[This article was first published in 2004,and updated in the January, 2005, issue of
Larry's Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click
here to subscribe.
Latest updated 8/19/2006 adn 5/10/2007.]
This whole issue began when several students in one of my classes asserted
that they were told "by people who know," that the life
of video tape is about a year. This struck me as seriously wrong.
John Lynn, of Genius DV, and I have been having a lengthy discussion
about the best way to archive media. John, in an article on his website,
argues that the
best way to archive media is to store it on hard disks. You can read his article
here:
http://www.geniusdv.com/managing-fcp-avid-media.php
The more I thought about this, and discussed it with John, the more
I disagreed with this point of view. A few months ago, I wrote an article
on how to archive your FCP projects. You can read it here:
http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_archive.html
John gave me the opportunity to write a differing opinion for posting
on his website and here's what I sent (thank you, John, for permission
to reprint this).
- - -
John, I appreciate your comments, but I disagree with them.
I think your advice of using removable hard disks is a good option
for short-term storage, say, the next two-three years. However, I think
it is a seriously flawed idea for long-term storage for three reasons:
- Technology is built to become obsolete.
- The life of a hard disk, in practice, is shorter than the life
of a video tape
- Image and capture technology continues to improve
Technology Becomes Obsolete
This, to me, is the strongest argument. The technology industry is
built on the idea of rapid obsolescence and frequent upgrades. Look
in your garage at all the old computer equipment you have stored there.
How much computer gear do you own that is seven years old that you
can still plug into your computer and use today? Virtually none of
it.
Look at the hard disk technologies we've had over the last decade
or two:
- Floppy disk
- Hard-shell floppy disk
- Zip drives
- Syquest drives (remember them? They were THE backup alternative
for ad agencies worldwide)
- Serially-connected hard disks
- Parallel hard disks
- SCSI 25-pin hard disks
- SCSI 50-pin hard disks
- And a whole plethora of tape drives
How many of these systems are currently working on computers? Virtually
none.
Technology is good for current and short-term storage. It is not
good for long-term storage.
You could argue that storing your media on DVD or CD provides long-term
storage. I would agree. I think we will be able to read CDs and DVDs
long after today's current crop of hard drives bites the dust. But
CDs and DVDs hold only a fraction of the media that one video tape
can hold. Unless you compress your media, which then makes editing
extremely difficult.
Look, also, at the current storage plans of broadcast stations and
networks. They use servers to keep current and recent shows on-line.
But the archives of CNN, arguably one of the largest and most profitable
networks, keeps its news archives on video tape. Why? Because 20 years
from now, they will still be playable.
Video Tapes Last Longer
The life of a properly stored video tape, assuming it is professional-quality
and not purchased at "Jim-Bob's Cut-Rate Video Tape and Fish Bait
Warehouse", is well in excess of 20 years.
Current research seems to indicate that the life of a magnetic hard
disk is less than that.
Image and Capture Technology Continues to Improve
As technology continues to improve, so does its ability to capture,
render, edit and output images. Recapturing from source tapes allows
you to take advantage of these improvements. Simply reloading clips
already captured locks you into the image technology of the past.
Conclusion
I agree with your idea of using removable storage to keep a current
project available for a while. My disagreement is relying on this system
for periods longer than five years. Nothing I've seen in technology
over the last twenty years leads me to believe that hard disk, communication,
or media technology is going to stand still.
Granted, capturing off video tape, especially cheap video tape, poorly
stored and poorly cared for, can be a problem. But, I think basing
your archiving plans on removable hard disk technology is even more
of a problem.
- - -
After reading this discussion, one of John's readers, Mickey
Hough,
wrote back, saying:
I currently use all methods both of you mentioned but I would like
to only work off of hard drives because they are so much faster and
easier to use. I am not quite sure what Larry is referring to about
hard drives becoming obsolete? Hard drives have been around forever
and if formats changed I would sure think that you could just transfer
your media from the old format to the new? Anyway maybe some more
input would help.
Larry replies, here's my point:
You can archive on hard disk or on video tape. I suggest video tape
is the better choice.
- Video tape has a longevity of 20-25 years, under proper storage
- Video tape is cheaper, by a long shot, than removable hard disks
- There is no assurance that a hard disk you use today will be
compatible with systems you use in 15 years. (Look at SyQuest or
serial hard drives as classic examples of technology obsolescence).
Video tape equipment today can be easily purchased or rented that
will play tapes recorded 20-30 years ago.
- I just finished teaching a Final Cut class with representatives
from Fox, CBS and NBC networks. In all cases, they have their current
video projects stored on hard disk, but for long-term archives,
they use tape.
Tape is cheaper, more flexible, more likely to work and lasts longer
than hard disks.
Clearly, if video tape has a very short life, you don't want to use
it for archiving. So, I asked readers with experience
in these matters to provide some additional input. This article is
the result.
Steve Smith, Senior Editor of STAR TV in Hong Kong:
I was reading through your excellent newsletter and saw that you need
some information on how long videotape lasts. I may be able to help
with this issue.
I have been a videotape editor for the past 25 years and have
handled every format of tape from early 2 inch and 1 inch formats
through to
today's cassette based formats. I believe that when correct storage
and handling are used the life of a videotape is almost indefinite.
In order to prolong videotape life there are a few key issues to always
remember.
- Always rewind the tape after use. This was never a problem
with 2 inch or 1 inch which obviously had to be de-spooled
from the VTR before storage. Cassettes
however can be ejected from a VTR at whatever position the tape is stopped at.
This leaves about eight inches of the tape exposed to whatever environment
it is stored in irrespective of whether it is put back in its case or not. The
cases are not airtight. It will also leave the two spools inside the cassette
imbalanced and this can cause the tape to go "slack" after storage.
When completely rewound there is a two foot clear plastic leader at the
head of the tape which means that none of the magnetic or ceramic tape is exposed.
It also "repacks" the tape onto the supply spool and once in its case
and stored upright (similar to books in a library) no slack will occur on the
spool.
- The storage environment should ideally be "climate
controlled".
Put simply a cool dark place not subject to fluctuations in temperature. An air
conditioned tape library is ideal. Please note though, I have numerous
tapes stashed in my bedroom closet that are still perfectly OK after 15 years.
Humidity is the biggest killer of stored videotape. Moisture once inside
a cassette housing is almost impossible to remove. Never get a tape wet, it is
the kiss of death otherwise.
- Avoid dust and smoke at all costs. If a cassette is placed
into a poorly maintained VTR i.e. dusty, dirty heads etc it
is a given that some of this contamination
will end up inside the cassette. Smoking near VTR's is not recommended. Smoke
particles are huge and easily ingested into VTR's that are constantly sucking
air in as coolant for the high speed heads. Dust and smoke particles pass across
the heads and the tape in contact with the heads and are the biggest creators
of dropouts and tape damage. A clean environment when working with the tape will
prolong its life.
- While the cassette is in the VTR try not to leave it in "Pause" or "Freeze" mode
for too long. Press the Stop button on the VTR or edit controller so that the
heads are no longer in contact with the tape. This will alleviate any attrition
on the tape at this point
There are probably a million other more technical and scientific
suggestions but these are my big four. Good housekeeping can save
you untold grief. I hope this helps sort a few questions out. Keep
up the great work in the newsletter!
Chris G. adds:
I just played a few old tapes to check this out. the oldest dv
tape i could find on my shelves was from 2000 (sony premium shot
in dv format). it looks perfect when played back.
A note on 8-13 year old VHS tapes. Although we are not that interested
in VHS tape, just for comparison, here's what I'm seeing: one of
my 8 year old VHS tapes
with footage transferred from dv footage stills looks great - even for VHS (must
have been a quality transfer). another old VHS tape which is 13 years old with
footage transferred from Beta SP is viewable but looks faded and pixilated, quite
bad. Some of the poor quality may have been in the orig. transfer because another
13 year old VHS tape, Beta SP transfer still looks quite good, maybe some minor
fading but still good resolution.
Last year, i think it was at DV Expo or similar trade show,
i attended an informative talk by a sony rep about MiniDV / DVCAM
tape stock. he went into
great detail about the specs and longevity and durability of the various qualities
of dv stock.
For starters, though, dv tape hasn't been around long enough to
really assess longevity, but if my memory is correct, i think the
sony guy estimated more than
25 years for any of the quality levels.
The formula differences in Sony's different tape stocks effect
both reliability and durability. factors effecting this are the
type of lubricant and how many
layers are applied - the more expensive = more lubricant (not sure if that's
the right word, but that's the gist of it). the recording mode, as we all know,
is also a factor because more info is crammed onto a smaller space in dv vs.
DVCAM, so the dv formatted would be a bit more vulnerable.
Obviously, storage method is a big factor.
The biggest new piece of info i got from the talk was that he
recommended taking
tapes out of storage every 3-5 years and "packing" them, i.e. fast
forward and reverse all the way to redistribute the lubricant. this should also
be done if you are shooting in an extremely humid climate before you put the
tape into your camera to shoot. i had always known about packing to assure smooth
alignment on the reel, but that was the first i'd heard about redistributing
the lubricant.
Don't know where your students got the idea that tape last only
a few years,
even VHS tape lasts longer than that.
Bill Turlock writes:
This concerns cleaning of the head drum.
A "professional" cleaning, whether you do it yourself or take it
to an authorized factory service shop is absolutely necessary every
once in a while. I've never
found that you _must_ obey the owner's manual's recommendation about cleaning
intervals, but when you can see the picture degrade, it's time!
You can take the machine apart so you can get at all the tape path, and the heads,
where great care must be taken to not break them. Or you can use a cleaning tape.
I've never ever used one of those 'wet' cleaning tapes where it didn't leave
the machine worse than when I started. Once long ago someone recommended that
I use a particular kind of Scotch 3M brand of 'Professional' cleaning cassette
which uses more or less normal tape inside, but it's formulated to be about 5
times abrasive than an ordinary recordable cassette. This does a very good job
of cleaning the heads, even to the extent of fixing units that have been rendered
unserviceable by a 'wet' cleaner.
- - -
Larry again: I've also heard from long-time engineers, such as Patric Anderson
and many others, all agree that when storing tapes properly -- on edge, wound
to
one end of the tape or the other, with no temperature extremes -- good quality
video tape should last 20+ years.
UPDATE - 2006
Swami Yatidharmananda writes:
I am Swami Yatidharmananda From The Divine Life Society, Sivananda
Ashram, India. It is a non-profitable, charitable and spiritual organisation.
I came across your articles while searching for information about
the life of video tapes. I need your advise.
I am here in this spiritual organisation. We have thousands of VHS
tapes few hundreds of Hi8 tapes containing very amazing content since
1980s. But editing them takes a lot of time. So I am of the opinion
that as it will take a lot of time to capture edit and finally put
them on DVDs, we should transfer them onto DV tapes using the Sony
DSR 11 DV recorder directly first so that the Tapes can be saved
for the next 20 years. After editing I wish to make a DVD master
and also print to tape using the Master DV tapes made by panasonic.
I also feel that the MOV files also should be stored in some other
format so that future formats can be handled like HD DVd or Blue
ray. If I am only making DVDs, then the future rolling of the Data
may not be possible to the other medias.
Is it the right understanding? Will it be the right way? Because
many people in my institution do not agree. They are saying tape
do not last longer. We should only store in DVDs. So I started looking
up in the internet and found your articles. You being in the field
and an expert, your opinion regarding this will be a great help.
could you please give us your opinion regarding this. We have a Mac
G5 and FCP. Also we have Sony DSR 11 DV Recorder.
Your advise is much appreciated in advance. Thanking you.
Larry replies: The issue of the life-span of video tapes
versus optical media is complex.
SOME optical media will last longer than tape -- however, the majority
of DVDs last about the same as tape and some last only a year or two.
Product brand has a lot to do with it, as do a large number of technical
factors.
My recommendation is to take your VHS and Hi-8 tapes and transfer
them through a Time-Base Corrector (such as the DataVideo
TBC-1000) onto DV tape, using the DVCAM format on your Sony DSR-11
recorder. The Time-Base Corrector cleans up problems with your VHS
video, such as chroma smear, drop-outs, tearing and other bad things.
(DVCAM is better than MiniDV for the work you are doing.)
Buy "Mastering" quality video tape - such as Sony or Panasonic.
Once you pick a brand of tape, stay with it; don't change brands. Changing
brands can adversely affect your recordings, as the tape wears the
video tape deck heads in unique ways. Changing tape brands alters the
wear pattern, decreasing the quality of your recordings.
Once you have made your DV tape dubs, store the tapes in a relatively
cool, dry, dark place -- avoiding extremes of dust, heat and light.
Given reasonable storage, a good quality video tape should last 20-25
years, easily. This would allow you the luxury of waiting for optical
storage media to stabilize in price, format and quality, so that the
next time these tapes need to be dubbed, they can be copied to optical
media.
However, now is NOT the time to do so, as my article earlier made
clear.
Finally, because DV tape has a higher video quality than VHS tape,
you won't have a generational quality loss such as we used to experience
when dubbing tapes in an analog environment.
UPDATE - May, 2007
Jesse Ritz sent in the following:
We have 1,000+ VHS and Beta tapes, many over 20 years old, prerecorded
and commercial, mostly because that is what was available at the
time. I've transferred Beta to VHS, with some loss, LD to DVD (some
of those laser disks get worse and worse every year; you can see
pinholes through the aluminum), and VHS to DVD with no loss that
I can see on a 32" 480i
television. The Beta tapes seem to have deteriorated somewhat over
the years, but I haven't found a 'two hour' VHS tape that looks any
worse than when it was made.
We store all our tapes 'tail down' - that is played straight through
without rewinding. We try to view every tape within three years but
some don't get 'retensioned' for seven or eight years. I don't think
that re-tensioning is nearly as important when you store a tape with
the nice smooth gentle wrap that you get with playing, vrs. rewinding.
With audio the big problem with too tight wraps is 'print through'
which you can hear in the leader, or between tracks, wearing headphones
- the first few few seconds can be heard on the layer just before the
music starts. Oddly enough you can hear print through on the lead-in
of many LPs; from the master tapes I presume.
Digital tape storage has its own peculiar problem: bit creep - caused
by a whole bunch of 'ones' being stored in a row; in NRZI recording
anyhow. The pressure of each magnetized particle causes the bits to
drift apart. The problem occurs when they get far enough off that they
don't align with the rest of the byte. I'm talking about 8 to 64 bit
parallel recording.
Moisture and heat are deadly for most magnetic media. I threw away
800 20 year old floppies of my brother-in-law that had a tiny dusting
of mould in the 'windows' of the floppies. On the other hand all of
his backup tapes were readable. I transferred them all and scrapped
the old tape cartridges. The biggest problem with heat that I've seen
is my 1976 TR-7's Lear 8 track tape player. The blasted foam pressure
pads all fail within a few years, even though it is parked in a garage
overnight. You'd think kept out of the sun they'd last longer than
two or three years, but they don't. I never tried saving the media,
I just re-record tapes from a new batch of 8 track tapes. (I wish I
could find those old berylium pressure pads.)
Media is a problem too. My step-father in-law insisted on Kodak VHS
tapes. I believe they are acetate instead of mylar and they are a mess,
jamming, breaking and just plain poor recording quality. But the 3M
cassette tapes that we bought originally (that was before Dolby noise
reduction) have all failed, some Fugi cassettes have had the lubricant
dry out in their tape formula and created horrible scrape flutter.
And digital media isn't immune either.
When 1.2 Meg floppies first came out I was called to help a PC technician
who had replaced a floppy drive twice, the controller twice and a
system board. I looked at the back of a few floppies that had failed
and said "These
bad floppies are all Verbatim (brand). The customer said "But
they are all IBM diskettes." I showed them the Maxell heat seals
on the ones that were OK and the Verbatim heat seals on all the ones
that failed; they inspected every diskette that they had. Every Verbatim
made 1.2 Meg diskette had errors. But Maxell isn't immune to problems,
their 1.44 Meg floppies failed left and right when they first came
out; brutal when you need to restore a 30 diskette backup and RESTORE
refuses to continue halfway through the restore.
Anyhow, I like tape storage for digital, audio (second to LPs which
never deterioriate if you don't play them much), and video. Will
DVDs last 100 years as they claim? I guess we'll find out. The thing
is, if my VHS tape gets a few extra dropouts I can still watch it.
But a blasted DVD just flat stops! And what is worse is watching
an analog television picture and having it disintegrate into pixels
or go black 'cause it is digitally sourced. Don't get me wrong, digital
broadcasts can be so beautiful that we can see a dramatic difference
on our twenty year old 72" projection TV. Even standard VHS
tapes of digital broadcasts (we get 37 channels) look great. But
digital dropouts are the pits; ain't progress great?
Larry replies: Jesse, thanks for all this additional information.
This technique is compiled from a variety of issues of "Larry's
Final Cut Pro Newsletter," a very cool FREE monthly Final Cut Pro
newsletter -- subscribe at Larry's web site: www.larryjordan.biz.
Larry Jordan is a post-production consultant and an
Apple-Certified Trainer in Digital Media with over 25 years experience
as producer, director and editor with network, local and corporate
credits. Based in Los Angeles, he's a member of both the Directors
Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America.
Any references to trademarks or products are used for
editorial purposes only. Text copyright 2006 by Larry Jordan and
Associates, Inc.. All rights reserved.
