Re: [AV Media Matters] let's talk about DV.

[smolians@erols.com]

Note that the evidential use in any legal proceedings of digital
recordings in any format at all is highly questionable.  Unlike
analog, there seems no analyzable audit trail to show if anything
has been altered.

If any such future use is a consideration, preserving a recording in
an analog format is essential.

I was astounded to find the opening evidence at the OJ Simpson
trial, the 911 phone call, went unchallanged.

Steve Smolian

Original Message-----
From: amipa2@pobox.alaska.net <amipa2@pobox.alaska.net>
To: AV-Media-Matters@topica.com <AV-Media-Matters@topica.com>
Date: Tuesday, October 12, 1999 10:29 PM
Subject: Re: [AV Media Matters] let's talk about DV.

>Well Eleanor, I have no concrete evidence regarding DV durability, but as
>an archivist who was (sometimes still is) a post-production editor for 15
>years, I have the same concerns about durability.  Hi-8mm got the same
>rabid endorsement from various producers when I was editing in D.C. in the
>early '90's.  My problem is that one of the chief reasons (besides
>price/performance) that folks pitch digital formats is the duplication
>advantage- "clones" from one copy to the next.  Well, they really aren't
>clones, thanks to digital "advances" such as error-concealment.  In the
>larger formats, you can track or turn off the error- concealment, but in DV
>no info will come to you about how much data on any one frame is being
>altered.  So if the cloning is suspect, my concern about the fragility of
>the tape itself rises in stature dramatically.  And what about interchange
>issues?
>
>I was pitching this concept to a group here at AMIPA last week for the
>National conference of the Oral History Association.  My basic statement is
>DV is too young to be considered a tried-n-true archive format.  Not enough
>data!  Isn't that what we are finding here on media matters?  So, I'll
>stick with the known quantity of BetaCamSP- a proven standard (though yes,
>it has it's faults too).  There was one fellow in the group who was
>shooting on DV and backing up on BetaSP to archive- within the same year!
>If only everyone was thinking like him..
>
>Bob Curtis-Johnson
>Alaska Moving Image Preservation Association