Stability of Digital Betacam

I was wondering if anybody has any in-depth information on the long
term stability of Digital Betacam videotape. At present I am
involved in the design of a film archives vault system. There is
much disagreement on the type of material that will be collected and
what the duplication and long term storage needs will be. As you can
well imagine, this is major migraine producing stuff. Certain people
have decided that duplication of film and video onto 16mm polyester
filmstock is not the way to go and that all the storage masters will
be on Digital Betacam (disturbingly they also want to get rid of the
original object once it's copied). The preservation implications of
such choices are huge.

The archive is intended to collect film and sound material of  State
significance. Much of the material is likely to be one off amateur
footage on a variety of video formats and film gauges.  If we do not
preserve it correctly, no one else will and it will be lost.

Although it is going to be impossible to solve the organisational
politics involved in this design brief, it may be possible to
prevent the use of an unsuitable longterm storage medium. Thank you
very much indeed,

Lydia Egunnike
Senior Conservator
Preservation Services
State Library of Queensland
PO Box 3488 South Brisbane
QLD Australia 4101
+61 7 3840 7779
Fax: +61 7 3840 7943

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 13:5
                 Distributed: Wednesday, June 30, 1999
                        Message Id: cdl-13-5-004
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