Films are fading, and digital can't save them

... Roger Mayer, a former MGM honcho who's now chairman of the National Film Preservation Foundation, estimates each studio spends $5 million to $10 million a year to fund preservation or restoration programs -- a sum that wouldn't even cover the marketing costs of a low-budget comedy.

Furthermore, the current funding is not enough to undo the damage after decades of neglect. While Sony and Warner Bros. get high marks for attempts at maintaining their libraries, Fox and Paramount get lower grades.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117976828.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&

Well Art . . . and others . . . what a mess:mad:

Hmm, digital data doesn't 'fade'. You may lose the data if you are stupid as a rock, but it doesn't fade. The digital media doesn't last forever, but it does last for decades. All you need to do is remember to spend 5 minutes and make a copy of the data to newer media once a decade.

Hmm, digital data doesn't 'fade'. You may lose the data if you are stupid as a rock, but it doesn't fade. The digital media doesn't last forever, but it does last for decades. All you need to do is remember to spend 5 minutes and make a copy of the data to newer media once a decade.

agreed, this is more a studio stupidity decision more than anything else.

An interesting documentary that illustrates this problem can be found here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7851705567600658577&hl=en

I especially liked the guy who changed his rather smallish house to accommedate a full cinerama setup.

Hmm, digital data doesn't 'fade'. You may lose the data if you are stupid as a rock, but it doesn't fade. The digital media doesn't last forever, but it does last for decades. All you need to do is remember to spend 5 minutes and make a copy of the data to newer media once a decade.

Hmmmmm . . 500+ movies per year times 10 years - well that's 5000+ movies.

Getting high end digital copies made before the masters fade is the issue. Of the 10s of thousands of masters in each studios vaults, how many have received (or ever will receive) an HD quality (or better) digital transfer?

I don't know that this article really offers anything that we don't already know, except for the info about Taxi Driver. The studios, for the most part, can't be trusted to do what needs to be done. It is really the creative people, the ones who love film and aren't just in the business to make money, who are going to have to push for these films to be properly preserved/restored.

It's always horrible hearing these kind of reports (since I love Rosemary's Baby this one smarts more than usual)

I would like to know exactly what is meant by digital "fading," does this mean literally the image is losing color and contrast, or merely that the media it was entrusted to has become corrupted and unstable?

It's amazing to think films as recent as FARGO can be in check. For years we heard that films on nitrate stock were all entering the last gasp of preservability, but now it seems as if cheap, fading color stocks as recent as twenty-twenty-five years ago are in equal peril.

Sometimes I suspect studios sa films they don't think have much broad commercial appeal are farther gone than they in fact are because they simply don't want to deal with them.

It's always horrible hearing these kind of reports (since I love Rosemary's Baby this one smarts more than usual)

I would like to know exactly what is meant by digital "fading," does this mean literally the image is losing color and contrast, or merely that the media it was entrusted to has become corrupted and unstable?

It's amazing to think films as recent as FARGO can be in check. For years we heard that films on nitrate stock were all entering the last gasp of preservability, but now it seems as if cheap, fading color stocks as recent as twenty-twenty-five years ago are in equal peril.

Sometimes I suspect studios sa films they don't think have much broad commercial appeal are farther gone than they in fact are because they simply don't want to deal with them.

+1


It is really sad to read this...hopefully these peoples and groups efforts will make a difference.

Yeah how does digital fade?? If proper care is taken getting good 4k or higher digital copies made I don't see what the problem is?

This article seems to say digital copies aren't the answer but what the hell are they talking about? If the discs or whatever storage medium starts to die they can always be replaced.

Digital seems the obvious answer to preserve these films forever.

Films are fading, and digital can't save them
But he didn't mention that his own "Taxi Driver" is deteriorating.

Although the 1976 film is part of Sony's vast library, ...

While Sony and Warner Bros. get high marks for attempts at maintaining their libraries, Fox and Paramount get lower grades.


http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117976828.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&

While the subject is serious and deserves attention this article is poorly written and confusing. It raises more factual questions that it answers.

While the subject is serious and deserves attention this article is poorly written and confusing. It raises more factual questions that it answers.

It was supposed to.

Sadly some films are almost beyond hope - I've read Robert Harris saying that "Tom Jones" is UN-restorable and I know that "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" is pretty much gone now. Sad, sad, sad.

Until studios started noticing negatives fading in the 70's, Kodak never really did anything about it - then they introduced CRI (Color Reversal Internegative) as a supposed 'fix' and it faded even faster... today's negatives are 'low-fade', NOT 'no-fade'. The only way to preserve a film, on film, is to do B/W color seps. It could be scanned into digital, but would the studio's do it at a high enough resolution? Also, will the digital formats the film is saved to be usable in the future? Disney had to jump through hoops to get the original Snow White Kodak Cineon files to work with more recent equipment when they re-restored it for DVD release. Same with Fantasia.

The only 'no-fade' printing process is Technicolor IB - I never really liked IB because it was so 'soft' looking, but the 'modern' IB, that started widespread use with "Bullworth" and "Godzilla" is really sharp and nice. Those prints don't fade and since they are on Polyester (Estar) stock, they don't shrink either.

I worked as a large format 15/70 projectionist for years and you should see the fadage that a IMAX print has after a 3 month or so run compared to it's original condition - just incredible - it goes all pastel! By itself, you wouldn't notice, but if I had to replace a reel or something - WOW! What a difference.

Disney had to jump through hoops to get the original Snow White Kodak Cineon files to work with more recent equipment when they re-restored it for DVD release. Same with Fantasia..

Well they must have been doing something very stupid then.

Hmmmmm . . 500+ movies per year times 10 years - well that's 5000+ movies.

yeah, it's a lot of data volume, but it doesn't need to be a lot of work. Once the information is in digital form, the entire process of backing up the data and archiving it can be largely automated. The hard part is getting all the movies into digital form to begin with. Once you have completed that step you should be in good shape.

CD-R discs are estimated to last for 100 years (according to TDK) and Kodak claims theirs will last 200 years in the proper environment.

Wasn't there a great version of Taxi Driver recently released on DVD? Wouldn't it stand to reason that it's from a pretty good Master? Why don't they just preserve that master? They should release it on Blu ray.

I guess I just don't understand it enough, maybe.

Wasn't there a great version of Taxi Driver recently released on DVD? Wouldn't it stand to reason that it's from a pretty good Master? Why don't they just preserve that master? They should release it on Blu ray.

I guess I just don't understand it enough, maybe.

DVD is a low definition format. What is good enough for DVD is not necessarily good enough for 35mm film or even 1080p high definition. I believe North by Northwest, acclaimed for its DVD presentation, is another example of a film that needs some work.

Well, the right answer here is for every studio to release every movie they have ever made on blu-ray and/or HD DVD. It will serve two purposes: Restore those old films AND give us niche-market hoodlums an unlimited library of HD titles to pick from.

I am all for it! :D

Well, the right answer here is for every studio to release every movie they have ever made on blu-ray and/or HD DVD. It will serve two purposes: Restore those old films AND give us niche-market hoodlums an unlimited library of HD titles to pick from.

I am all for it! :D

+ PIE:D

We always think about restoration and the classics from the 30's and 40's. Now we find out that the films of the 1970's are in trouble. What about the "golden age" of cinema (IMO) - the 1960's?

We always think about restoration and the classics from the 30's and 40's. Now we find out that the films of the 1970's are in trouble. What about the "golden age" of cinema (IMO) - the 1960's?

Even more precarious is the destruction of films from what I consider the golden age of cinema - the '40s.

This is an area where I believe the need for legislation supercedes business privacy. These films are part of America's cultural heritage & should not be allowed to disintegrate before our very eyes due to studio neglect. Let's make our elected officials earn their salaries for a change and urge them to force the studios into allocating increased preservation funding.

Well they must have been doing something very stupid then.

I believe Disney actually dumped the original six channel, optical "fantasound" record of Fantasia, and the only original audio that survives was one that was recoded over phone lines! That's why it sounds a bit like it was recorded in a coffee-can on DVD. They also re-orchestrated around 1980, and a lot of people think that rendition is pretty wanting as well.

I suspect only a complete recreation of Fantasias audio will suffice for it's outing on HD

An interesting documentary that illustrates this problem can be found here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7851705567600658577&hl=en

I especially liked the guy who changed his rather smallish house to accommedate a full cinerama setup.


Thanks for the link, what great documentary. And what a shame that so much of film history is being lost at such a rapid rate.:(

I believe Disney actually dumped the original six channel, optical "fantasound" record of Fantasia, and the only original audio that survives was one that was recoded over phone lines! That's why it sounds a bit like it was recorded in a coffee-can on DVD. They also re-orchestrated around 1980, and a lot of people think that rendition is pretty wanting as well.

I suspect only a complete recreation of Fantasias audio will suffice for it's outing on HD


I was mainly referring to their supposed problems with cineon files, which I find extremely hard to believe considering I can read , write and convert them just fine and dandy on a 4 year old PC with $500 worth of software let alone a proper film workstation.

I believe Disney actually dumped the original six channel, optical "fantasound" record of Fantasia, and the only original audio that survives was one that was recoded over phone lines! That's why it sounds a bit like it was recorded in a coffee-can on DVD. They also re-orchestrated around 1980, and a lot of people think that rendition is pretty wanting as well.

I suspect only a complete recreation of Fantasias audio will suffice for it's outing on HD

According to my source - it was called Fantasound. It had 4 channels - L,C,R and S with a backup mono (on the film itself) in case of a audio failure.It was developed by RCA and Disney in 1940 - before the outbreak of WWII. They used a synced 35mm "full coat" as the audio source synced to the film.

I was mainly referring to their supposed problems with cineon files, which I find extremely hard to believe considering I can read , write and convert them just fine and dandy on a 4 year old PC with $500 worth of software let alone a proper film workstation.


Mr. D:

I believe someone is referring to the CYM protection masters that had faded badly where they had to do a full restoration to get the color back into the film. The CYM's were almost B & W.

Hmm, digital data doesn't 'fade'. You may lose the data if you are stupid as a rock, but it doesn't fade. The digital media doesn't last forever, but it does last for decades. All you need to do is remember to spend 5 minutes and make a copy of the data to newer media once a decade.

You're talking about terabytes of uncompressed movie footage. There are only 2 ways to store that kind of data, Hard drives or tape. Tape fades. Hard drives crash.

It's not as simple as making a DVD and sticking it in a slip cover and viola.

Sadly some films are almost beyond hope - I've read Robert Harris saying that "Tom Jones" is UN-restorable and I know that "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" is pretty much gone now. Sad, sad, sad.



Well they can have my dvd of "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" if it will help.

But seriously though, once captured on digital media, nothing will happen to the quality of the video. I mean unless the media its recorded on is destroyed some how, it will be perfect forever. Simply transfer the files to a newer form of digital media every decade or so, and the problem is gone.

We should all be grateful for Blu Ray and HD DVD if for no other reason than 1080P copies of thousands of films will now be safe from deterioration.

Well they can have my dvd of "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" if it will help.

But seriously though, once captured on digital media, nothing will happen to the quality of the video. I mean unless the media its recorded on is destroyed some how, it will be perfect forever. Simply transfer the files to a newer form of digital media every decade or so, and the problem is gone.

That's not what Ridley Scott said:

Movies "get lost in the wilderness unless (studios) pay attention to them," says Ridley Scott, who found the digital version of his 1982 "Blade Runner" in fragile condition. "We discovered inadvertently that a lot of digital stuff was fading quicker than expected. We think it's safe forever on disc, but, in fact, it was actually fading."

Mr. D:

I believe someone is referring to the CYM protection masters that had faded badly where they had to do a full restoration to get the color back into the film. The CYM's were almost B & W.

Disclord originally said:

Also, will the digital formats the film is saved to be usable in the future? Disney had to jump through hoops to get the original Snow White Kodak Cineon files to work with more recent equipment when they re-restored it for DVD release.

Clearly he was talking about interoperability with digital files at this point. Which is what Mr. D is referring to.

If you are referring to someone else's comments, regarding color separation, I'm not sure why you did so in context of a reply to Mr. D's comment.

With use, DVDs will likely eventually rot also, even the HDM ones.

You're talking about terabytes of uncompressed movie footage. There are only 2 ways to store that kind of data, Hard drives or tape. Tape fades. Hard drives crash.

It's not as simple as making a DVD and sticking it in a slip cover and viola.

Yes, but it's not as if thousands of companies aren't already backing up terabytes worth of data on a regular basis, with protections in place to safegaurd against damage caused by hardware failure. Companies do this all the time as a normal course of business.

We always think about restoration and the classics from the 30's and 40's. Now we find out that the films of the 1970's are in trouble. What about the "golden age" of cinema (IMO) - the 1960's?

Sorry Lee, nothing personal, but this thread is getting me depressed.... thinking about how prior generations of studio executives let film rot :(

What about the whole "Age of the Silver Screen" (silent era)? The Birth of a Nation or Gold Rush are what 90 & 80 yrs old. I have them on DVD but am I to understand the original film is a goner :eek:

On that not am off to see a Charlie Chaplin movie right now.... I need a laugh :)

Even more precarious is the destruction of films from what I consider the golden age of cinema - the '40s.

This is an area where I believe the need for legislation supercedes business privacy. These films are part of America's cultural heritage & should not be allowed to disintegrate before our very eyes due to studio neglect. Let's make our elected officials earn their salaries for a change and urge them to force the studios into allocating increased preservation funding.
What makes you think that the film studios are responsible for film preservation??? In many cases they only release the movie and don't even own the negatives.

That's not what Ridley Scott said:

It's this word "fade" thats got me hung up on his comments; degrade, corrupt, sure, but the implication is that the resulting image is fading, not the data. How is this possible?

It's this word "fade" thats got me hung up on his comments; degrade, corrupt, sure, but the implication is that the resulting image is fading, not the data. How is this possible?

WILD GUESS TIME!:p

Losing the color saturation

This is a very sad and serious situation. Hopefully artists like Spielberg who really care about cinema will step up to the plate. Wasn't it Speilberg who put in a million dollars or so to help preserve The Godfather? Something should be done as these films are part of the U.S.A.'s cultural heritage. Efforts are made to preserve paintings, sketches, statues etc. To think that so many valuable and enjoyable works of art may be lost to the ages is awful.

I hope that technology and ingenuity comes to the rescue.

>>I was mainly referring to their supposed problems with cineon files, which I find extremely hard to believe considering I can read , write and convert them just fine and dandy on a 4 year old PC with $500 worth of software let alone a proper film workstation.<<

I just recall being told, at the time, that they were having a very hard time getting the Cineon files read correctly into the computer they were using for the re-restoration. Incompatible file-formats or something - they ended up writing custom conversion software - well, Kodak did... I was told that by one of the guys working on Snow White - I wish I could remember his name. It was a few years ago and he was just an internet contact I 'met' via an iWerks repair tech who worked at Disney as his full-time job.

If I recall correctly (and I probably am not), the Snow White neg was scanned to Cineon at something like 3000 lines x 3000 lines.

I might be mistaken but I think adapting the Cineon files to the 'new' system is even mentioned on the 'restoration' part of the Snow White DVD.

Oh, quick question since you take care of digital files - is the Kodak Photo CD format used for anything anymore? The compression system, I mean, not the CD form-factor. I can't get my Photo CD files to look right in Photoshop 6. My family was a 'test family' for Photo CD back in 1991 so I have a lot of PCD's that Kodak made for us - their scanning quality was excellent.

I think we also have to define what "Unrestorable" means. I just got a SD DVD of third restoration of NOSFERATU (1921) from one of three known 35mm prints, and it's easily the best I've seen it look. Now that's a far cry from perfect, but I found it very acceptable.
http://members.aol.com/dhtreptow/nosferatu.jpg

WILD GUESS TIME!:p

Losing the color saturation

Of a digital file?

Uhh... no.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee Stewart View Post
WILD GUESS TIME!

Losing the color saturation
Of a digital file?

Uhh... no.
__________________
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Well, and I have to point out, we hear a lot of quotes from directors on issues of format preference, and restoration and preservation because the have the spotlight, but being a film director doesn't necessarily make one a preservation expert any more than being a painter makes you a painting preservation expert. You may know a lot, but maybe not as much as technicians who do this work and research.

Of a digital file?

Uhh... no.

So what will "fade" as Scott used the term - he said the "digital stuff" - ON DISC

We discovered inadvertently that a lot of digital stuff was fading quicker than expected. We think it's safe forever on disc, but, in fact, it was actually fading."

If the dream of all digital distribution is going to come to pass then there will be a need to digitally store all films at some point. Large redundant data warehouses like what is used for business databases today would be needed. This is an expenditure that the studios will need to make if they want to at some point digitally distribute their films. I see at as a business opportunity for a 3rd party company to start offering the movie industry. A secure, persistant, redundant, and disaster proof data warehouse solution to store current and past film masters for eventual deployment into a digital distribution stream. If I had the millions to invest in that idea I would.

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/4558/estimatedlifeofdvdr1li5.jpg

From the Study: Eight brand DVD-R discs were tested (from A to H).

source: http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc23/SC23_p8_DCAj.ppt

My use of DVD-R in the field has produced a significant fail-rate over time, I want to say 30%. The worst disks being SONY and TDK, the best being Verbatim. Purely anecdotal, but a major reason that you can keep downloaded content IMO.

So what will "fade" as Scott used the term - he said the "digital stuff" - ON DISC

When exposed to other stray magnetic fields, or if the magnetic substrate should deteriorate, you can get bit errors when reading a disc back. With enough of them, the error correction on the hardware would be unable to correct it, thus corrupting that data.

However given that it's digital data, this would not be evidenced as lesser color saturation. Or the "graceful" degradation akin to anything on analog.

It would be a digital error that might corrupt a compressed chunk, render an improper value, etc...

Note that in the latter example the improper value is just as likely to be a greater value as a lessor value. And it might affect luminance, header data, metafile data, etc. This wouldn't be "lighter blues" as the years go by.

What we are missing in this discussion is not the relative handful of films which can and will be saved in a high quality digital capture ... but the countless 100s of thousands which will not be transferred, or transferred in a compromised state.

Probably, Citizen Kane, Maltese Falcon and Casablanca are safe. But what about George Sanders in the Falcon serials? Or Warren William as Perry Mason in The Howling Dog from the late 30s?

We already get collections of Stanwyck, Davis and Crawford where some scenes are clearly damaged ... does that mean, already, even for DVD quality, these masters have disappeared? Well, yes, actually, that's exactly what it means.

DVD is a low definition format. What is good enough for DVD is not necessarily good enough for 35mm film or even 1080p high definition. I believe North by Northwest, acclaimed for its DVD presentation, is another example of a film that needs some work.

Yes but it is down-rezzed from a high-def master. I thought most, if not all, of the newer transfers are handled this way.

UGH . . . . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_film

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lost_films

My use of DVD-R in the field has produced a significant fail-rate over time, I want to say 30%. The worst disks being SONY and TDK, the best being Verbatim. Purely anecdotal, but a major reason that you can keep downloaded content IMO.
A brand name has little to do with who has actually manufactured the media in a cakebox. I used to buy Fuji from Bad Buy with a blue label which were Taiyo Yuden. TY makes some of the best if not the best media out there. I went in one day to grab some discs and the Fuji labels were all gray. I bought a box, took them home and scanned them to see what I had actually purchased. They were Prodisc, absolute garbage. Needless to say I took them back right away.

There are certain things you can look for when buying blanks. It depends on who's discs you are looking at.
One way to tell who has manufactured a box of Verbatim discs is the lip on the cake box. On a hundred pack a high lip is CMC Magnetics, a low lip is Prodisc. On a 50 pack the font is your clue. Times/Roman=CMC Magnetics, Helvetica/Arial=Prodisc.

As a rule of thumb, if you're going to buy media from a B&M store - only buy made in Japan. If the box says Taiwan or China put it down and back away. I have now quit buying from B&M stores and only buy Taiyo Yuden from Super Media Store online.

If you want to see who manufactured the media that you've purchased just drop a blank in and use Nero's CD-DVD Speed in the toolbox and click the Disc Info tab
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a112/Reseven/Disc_scan.jpg
You can see the MID says TYG02
You can also see the media code at the bottom in the Lead-In info.
This is a scan from a TY 8X I got from SMS.

Back on topic...
It's sad to know that older films are being neglected like this. It may be that one of your favorite old flicks is setting on shelf, rotting away and may never see HD. There are a lot of older films that have never even seen a transfer to SD-DVD. I recently purchased an OOP movie on VHS for my dad from eBay. "This Mortal Storm" starring James Stewart. I was surprised to see that this has never been transferred to DVD.

Sadly some films are almost beyond hope - I've read Robert Harris saying that "Tom Jones" is UN-restorable and I know that "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" is pretty much gone now. Sad, sad, sad.

Until studios started noticing negatives fading in the 70's, Kodak never really did anything about it - then they introduced CRI (Color Reversal Internegative) as a supposed 'fix' and it faded even faster... today's negatives are 'low-fade', NOT 'no-fade'. The only way to preserve a film, on film, is to do B/W color seps. It could be scanned into digital, but would the studio's do it at a high enough resolution? Also, will the digital formats the film is saved to be usable in the future? Disney had to jump through hoops to get the original Snow White Kodak Cineon files to work with more recent equipment when they re-restored it for DVD release. Same with Fantasia.

The only 'no-fade' printing process is Technicolor IB - I never really liked IB because it was so 'soft' looking, but the 'modern' IB, that started widespread use with "Bullworth" and "Godzilla" is really sharp and nice. Those prints don't fade and since they are on Polyester (Estar) stock, they don't shrink either.

I worked as a large format 15/70 projectionist for years and you should see the fadage that a IMAX print has after a 3 month or so run compared to it's original condition - just incredible - it goes all pastel! By itself, you wouldn't notice, but if I had to replace a reel or something - WOW! What a difference.

'its a mad,mad...,world', endangered ?, gone?:eek: the end of the world is nigh!:eek: thats one of my all time favorites, oh no, what to do?...

im serious, thats a family favorite, has been for 40 yrs, 3 generations!

edit-after thinking a little more about it, i just realized that 'its a mad...world' was the 1st dvd i ever bought, several years ago. anamorphic even!

Well they can have my dvd of "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" if it will help.

But seriously though, once captured on digital media, nothing will happen to the quality of the video. I mean unless the media its recorded on is destroyed some how, it will be perfect forever. Simply transfer the files to a newer form of digital media every decade or so, and the problem is gone.

mine too!

My use of DVD-R in the field has produced a significant fail-rate over time, I want to say 30%. The worst disks being SONY and TDK, the best being Verbatim. Purely anecdotal, but a major reason that you can keep downloaded content IMO.

i recently set aside 5 dvd-rs (from 5 different major manufacturers) recorded in july/august of '04, when i first started using them, for my dvd backups and some tv shows. i dated them and keep them in black cases (as i do all my -rs) and test play them every 3 mos or so to see if they're still viable. so far, so good.

my plan is to soon purchase an inexpensive replicator for a few hundred bucks and copy all my -rs every 8 or 9 yrs (if i live that long (lol!)), unless its proven that it should be done sooner.

i made a lot of -r copies of older sit-coms, various shows (man/girl from u.n.c.l.e., i spy, f-troop, mtm, etc, off 'american life tv', a cable channel) and i want to make them last.

I've suggested numerous times that this should be tied to the copyright issue. Copyrighted material is supposed to enter the public domain once the copyright expires.

So we could kill two birds with one stone by making a requirement that, to extend copyright past 20 years or so, you would have to file a full resolution unencrypted digital copy of the media with the Library of Congress. Anybody unwilling or unable to create that copy would face an expired copyright and public domain efforts (legal public file sharing) would start creating shared copies all over the Internet. These might be lower quality but at least would exist.

Under the current system we are losing much of our cultural heritage. We should not have to wait for 150 years for others to pick up the slack for shoddy backup practices. It is too late by then and too much is lost.

- Tom

Well Art . . . and others . . . what a mess:mad:

Very very sad. I think many of us had had images of things now not being as bad. I had heard about so many nitrate films having disintegrated but the task appears to be monumental and the situation grim.

Art

'its a mad,mad...,world', endangered ?, gone? the end of the world is nigh! thats one of my all time favorites, oh no, what to do?...

im serious, thats a family favorite, has been for 40 yrs, 3 generations!

It's in serious trouble - especially all the extra clips that were removed from the original Roadshow version. They have vinegar syndrome and are decaying fast.

One good thing - the intermission audio of the police radio reports was found a few years ago - it was used when IAMMMMW was screened at the Cinerama Dome in 2006, I believe. They screened the 'cut' version of the film though, NOT the complete Roadshow edition.

Sadly, Warner considers this film 'worthless' and won't fork over the money to do a proper restoration of the Roadshow edition. With the condition the edited clips are in, it's probably too late.

Very very sad. I think many of us had had images of things now not being as bad. I had heard about so many nitrate films having disintegrated but the task appears to be monumental and the situation grim.

Art

So true Art. And the problem is that the solution rests squarely on the shoulders of the studios, who are not in the greatest financial shape.

When we read about Paramount not caring enough to spend the money to do The Godfather restoration I have to ask myself; "If they don't care about this film - what films will they care about?"

Look at TV - we have 2 channels dedicated to old programming - TV Land and TCM. Out of how many available channels?

IMO we are at a point where money is the ONLY deciding factor when it comes to our heritage.

A pitiful state of affairs indeed.:(

I've suggested numerous times that this should be tied to the copyright issue. Copyrighted material is supposed to enter the public domain once the copyright expires.

So we could kill two birds with one stone by making a requirement that, to extend copyright past 20 years or so, you would have to file a full resolution unencrypted digital copy of the media with the Library of Congress. Anybody unwilling or unable to create that copy would face an expired copyright and public domain efforts (legal public file sharing) would start creating shared copies all over the Internet. These might be lower quality but at least would exist.

Under the current system we are losing much of our cultural heritage. We should not have to wait for 150 years for others to pick up the slack for shoddy backup practices. It is too late by then and too much is lost.

- Tom
I don't believe this will ever happen. The studios were already able to have the 75 year? limit copyright law eradicated, and they aren't about to let something this costly impede their present ability to copyright their ownership interests.

This is very sad. It's a shame the studios can't pool their resources into making a facility dedicated to film preservation. As far as digital goes I think there is some misinformation here. I respect Mr. Scott as a director, but I'm sure like many people he's probably not well versed in technology. Digital technology doesn't fade, it's simply not possible. The data is either present or corrupted (i.e. the 1 or 0 can be read or it can't). There's no in between. If it's present it will be exactly as it was originally stored. I do think digital preservation is the key. Perhaps not on optical media, but perhaps in large server farms that contain the data or media specifically engineered for long term storage.

This is very sad. It's a shame the studios can't pool their resources into making a facility dedicated to film preservation. As far as digital goes I think there is some misinformation here. I respect Mr. Scott as a director, but I'm sure like many people he's probably not well versed in technology. Digital technology doesn't fade, it's simply not possible. The data is either present or corrupted (i.e. the 1 or 0 can be read or it can't). There's no in between. If it's present it will be exactly as it was originally stored. I do think digital preservation is the key. Perhaps not on optical media, but perhaps in large server farms that contain the data or media specifically engineered for long term storage.

The fade on digital media is not turning 1's and 0's into 1/2's. It is instead a lowering of probability you will successfully read the 1's & 0's. After error checking and correction this tends to turn into the fading probability of successfully reading any block of data at all, sometimes after an increasing number of retries.

Ever have to swipe your credit card more than once to make it work?

Or notice a fading probability of typing a correct phone number after a few beers? ;)

- Tom

Well it's a problem with semantics I guess. Fade usually implies that something about the object in question has diminished, usually over time. But when you hear something has faded it does not imply that the aspect is completely absent. My shirt has faded colors, the print on this page has sun faded. Digital data is fully intact until it degrades to the point it isn't. And if it's readable, no aspect of it is compromised.

Digital data is fully intact until it degrades to the point it isn't. And if it's readable, no aspect of it is compromised.With embedded error-correcting codes, a digital data set may gradually degrade (aka "fade") with some bits toggling, but still be correctable to a perfect copy. Once too many bits degrade you get dropouts.

Doing a fresh digital copy restores this. (and no "jitter" is added :p )

I guess I just don't like that term. I hear what you are saying with error correction. But when the bit is dead, it's dead. Of course error correcting algorithms can restore the missing data, but it is restored to 100% in the digital world there is no in between. To me when the error correction fails and the data is damaged, that isn't fading, it's corrupted unreadable data. When that happens you get a completely dropped dataset, not reds that have "faded" to pinks. I know, I know. It's semantics. But using the term "fade" in conjunction with digital data makes little sense to me.

If the dream of all digital distribution is going to come to pass then there will be a need to digitally store all films at some point. Large redundant data warehouses like what is used for business databases today would be needed. This is an expenditure that the studios will need to make if they want to at some point digitally distribute their films. I see at as a business opportunity for a 3rd party company to start offering the movie industry. A secure, persistant, redundant, and disaster proof data warehouse solution to store current and past film masters for eventual deployment into a digital distribution stream. If I had the millions to invest in that idea I would.

The cost of running a secure, persistant, redundant, and disaster proof data warehouse is significantly greater than the cost of running an environmentally control film vault. If studios are not even willing to pay the cost to maintain their film vault, they are unlikely to pay the cost of running a data centre.

In this article about the restoration of Blade Runner, there is a picture of the 4K-capable LTO (Linear Tape Open) magnetic tape that they use to store the new scan.

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/features/2624/blade-runner-on-the-cutting-edge.html

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/9434/ltotape125200717734ri0.jpg

Hmm, digital data doesn't 'fade'. You may lose the data if you are stupid as a rock, but it doesn't fade. The digital media doesn't last forever, but it does last for decades. All you need to do is remember to spend 5 minutes and make a copy of the data to newer media once a decade.

A colleague in the electronic forensics/e-discovery business told me a story this week about how he and his team had to recover a patent application from 1991 that was stored in Microsoft Project 1.0 format on an old QIC tape. They were able to reverse engineer the format, restore the files, and then convert them to PDF for use by the company in court for a lawsuit.

So, you don't even need to make copies every 10 years. Good magnetic backup tapes stored in optimum conditions will last as long as you need them to.

I guess I just don't like that term. I hear what you are saying with error correction. But when the bit is dead, it's dead. Of course error correcting algorithms can restore the missing data, but it is restored to 100% in the digital world there is no in between. To me when the error correction fails and the data is damaged, that isn't fading, it's corrupted unreadable data. When that happens you get a completely dropped dataset, not reds that have "faded" to pinks. I know, I know. It's semantics. But using the term "fade" in conjunction with digital data makes little sense to me.


I agree... it's an odd term to use with digital media, and it may simply be something that Bay was used to saying.

Unfortunately, it leads to conclusions like Lee's above that somehow digital dropouts would lead to something like lessened color saturation from an older didgital disc.

A colleague in the electronic forensics/e-discovery business told me a story this week about how he and his team had to recover a patent application from 1991 that was stored in Microsoft Project 1.0 format on an old QIC tape. They were able to reverse engineer the format, restore the files, and then convert them to PDF for use by the company in court for a lawsuit.

So, you don't even need to make copies every 10 years. Good magnetic backup tapes stored in optimum conditions will last as long as you need them to.

We hope.

We are talking archival requirements that are an order of magnitude (or really inifinite, but that implies some re-copying at some point) more than that. There are already films from 100+ years ago that are simply gone.

There was some extra in the Star Wars dvd's about the restoration process they had to go through. Comparing the film footage, with the restored digital footage etc. Educational..

>>I was mainly referring to their supposed problems with cineon files, which I find extremely hard to believe considering I can read , write and convert them just fine and dandy on a 4 year old PC with $500 worth of software let alone a proper film workstation.

I just recall being told, at the time, that they were having a very hard time getting the Cineon files read correctly into the computer they were using for the re-restoration. Incompatible file-formats or something - they ended up writing custom conversion software - well, Kodak did... I was told that by one of the guys working on Snow White - I wish I could remember his name. It was a few years ago and he was just an internet contact I 'met' via an iWerks repair tech who worked at Disney as his full-time job.

If I recall correctly (and I probably am not), the Snow White neg was scanned to Cineon at something like 3000 lines x 3000 lines.

I might be mistaken but I think adapting the Cineon files to the 'new' system is even mentioned on the 'restoration' part of the Snow White DVD.
.

Cineon files are still used today , there is nothing marginal or exotic about the cineon format. They probably had some problems reading the cineon files into a piece of hardware not designed for them. Anything remotely connected with handling digital film formats will handle cineon right off the bat. DPX which is about the industry standard for this sort of thing is pretty much just a cineon file with some additional header info. Inferno used to render a troublesome cineon format years ago but that'd hardly Kodak's problem. The Snow White restoration was done on Cineon workstations ( I know as I learnt to composite on Cineon).

I seriously doubt they had to do any "re-restoration" on the image front : implying the recent restoration was inadequate : I suspect they are merely referring to pulling the digital files into a colour correction suite for video mastering ( a totally normal process)..in fact if memory serves me correctly I remember Nucoda or Scratch colour correction software not handling cineon files ( and generally being regarded as a bit stupid for not doing so , later versions rectifying this).

Custom software would be overkill to fix this seeing as you could just read the files into something like Shake or Combustion or Inferno or Flame or After Effects or Photoshop or umpteen other bits of software and write them out as DPX files with no actual conversion going on ( its really a reformat).

If someone workign as a professional in this industry had trouble with cineon files I personally wouldn't trust them to tie their own shoelaces.

Snow white was scanned at 4k ( 3656x2664) for academy 1.37:1

>>

Oh, quick question since you take care of digital files - is the Kodak Photo CD format used for anything anymore? The compression system, I mean, not the CD form-factor. I can't get my Photo CD files to look right in Photoshop 6. My family was a 'test family' for Photo CD back in 1991 so I have a lot of PCD's that Kodak made for us - their scanning quality was excellent.

I don't take care of digital files I make the images they contain but I'm sure PhotoCD will be readable and correctly viewable for years to come , the fact you can see an image means you don't have any serious problems , maybe its a calibration problem if there is a format problem someone somewhere will have fixed it on the www.

Thanks for the great info! Disney did more dirt and scratch removal on the 're-restoration' as I call it. Stuff they couldn't do as well the first time from what I understand. They also did a full re-render to 35mm in addition to the video transfer.

Maintenance of digital material means it has to be recopied nearly every 18 months in the latest format, says Robert Rosen, dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, who served as founding director of the university's archives from 1975-99. He adds that commercial labs are not up to the challenge, so "you're on your own."

"A thousand years from now, there will be a temple and on its altar will be a piece of 35mm film," Rosen muses. "They're going to say, 'Way back then, everything was shot on that and was shown on that and was preserved on that.' And people will 'ooh' and 'ah' and say, 'That's not possible.'"

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/film/e3i7631a4fea1c15e09cf33182d855cc6f4

You're talking about terabytes of uncompressed movie footage. There are only 2 ways to store that kind of data, Hard drives or tape. Tape fades. Hard drives crash.

It's not as simple as making a DVD and sticking it in a slip cover and viola.

Sure HDD crash and tapes can be corrupted but many companies have managed to securely store hundreds of Terabytes worth of data with no data loss. HDD fail but SAN (storage area networks) can be built RAID6 to handle 2 disk failures with no data loss per cluster. Further more the SAN can be designed with one or more hot spares so the cluster can rebuild parity data as soon as a corrupt or damaged drive is detected. Clusters can be mirrored to provide another layer of fault tolerence. Accidental deletion can be solved by SAN control that prevents write access unless placed into read/write mode. The cluster is placed into read/write and loaded with number of digital masters. Once loaded the cluster is locked into read only. Even if an operator accidently attempts to change the data it will be blocked by the SAN controller and flagged.

Modern digital magentic tapes properly stored are very fault tolerent and can be stored off site. The tapes would be used minimally used since they would only be needed if the cluster and it's mirror failed. They provide a substantial level of error correction unlike analog film stock.

Most corporate data is stored in database format which is a magnitude more difficult to manage. Data needs to be arranged for rapid access and modification. Backups are more challenging because large sections of the db may change even when the actual amount of data changed is small. Walmart's DB platform is 4Petabytes. That is enough space for about 1000 movies uncompressed as 4K scans and LPCM audio. Use some lossless compression and the number of movies stored could be doubled.

If hundreds of companies can do it with rapidly changing data why can't the movie industry manage it with large static blocks of rarely changing data? Bits are bits. Of all types of data management situations movies would be ideal. They get loaded into the system once. They are rarely accessed, and almost never modified. The masters would never be "worked on" in the archive system. Daily updates of movies are not needed. A tape backup of the master would be made when the master is loaded. Once compared to the master and checksums generated multiple copies are moved off. The off site location routinely checks the integrity of the tapes against the checksums and requests new tapes as needed.

The studios didn't simply care enough to protect these treasures and now many will be lost forever. It is not as simple as burning a disc but it is done every day in hundreds of companies safeguarding petabytes worth of corporate data.

Thanks for the great info! Disney did more dirt and scratch removal on the 're-restoration' as I call it. Stuff they couldn't do as well the first time from what I understand. They also did a full re-render to 35mm in addition to the video transfer.


Seriously doubt there was anything describable as a scratch or dirt left after the first restoration , the work hasn't changed that much and the kit used at the time compares well with the standards of today , the operators were all first class. (Cineon ops generally are unlike the 10 a penny kids with a Shake licence on their powerbook)

If there was any stuff left it was likley the original restoration team thought removing it represented a degradation greater than leaving it alone... the later team may not be quite so respectful.

A "full re-render to 35mm" is meaningless, the original was carried out at 4k 10bit log full negative density , thats as good as it gets with scanning and recording 35mm. Writing that back out to film at 4k is a relatively normal thing.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/film/e3i7631a4fea1c15e09cf33182d855cc6f4

Maintenance of digital material means it has to be recopied nearly every 18 months in the latest format, says Robert Rosen, dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, who served as founding director of the university's archives from 1975-99. He adds that commercial labs are not up to the challenge, so "you're on your own."



Rubbish.

10bit log file formats have been a very solid standard for over 10 years.

Sadly some films are almost beyond hope - I've read Robert Harris saying that "Tom Jones" is UN-restorable and I know that "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" is pretty much gone now. Sad, sad, sad.



Now that is horrible news. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a great movie. I remember watching my dad's laserdiscs of that movie. Didn't it have like 3 or 4 discs? lol

Here's a link to an article (PDF) on what Disney did in 2001 for Snow White.
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/pdf/Entertainment/1030entertainment_snowwhite_dmo.pdf

The LD Box Set of "...Mad World" was a truly wonderful package. It was also a semi-restored version in that collectors had found trims and outtakes that Stanley Kramer oversaw putting back into the film on video. MGM chose not to use that version for the DVD. It's amazing the feelings Mad World generates in people - they either absolutely love it, or they despise it.

Here's a link to an article (PDF) on what Disney did in 2001 for Snow White.
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/pdf/Entertainment/1030entertainment_snowwhite_dmo.pdf

"Disney used Cineon tools for dirt and scratch removal that would be considered relatively primitve today"

Nonsense. Cineon is a compositing package , sure it doesn't have any automated dustbusting tools as standard but neither does any other compositing package to this day. As a compositing package it offers exactly the same sort of functionality as the up to date packages : most of which (if they are node based like Shake and Nuke) get most of their best ideas directly from Cineon. It took them years to get the calibration and grain management tools as good as the original Cineon ones (mostly they've just ported the tools over as Cineon/Kodak were very good at making the code available).

"Also the cleaned up Cineon data...had to be read back out onto a film negative , a new print struck and that print had to go through telecine conversion"

Cineon files are indistinguishable from the files used at a DI. I just finished on 10000BC and it used cineon files for delivery and scanning. You do not need to record back out to film and then telecine in exactly the same way as you can generate video masters from a DI. Neither do you need to strike a print or interpositive for telecine purposes you can telecine the neg itself and this is fairly common practice .

The only reason they had to record out to film again is to use a LAB based traditional colour grading and video mastering pipeline which was standard at the time. This has nothing to do with any limitation of the cineon files.On the recent mastering (because thats all it is rather than a restoration). It sounds as if they then just DNR'd and blasted any available film artifact away and justified some change in the colour correcting to video with some sort of half assed reference to animation cells using volatile pigments from 80 years ago!.


There is so much BS in that article I'm getting bored of correcting it. Certainly the bulk of the digital restoration was carried out by Cinesite and did not involve hardware or artists from "Disney" at all.

Certainly the original statement you made about the cineon files being problematic isn't the case.

Here's a link to an article (PDF) on what Disney did in 2001 for Snow White. Gosh! I guess you can't preserve film in 5 minutes on a $600 computer!