5 ms·

Except when ten years have passed and everyone's forgotten about the movie and tending its backups. Corruption happens, then it's too late. If you have a film p

by jdnier 12y ago

Except when ten years have passed and everyone's forgotten about the movie and tending its backups. Corruption happens, then it's too late. If you have a film print in a vault, it can be ignored or forgotten for decades and there's still hope.

dublinben 12y ago
Every large studio will have an archive department whose sole job is to protect the integrity of these films. They won't just 'forget' about a movie that's been placed into the archive system.
- wcfields 12y ago
  Anyone have any ballpark numbers on how the finished products are saved? Quick estimation of RED 4K at a _minute_ is about 2.5TB [1]. The file-vaults of studios then will eventually rival the NSA's data collection warehouse! [1] http://www.hdslr-cinema.com/tools/filesize.php?w=4096&h=2304&d=8&fps=25.000&cust_%0D%0Afps=&s=3600 http://www.hdslr-cinema.com/tools/filesize.php?w=4096&h=2304...
  - jdnier 12y ago
    From a recent IEEE Spectrum article: "If you were to make a 2-hour motion picture with an extended color range in 4K and at 48 frames per second, the raw (uncompressed) movie file would occupy more than 15 terabytes. For comparison, the total amount of data in all of the e-mails sent in the United States in one year has been estimated to be 10.6 TB." http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/lasers-coming-to-a-theater-near-you http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/las...
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - function_seven 12y ago
      The email estimation seems off by several orders of magnitude. If you follow the link in the IEEE article, you get this: > It's estimated that the average size of an email is 75 kilobytes. Say we decide that 75 kb average is way off the mark and bump it up to 200 kilobytes per email times 144.8 billion emails per day times 365 days per year and were at just under 10.6 terabytes per year (3 of those Seagate drives will do the trick). But doing that math myself results in: 200 000 * 144 800 000 000 * 365 = 1.05 * 10^19 In other words, 10 exabytes. 1,000,000 times more than 10 TB. So, 3,000,000 Seagate drives, not 3.
    - revelation 12y ago
      Uhm... so? 15 TB of storage cost way under $1k.
  - wmf 12y ago
    Out of the camera is more like 6 GB/min [1] and DCI is limited to ~2 GB/min [2]. Those are both lossy; lossless masters would be much larger but it's questionable whether they need to be preserved. [1] http://www.red.com/tools/recording-time http://www.red.com/tools/recording-time [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Initiatives http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Initiatives
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Well, the data for the final master copy is measured in terabtes but when you add up all the ingredients (unusued footage, VFX intercopies, safety copies, multi-layered VFX and audio stuff) a sci-fi blockbuster can hit a petabyte, easy.
    - WalterBright 12y ago
      I don't really get the every bit is precious thing when archiving film. Take the movie Casablanca, for example. Why would anyone care about more than the final cut, plus a few outtakes and screen tests? What's so precious about a blizzard of minute detail?
      - anigbrowl 12y ago
        Well, suppose the master is damaged, and you need to go back to the original footage and reconstruct the scene using the same post-production methods that were available then? alternatively, suppose business conditions or personal conflict led to a truncated version of the original film being released, but the source materials allow the reconstruction of the director/ screenwriter/ producer's original vision? The former has been the case with Fritz Lang's film Metropolis, with the complete version available today being a built (IIRC) from a mix of different masters and some raw footage, and the latter has been the case for another silent classic, Erich von Stroheim's Greed, which is a historical masterpiece but was heavily cut at release for both content and runtime. More recently, the version of The Good The Bad and The Ugly you get on DVDs now restores 19 minutes that were cut from the original...and I could cite a bunch of other important films (at least, if you're a film nerd) that only exist in their current form because someone knew the release version was compromised and went looking for the original production footage.
- icantthinkofone 12y ago
  But they do. When I was in the business, many a story was written about some old editor dying and they find the original and only negative in a closet in his house.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Oh yes they will - not least because digital archival is quite a bit more expensive than print archival, but doesn't generate much revenue, so guess who gets the shitty end of the stick in times of squeezed budgets? Also, while big studios can afford to invest in that sort of thing, lots of high-quality films originate outside big studios, where there's even less awareness of or capital for proper digital archival. In quite a few smaller studios the archive consists of disconnected disk arrays sitting in a box, a collection of LTO tapes, and a print master.
kryptiskt 12y ago
When it comes to film prints it is probably better if they are ignored and not meddled with. The history of the Star Wars prints (http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/05/star-wars/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/05/star-wars/) shows weaknesses of both analog and digital. Edit: more about that http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/could-disney-finally-give-us-the-remastered-unedited-star-wars-we-want/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/could-disney-finally-...

by jdnier 12y ago

dublinben 12y ago

Every large studio will have an archive department whose sole job is to protect the integrity of these films. They won't just 'forget' about a movie that's been placed into the archive system.

wcfields 12y ago
Anyone have any ballpark numbers on how the finished products are saved? Quick estimation of RED 4K at a _minute_ is about 2.5TB [1]. The file-vaults of studios then will eventually rival the NSA's data collection warehouse! [1] http://www.hdslr-cinema.com/tools/filesize.php?w=4096&h=2304&d=8&fps=25.000&cust_%0D%0Afps=&s=3600 http://www.hdslr-cinema.com/tools/filesize.php?w=4096&h=2304...
- jdnier 12y ago
  From a recent IEEE Spectrum article: "If you were to make a 2-hour motion picture with an extended color range in 4K and at 48 frames per second, the raw (uncompressed) movie file would occupy more than 15 terabytes. For comparison, the total amount of data in all of the e-mails sent in the United States in one year has been estimated to be 10.6 TB." http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/lasers-coming-to-a-theater-near-you http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/las...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - function_seven 12y ago
    The email estimation seems off by several orders of magnitude. If you follow the link in the IEEE article, you get this: > It's estimated that the average size of an email is 75 kilobytes. Say we decide that 75 kb average is way off the mark and bump it up to 200 kilobytes per email times 144.8 billion emails per day times 365 days per year and were at just under 10.6 terabytes per year (3 of those Seagate drives will do the trick). But doing that math myself results in: 200 000 * 144 800 000 000 * 365 = 1.05 * 10^19 In other words, 10 exabytes. 1,000,000 times more than 10 TB. So, 3,000,000 Seagate drives, not 3.
  - revelation 12y ago
    Uhm... so? 15 TB of storage cost way under $1k.
- wmf 12y ago
  Out of the camera is more like 6 GB/min [1] and DCI is limited to ~2 GB/min [2]. Those are both lossy; lossless masters would be much larger but it's questionable whether they need to be preserved. [1] http://www.red.com/tools/recording-time http://www.red.com/tools/recording-time [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Initiatives http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Initiatives
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Well, the data for the final master copy is measured in terabtes but when you add up all the ingredients (unusued footage, VFX intercopies, safety copies, multi-layered VFX and audio stuff) a sci-fi blockbuster can hit a petabyte, easy.
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    I don't really get the every bit is precious thing when archiving film. Take the movie Casablanca, for example. Why would anyone care about more than the final cut, plus a few outtakes and screen tests? What's so precious about a blizzard of minute detail?
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Well, suppose the master is damaged, and you need to go back to the original footage and reconstruct the scene using the same post-production methods that were available then? alternatively, suppose business conditions or personal conflict led to a truncated version of the original film being released, but the source materials allow the reconstruction of the director/ screenwriter/ producer's original vision? The former has been the case with Fritz Lang's film Metropolis, with the complete version available today being a built (IIRC) from a mix of different masters and some raw footage, and the latter has been the case for another silent classic, Erich von Stroheim's Greed, which is a historical masterpiece but was heavily cut at release for both content and runtime. More recently, the version of The Good The Bad and The Ugly you get on DVDs now restores 19 minutes that were cut from the original...and I could cite a bunch of other important films (at least, if you're a film nerd) that only exist in their current form because someone knew the release version was compromised and went looking for the original production footage.
icantthinkofone 12y ago
But they do. When I was in the business, many a story was written about some old editor dying and they find the original and only negative in a closet in his house.
anigbrowl 12y ago
Oh yes they will - not least because digital archival is quite a bit more expensive than print archival, but doesn't generate much revenue, so guess who gets the shitty end of the stick in times of squeezed budgets? Also, while big studios can afford to invest in that sort of thing, lots of high-quality films originate outside big studios, where there's even less awareness of or capital for proper digital archival. In quite a few smaller studios the archive consists of disconnected disk arrays sitting in a box, a collection of LTO tapes, and a print master.

kryptiskt 12y ago

When it comes to film prints it is probably better if they are ignored and not meddled with. The history of the Star Wars prints (http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/05/star-wars/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/05/star-wars/) shows weaknesses of both analog and digital. Edit: more about that http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/could-disney-finally-give-us-the-remastered-unedited-star-wars-we-want/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/could-disney-finally-...