RE: [AV Media Matters] For the Record...

[Jim Lindner <jim@vidipax.com>]

George McBride wrote:
>>
>Sid Friedman who was
>responsible for the transfer and archive project for NBC, New York.

Let's give credit where credit is due.

For the record.  VidiPax restored all of the NBC News Archive 2" tapes
and a large quantity of 3/4" tapes and still provides that service for
NBC on premise at VidiPax.  In addition, VidiPax was retained to restore
literally tens of thousands of tapes that had been exposed to smoke in
the fire at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.  Neither of these huge projects had
any involvement with Mr. Friedman whatsoever.

VidiPax also was responsible for the design of the NBC Archive
duplication project which took place in New Jersey at an NBC facility -
down to specifying which equipment to use, the workstations, operator
stations, scheduling, logistics, staffing and so forth - and dare I say
- was even asked it's opinion on tape stocks to migrate the collection
to (Maxell was the chosen vendor). In fact - it was VidiPax that worked
with the Archive Director (Stan Singer) in the first place to work out
the basic feasibility of the project and the considerable resources that
were involved.  A project of this scale had never been done before, and
we are honored to have had the key role in the project. VidiPax was paid
as a consultant by NBC to do all of this work.

In addition VidiPax was offered the "opportunity" of providing
additional management services for the staffing and running of this
other facility that we had designed.  VidiPax was even offered the
opportunity to purchase the equipment for the project for NBC as a
"turnkey" project. We chose not to accept the offer as made by NBC for
various reasons - economic as well as issues relating to the size of our
company, our internal resources, and the fact that the project was
engineered to be a duplication project and NOT a restoration project,
and had very serious time constraints and as such was too much of a risk
for our company (which at that time was 1/4 the size we now are ) - and
similarly NBC felt that it could internally manage the project more
effectively - an opinion that we agreed with.  Mr. Friedman was hired as
an NBC employee to be the operations manager of the project.

The overall manager of the whole archive project and the news archive
was Stan Singer who remains with NBC (recently promoted). Stan was the
person who had overall responsibility for the project and the person who
we interfaced with directly.  Stan reported to Nancy Cole who is the
Director of the NBC News Archive.

The New Jersey project was not as much a restoration project as a
duplication project, and there are very significant differences between
the two that were discussed at length in the design of the project. Once
the project had accomplished it's goal of duplicating the materials to
new media it was shut down.

We are proud to continue to do work with NBC on a regular basis - both
film and video - with the News Archive as well as with many other
divisions of the company. It is an excellent business relationship that
has lasted over 5 years.

Jim Lindner - President
VidiPax - The Magnetic Media and Information Migration Full Services
Company
Telephone 212-563-1999
www.vidipax.com
Moderator of A/V Media Matters@topica.com