How can digital restorations fade?

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

I read the same article and wondered the exact same thing. The only thing I can think of is how the digital files were stored, like on magnetic tape, and that's not holding up well either.

But if someone like Robert Harris could explain it that would be ideal.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

Is there a link? I'm interested to read it.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

Full article is here: http://www.variety.com/article/VR111...ryid=2520&cs=1

First off, the story about ROSEMARY'S BABY sounds extremely apocryphal to me. I don't even know how something like that is physically possible (there's no reason it would have been spooled on the floor, for one).

I don't think Ridley Scott literally means fading in the way film does. I think what he is saying is that the digital medium is "fading out of immediacy" or some such thing. Digital is NOT permanent, as everyone thought it was ten years ago.

You can transfer a digital record unaltered to another (in theory, at least), but the fact of the matter remains that the information must be stored on something here in the real world. And as many people here can attest to, recording media these days like DVD-Rs aren't exactly the life-long guaranteed format we were promised when they first came out.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

Maybe Scott was referring the original camera negatives as having begun to fade and not the new digital files. It must have been a helluva job producing such a good looking version of his film from those zillions of feet of old 35mm film.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

Aside: I'm sure someone'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Blade Runner was shot 65mm. At least a number of the effects sequences were, but I had the impression most of it was.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

Live action footage was all shot in 35mm anamorphic. The effects were shot in 65mm spherical so that when the film elements were composited on an optical printer the resultant image wasn't overly grainy looking.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

I read the article. It means that some of the storage medium that contain digital files are degrading faster than film. Completely understandable, like a DVD-R that you burned 5 years ago and can't read it again!

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

I know it's being nit-picky, but wouldn't that be a corrupted file? Not a faded image as we know it on film.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

Scott just used a poor choice of words. The data isn't really "corrupted" though in a sense, it is "fading", just not in the same sense as film fades. In the end, digital isn't that much different from film. It is still subject to the stability of the media it is stored on.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

Good point!

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

Kevin, I don't understand why you ask this. It's simple. The media is degrading and they can not read the files. We are not talking about a DVD commercial copy. The medium they store the data could be magnetic like VHS. (like D-VHS)

Your DVD commercial copy could also be damaged and stop working.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

Aren't digital film files stored on harddrives withing big arrays?

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

This Variety article is similar to an article that ran in Billboard magazine some years back. Record companies are finding that music that was digitally recorded in the 80s/90s is not standing the test of time as well as music recorded on tape 50/60 years ago. Corrupt media, incompatible technology, etc. have all wreaked havoc on these "modern" catalogs.

Hopefully a solution will be found. I would hate to think that we've outsmarted ourselves with regards to long term preservation of our cultural heritage.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

I'm guessing due to the enormous amount of data they are stored on tape.

I also would like to hear what Robert Harris has to say.

An early poster commented on restored movies being stored in archives on DVD, which I am quite certain is not what the article is talking about.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

If you need some input into what preservation really is, watch Keepers of the Frame. It doesn't cover digital, but that's fine since you can't preserve films digitally anyways.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

I think the general consensus is that digital restoration is fine, but there should always be a hard copy (film print) made afterwards or it won't be a true preservation (preferably a dye-transfer print to prevent color fading). Expensive, though.

That's an excellent documentary.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

Dye transfer prints are no longer made and even if they were, transfers to digital media are not satisfactory. The copies made from dye transfer materials are very contrasty. The solution is as old as color negative film itself - make black and white separations. These can, in turn, be used to generate a new set of printing materials.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

What a coincidence. I was just reading Inside Star Trek. Justman and Solow wrote a paragraph or so about the editors of the series, one of whom was a perfectionist. When he got frustrated, he'd accidentally unspool some of the film onto the floor and step on it. When they viewed the rough cuts in dailies, they'd see footprints on some frames.

So, it is possible.

Doug

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

Sorry, I should have been more clear.

I understand that B&W seps have to be made in order to make DT prints, and that DT prints are too dense to yield good copies, but wouldn't a finely-tuned DT print be the best color reference for any subsequent Kodak prints made from the B&W seps?

Last I heard, there was still a lab in China that made DT prints (but it may too be gone now, so it's probably a moot point).

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

You're right, a non-fade, dye transfer print would make an excellent color reference for future releases of older films - if a lab somewhere in the world was still set up to make them. I'm not even certain that the Chinese are still using the system. Maybe a digital recording is the best thing to use. I realize that any physical material is subject to degradation but at least it's simple to copy digital code from one medium to another before the original disintegrates. Film is simply too fragile. It's easily scratched, it shrinks over time, sprocket holes tear and all color dyes used in photo-chemical film manufacture eventually fade.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

The problem with digital backups is that there's no one standard, and no one "perfect" method of doing it. Hard drives can fail or become corrupted despite the best precautions. DVD-Rs and tape backups can be damaged. It's all well and fine to try to preserve the digital restoration files as long as possible and on whatever the best technology of the day is, but that shouldn't be the only method of backup. Every time one generation of storage technology becomes obsolete, it becomes necessary to make new backups. For better or worse, with film, the technology has stayed consistent enough that I can play a new movie on the same equipment I can play a fifty year old film on; can't say the same about digital storage. Whatever the state-of-the-art storage method is today will inevitably become obsolete, and will studios have the time, resources, and inclination to reassess and redo backups to stay with the changes in technology? Think about how difficult it can be if you have an old floppy disc from your previous operating system or generation of computer that you need access to, but nothing to access it with. Or how a hard drive looks perfectly fine on the outside, but suddenly stops working. If a film negative ends up with some bad or missing frames or fading or other wear and tear, at least the rest of the film still exists and gives something to be worked with. If a hard drive storing the master copy of something fails, that's it. It's not like a physical piece of film where you can see damage and possibly repair it and even if not still retain the rest of the film; if the hard drive goes and that's the backup, it's gone. I'm more concerned about a file corrupting than I'm concerned about a properly made archival print stored in a proper facility. I know I would personally be very nervous if the master backup for the Bond films or Blade Runner or anything else existed only in the digital realm, if there wasn't a new preservation negative also created.

For archival film prints and negatives, I believe it was Kodak that introduced a polyester-based film stock that is supposedly their most durable stock for archival purposes. Apparently it either doesn't fade at all or is far less susceptible to fading than conventional prints. And film has more or less been standardized over the years; as I said before, a 35mm print from twenty years ago can be played in any modern movie house, but the technology to read a twenty year old digital file may not be as readily available.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

I'd be interested to know what the digital restoration consisted of. Remember, Bladerunner was rereleased in 1992; Star Wars in 1997. The technology require to store and edit a 4K movie may not have been available at that time. However, it was possible to transfer a fading dye print to an allegedly more archival safe medium-- that wasn't as susceptible to fading. The problem is that this archival safe medium turned out not to be.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

No one is currently doing dye-transfer anymore (the China thing shut down in the mid-90s and Technicolor's brief revisit only lasted a few years). Technicolor will dust off the old equipment-- that is, if you have the money, first.

Dye-transfer prints CAN fade, if exposed to the right amount of heat and UV radiation. Take a clip of IB film sometime and stick it to a window or lamp for a few days. It will fade quite rapidly. But it's not often that films are exposed to this kind of climate.

With new low-fade, polyester stocks on the market, scratching, color fading and shrinkage are less of a problem. Black and white, of course, does not fade since it is simply silver particles, and is still archival practice.


Sure, it can happen, but it doesn't happen very often. The Star Trek incident took place while the editing was being done. But the Variety article cites no source for the ROSEMARY'S BABY story. While some studios can be fairly careless, something like that is enough to fire someone over.

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

As an aside, this has got me concerned about preserving home movies. I've had 8mm film that is on it's last leg after 40 years, but I was able to copy it to VHS. Now, I am filming my son on DVD-R's and I read above that these can go after about 5 years (and I assume something similar applies to VHS) ! What should be done to help keep them for the next 50 years ? Should they be copied every 3-4 years ?

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

StevenHa,

Guess what!

This is a fundamental problem; it's a very simple question you're asking, but no one knows the answer to it. I'm not in "the film industry" myself, but I work with media archivists in the Smithsonian Institution, and none of them agree on how to do it, either.

DVD-Rs can last longer than five years; we use them for playout, and we've had some in constant use for close on seven years without any media failure issues. Not that 7 years is so much more than 5. But a lot depends upon how you're treating them.

Some would say, for the short term, use hard drives. A Hitachi 1TB disk is what, $400? You can store a lot of stuff on 1TB. And if you mirror the drive every two years or so...

...right...

Leo

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

I have VHS tapes that I recorded on my first VCR from 1984 and they still play fine.

If you're concerned about the DVD-Rs of your son degrading, maybe making back-up copies of them on VHS tape (in addition to making DVD-R copies every 5-10 years) would make sense. It certainly couldn't hurt!

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

This is an odd article, as it seems to have been removed from a c.1986-7 time capsule. The comments regarding studio vaults and the care of assets represent an archaic era and have no relationship to reality.

Mr. Mayer's comments regard the 1960s.

Rosemary's Baby? I don't believe it for a moment.

Taxi Driver? One of the most protected productions in the library.

What a silly piece!

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

RAH

Re: How can digital restorations fade?

That's probably not a bad idea; I try to keep backups of my home movies in multiple formats. For instance, I think have for a typical home movie:

-the original miniDV tape it was shot on
-a VHS dub (often made for relatives)
-a DVD-R dub (easy viewing for me)

For really important things, I'll also keep it digitized on a hard drive.

Just make sure that whatever method(s) you use, to go back and review the stuff every couple of years to make sure it's still in good shape.