. It’s just nature, or at least science. Just look at the CD as an example. CDs burst onto the scene in the 80s as a purely digital format based on optical technology. Laser beams read and write CDs… so, they’ll last forever right? Twenty years later we’re finally starting to see what degradation in an optical format can do to our audio, video, and digital images.
Videotape was never meant as a permanent or long-term storage medium. Most have a life expectancy of 10 to 30 years. So if you have some 10-year-old tapes sitting in your library, you may already be at risk. Additionally, most estimates base “life expectancy” on perfect and pristine storage practices. But who can really afford to store all of their footage in a climate controlled, limestone vault 10 miles below a mountain in Kansas?
Restoration
Film and video restoration can take many forms and include any number of processes depending on the type of material being restored, the level of degradation, and the desired end product use, including: washing, baking, retiming, color balancing, cleaning, even digital reconstruction and manipulation. But the most important ingredients in any restoration are an obsessive attention to detail - bordering on compulsive - and a whole lot of tender loving care. Without these two things, your film and video elements could literally melt through a restorer’s fingers.
The Bad
Duke University recently attempted to restore a ½ inch open reel EIAJ videotape (one of the earliest video formats) containing Grateful Dead concert footage -- historically significant for both Duke and Grateful Dead archivists. The videotape was still stored in its original 1970s packaging. However, during recovery, its signal strength was so low that playback was impossible. Technology may never be available to recover this content. If the tape was transferred earlier, chances are good that restoration could have salvaged priceless Jerry Garcia footage from the trash heap.
The Better
Numerous projects require restoration of oxide Betacam tapes, the predecessor to the Betacam SP format. Many of these tapes do not play, even after being stored in a relatively stable environment and when you might expect them to be in good playable condition. Often you can see signs of severe degradation that produces sticking during playback and head clogs. Extra steps may be necessary before restoration or transfer is even possible. Many oxide Betacam tapes can ultimately be transferred successfully, but the longer you wait, the more likely footage will be unrecoverable.
The Best Storage What's the Next Step?
Indiana University wanted to transfer some films in their collection that were being used for classroom instruction. Most of the films dated from the 1920s and 1930s. The problem: Repeated projection posed a damage risk that was compounded by the age of the film and the natural shrinkage that occurs over time. What to do? The films were transported, inspected, repaired, cleaned, and transferred to new formats that now can be used in the classroom (See before and after comparison below). The original films were then moved to a long-term, climate controlled storage facility for preservation.
After the remastering and restoration you must decide how you want to store your footage to protect it for future use. You may choose to transfer everything onto another physical format such as Digital Betacam (used by the Library of Congress). You can also move your entire library into the digital realm to save space and provide easy and instant access. Another option is to utilize some combination of a physical and digital archive, creating a searchable database, while storing the back up masters on physical media. Physical and digital libraries can be constructed according to your specific needs and limitations by analyzing the restored footage, its purpose, space, and parameters of use.
Face it. Everything degrades. If you don’t get ahead of it, your footage will decompose into nothing more than sepia toned memories. You can’t afford to wait. So, what should you do?