Go Back    Forum > Featured > General Discussion

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
  #1  
06-25-2014, 05:15 PM
DeeSeven DeeSeven is offline
Premium Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 185
Thanked 10 Times in 10 Posts
Very interesting article on CNN about LoC digitizing their collection

Quote:
Culpeper, Virginia (CNN) -- When the Library of Congress comes to mind, most of us don't think of movies, TV shows or old-school vinyl.

But the federal library has been collecting analog recordings of sound and moving images since the late 1800s: Early film reels from inventor Thomas Edison's lab of the 1890s. Audio recordings of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The original 35mm film stock of "Star Wars."

These national treasures are among the millions of cultural artifacts being stored in secure vaults in the Library of Congress' National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, some 90 minutes southwest of Washington.

The center occupies the Packard Campus, a former bunker for storing federal currency, and measures an amazing 415,000 square feet. Its artifacts are housed in dozens of temperature-controlled vaults and on 90 miles of storage shelves.

With more than 5 million items, it's an impressive collection. There's just one problem: Despite the best efforts of preservationists, some of them are physically decaying and in danger of being lost forever.

"Any physical artifact is just that, a physical artifact," said Mike Mashon, head of the Library of Congress' moving image section. "These things can shrink, they can fade, they can crumble to dust in less than a lifetime."

Going digital

The solution, said Mashon, is to convert these artifacts to digital files. It's an exhaustive job. Between 1.5 million film, television and video items, and another 3.5 million sound recordings, the 114 staff members here have their work cut out for them.

Collecting and cataloging over 120 years of recorded American history may seem to be a daunting task. But the preservation of these deteriorating items is currently one of the most pressing missions for the library.

Years ago, when analog began to degrade, staffers would make a new copy. But that process has its limitations.

"Think about back when you were making your mix tapes," said Gene Deanna, head of the library's recorded sound section. "Every time you made a copy of that tape, it didn't sound as good."

Digital technology, he said, is now the best way to preserve the past.

"The great thing about digital is that it can be migrated (to copies) without loss."

Going digital doesn't solve the problem entirely if the data isn't stored properly. When the compact disc was released to consumers in the early 1980's, many people felt the new format could last forever. Leave a CD on a car's dashboard on a hot summer day, however, and its weakness is revealed.

But digital files have the advantage of flexibility, because they can be converted easily into pretty much any other available digital format. Because of advancements in technology, these artifacts in the library's massive vaults will now have a chance to live forever.

"Our work in the future is going to be migrating the files and transcoding them to make sure that they're always going to be available to be played back on whatever the next generation software is," Deanna said.

Preserving history

Every year, music and movies from all genres in the Library of Congress collection make their way into the digital archives of the National Recording Registry and the National Film Registry to be preserved as national treasures.

"We have this entire campus ... for the preservation of the audio-visual heritage of the United States," said Gregory Lukow, chief of the library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound division.

"We're still acquiring very large-scale collections," he added. "It forces us to think very deeply about how we prioritize what we choose to put through this incredible technological machinery. That's a big challenge, and it means that we'll be at it for decades because we have more than we're capable of putting through the production pipelines at this time."

Film stock, especially cellulose nitrate film from the early 20th century, sometimes decays faster than the library's staff can preserve it.

"There are inevitably going to be films that we just can't get to," Mashon said. "We try to inspect the film as regularly as we can. If it's seen to be deteriorating rapidly, we want to get it up into the laboratory, but sometimes it's just going to be too late. It's a cultural loss."

But thanks to new international standards for audio formats -- a 97-kilohertz, 24-bit, broadcast wave file -- audio snippets catalogued here will be playable around the world.

Mashon said the next step in the process is to make many of these audio items available to the public via the Internet. More than 10,000 historical recordings are already available to listeners on the Library of Congress' National Jukebox page.

Librarians feel a duty to preserve as many audio and visual artifacts -- more than a century of American life -- as possible.

"There is so much to learn from the past from a historical sense," said Deanna. "What people sounded like, what our leaders actually said in their speeches, what the radio broadcast of the day actually consisted of. And without that actual recording, you only have someone else's interpretation of it.

"It's absolutely critical that we don't let this legacy fall from the soundscape, fall from our memories."
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/25/tech/i...ves/index.html
Reply With Quote
Someday, 12:01 PM
admin's Avatar
Ads / Sponsors
 
Join Date: ∞
Posts: 42
Thanks: ∞
Thanked 42 Times in 42 Posts
  #2  
07-18-2014, 02:22 PM
lordsmurf's Avatar
lordsmurf lordsmurf is online now
Site Staff | Video
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Posts: 13,501
Thanked 2,447 Times in 2,079 Posts
Sadly, some of the LoC methods are really, really bad. I've had public arguments with at least 2 of them over the years. And I've had 1 disagreement in person. They're too addicted to "brand name" items (Memorex, Pinnacle, Canopus), even when it's not good. It's really disjointed, and changes all the time. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

The disagreements have always stemmed from those that insist on "archiving" items as-is, with no cleanup. I can understand that, even if I do not agree with it. But the methods used to convert the material would actually make it WORSE because the digitizing step was full of inferior hardware and software. Cheap Pinnacle items, for example. Or Canopus DV compression. It was terrible.

Many, many myths also fester there. You still see the "disappearing data" (DVD) hogwash, which was disproved years ago. It reminds me of the discredited vaccinations debacle, and those stupid parents that think baby shots cause autism. At least the DVD thing is just stupid, where the baby shot issue is harming those kids in later years, as they catch once-eradicated diseases.

Preservation is a good idea, but the LoC needs to get their shit together.

- Did my advice help you? Then become a Premium Member and support this site.
- For sale in the marketplace: TBCs, workflows, capture cards, VCRs
Reply With Quote
  #3  
07-18-2014, 02:41 PM
DeeSeven DeeSeven is offline
Premium Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 185
Thanked 10 Times in 10 Posts
that is really disappointing that people with THAT much footage have no clue what they're doing
Reply With Quote
  #4  
07-18-2014, 04:29 PM
NJRoadfan NJRoadfan is offline
Premium Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
Posts: 1,155
Thanked 357 Times in 293 Posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
Sadly, some of the LoC methods are really, really bad. I've had public arguments with at least 2 of them over the years. And I've had 1 disagreement in person. They're too addicted to "brand name" items (Memorex, Pinnacle, Canopus), even when it's not good. It's really disjointed, and changes all the time. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
On a related note, I have had a conversation with someone who works for The Internet Archive. I relayed them techniques for preserving analog video. I find it odd that the LoC would rely on the cheapest mass-market stuff when they seek out things like laser turntables and invest in research like reproducing audio from optically scanned phonograph grooves.
Reply With Quote
  #5  
07-18-2014, 07:49 PM
lordsmurf's Avatar
lordsmurf lordsmurf is online now
Site Staff | Video
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Posts: 13,501
Thanked 2,447 Times in 2,079 Posts
Yeah, again, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. I, too, hear about some really ingenious audio restoration work. Yet the same organization is butchering videos.

Archive.org (IA) is a good place to see the huge array of (non)quality that goes on there. One page can be an excellent MP3 of clean music, and then you find a MP4 that is worse than what Youtube amateurs post.

It's just really, really sad that goobers can sometimes control the preservation of precious one-of-a-kind items like this.

- Did my advice help you? Then become a Premium Member and support this site.
- For sale in the marketplace: TBCs, workflows, capture cards, VCRs
Reply With Quote
Reply




Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Scala Hosting Review after 6 years of using it Bithunter Web Hosting 4 05-15-2014 10:03 PM
The Ultimate VHS transfer project: 35 years of TV news NJRoadfan General Discussion 3 02-09-2014 07:17 AM
YouTube celebrates 57 Years of VHS jbd5010 General Discussion 2 04-21-2013 05:11 PM
Its been 10 years, time for a new camera; Olympus vs Panasonic DSLR NJRoadfan Photo Cameras: Buying & Shooting 8 01-31-2012 10:18 PM
Converting to AVI: best option for preserving sound quality? Reading Bug Digital Devices 6 01-14-2011 03:04 PM

Thread Tools



 
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 05:47 AM