[AV Media Matters] Video to film for preservation?

[tcorlis@yahoo.com]

I have a question that may be coming from a strange direction, but I
keep coming back to it.  What is the feasibility and potential economic
consideration for using motion picture film as a preservation medium
for things that are currently recorded on video?  I ask this because it
seems we have a better handle on preserving film over longer terms, and
I wondered if anyone had experimented with this idea.

Moderators Comment:
Groan. This single issue put video restoration efforts behind film
restoration for years, and fortunately I think that it is finally behind
us - even though this does crop up every now and again (that's a joke - get
it film - crop - video - aspect ratio - crop .... OK so it wasn't funny).
The short answer - no, film is preserved as film - video is preserved as
video. Even in the digital domain there are very significant differences
between the two media types - from resolution to color space to frame rate -
in fact it sometimes seems that there are more differences then
similarities - and film has all sorts of preservation issues too. It isn't
preservation if it changes the nature of the material you are trying to
preserve. And yes, it is incredibly expensive anyhow.

So even if you were to preserve video by digitization (a very contraversial
subject in and of itself) one would be extremely careful to preserve the
"nature" of the media type. Video on film looks like  - well - a Kine, or
something other then either film or video -it has it's own visual
"character".... been there did that.

jim

Tim Corlis - Rutgers University             tcorlis@rci.rutgers.edu
Special Collections & University Archives   tcorlis@yahoo.com
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