A "Lost" Generation

This is a great article that I received from Geeks.com today:

http://www.geeks.com/techtips/2007/techtips-30DEC07.htm

[kbob]

that's something I've encountered as a church as well. We're celebrating our 20th-a bit late, in order to avoid Thanksgiving/Christmas overload, and getting images from our early years-only 20 years back-is tough.

In fact, I'm thinking of starting a business doing nothing but copying tapes from digital 8 et al to vhs/dvd (some still want the tapes, even now). I've got my first customer's tapes here tonight in fact-and even though he doesn't yet have a dvd player, that's the medium he chose just because you can hardly buy a decent vhs deck any more.

This is a problem at all levels too-now Hollywood, fresh from pushing digital projection systems on many theaters, has discovered that archiving the digits is even more expensive than archiving the film. Magnetic media degrades, far faster than film, and optical discs are subject to de-lamination, foil destroying fungi, as well as the more every day scratches, cracks, and warping.

Backing up to one type of medium isn't a great idea-do it to all that you can. DVD-both r & rw; external drives, flash drives (where feasible), and hard printouts (though even those fade). For the truly special stuff, have the prints made at a specialty shop. Not that expensive, and using archival acid free paper, etc, is more of a profession for them than for most of us.