Digitize and Dump?

This was one of the compelling topics of discussion during the panel session I participated in at last week's first NY installment of Createasphere at The New Yorker Hotel. The panel called, "Capture-Preserve-Access-Present: How Major Entertainment Companies Succeed with their Digital Workflows," was moderated by Charlie Miller of Control Group, Inc. and also included representatives from USGA Archives, TruTV, Universal and Avid.  We spent a lively 90 minutes or so talking about some of the surprisingly similar challenges we've all encountered as media archive / asset managers.

But let's rewind to the night before first to the pre-conference DAM meet-up held at the Cooper Tavern just off the hotel lobby.  This is a lively crowd and clearly NYC DAMSta's know how to party.  It was a great chance to put faces to so many familiar names and to reconnect with many other DAMsta friends.  I was impressed with the energy of the group and the diversity of experience present from seasoned vets to students going through DAM programs at Columbia and Pratt.  Clearly, this risque little anagram has evolved into something quite serious and mature.

The show itself was comprised of three session tracks and also included a small vendor exhibit space and the first annual DAMMY''s luncheon in the Grand Ballroom. It was a relatively intimate affair with good panels and exhibits.  My favorite comment of the show was from Dan McGraw of Seven Dials Media who said of storage and bandwidth that they are like whiny children in a checkout line...they demand attention.  Well put and so true.

But let's get back to digitize and dump.  It's a compelling notion and one that I believe we are all going to be faced with sooner or later. The financial pressures at play will ultimately push us to this discomforting junction and a decision will have to be made.  In reality though, ignoring this will the decision for you.  How many media archive are sitting on mountains of VHS, U-matic and Beta masters that may need some sort of massaging to playback well enough to digitize?  What's your budget for tape restoration? How many times have you had to explain and then justify this expense?  The dollars and cents have to make sense...we ARE in the media business.  The convergence of content viability along with format, rights and overall condition will drive a culling of the media archive herd.  Maybe everything can't be saved...and maybe that's not going to be as wrong as it may initially seem?

If that is the case then the media the content lives on becomes just the delivery mechanism.   The digital capture (at a quality at least as good as the original media) transforms this physical space and makes the retention of the physical media redundant.  At least that's the theory...raise your hand if you digitize and still keep a physical copy?  Or multiple physical copies?

Exactly.

I think the freedom from the physical video media and analog world that comes from the digitization  outweighs the insecurity that can come from not having the physical master.  And for context. I've lived in both worlds and have argued passionately in the past against the notion I am proposing now but I recognize that times change.  At this point, I would rather have the media as 1's and 0's contained, managed and supported within established IT backup and migration protocols than shelves of slowly decomposing videotape reliant on nearly obsolete machines.  You don't have to toss the tape straight into the dumpster after digitizing but you may want to live in both world for some amount of time.  However, at some point it will stop making good sense to keep all the masters and perhaps..we are closer to this point than we realize?

Comments

[Greg Schmitz]

Posted this week on AMIA-L

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/file-not-found-the-record-industrys-digital-storage-crisis-20101207

Personally, I’d make a snide comment when the issue is tossing analog originals that are still viable like, oh say maybe, “don’t bet your ass on high tech.” But Jared Diamond already said what I’m thinking about your suggestions in a much better way.

There is no basis for believing that technology will miraculously stop causing new and unanticipated problems while it is solving the problems that it previously produced.

Prof. Jared Diamond, UCLA
Harper’s Magazine, 2003 June