CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they’re digitized • Hacker News Board

Re: CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they’re digitized

#61

Post by ajnin » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 1:18 AM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #60

cm2187 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but film has grain and at one point your resolution becomes finer than the grains. At that time you know new technologies won't bring much more precision. Now if the support is in poor conditions, perhaps the technologies mentioned in the other posts are worth considering. But if it is a tape or film stored in decent condition, it is unlikely that future techniques will add much to current ones.

That was the logic behind the choice of MPEG2 8mb/s @MPML: you're full (SD) resolution, full color, so you're better than the source (for instance, U-Matic is ~200 lines of ~250 points and a 4:2:0 color space). However, the switch to HD broke all expectations, because the low resolution of U-Matic captured in full SD and upscaled to HD is awful . Somehow that doesn't work out; you must capture even the very low resol…

It's not that bad if they're keeping the originals. Scanning in 4k HD in 1998 would not only have produced files too large to be processed and stored practically by computers of that time, but there was no scanning equipment capable of that. Also gives them a nice justification for their budget year after year.

Re: CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they’re digitized

#62

Post by Nomentatus » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 1:40 AM UTC

ixf wrote: post #11

cm2187 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why do they want to keep it? Even old film has a low resolution, let alone magnetic media. Do they expect to be able to better digitalise the same media that will be in worse state (more decay) in a distant future?

For some media, this is absolutely the case. Particularly films that are slightly damaged, or seriously damaged, it's well worth holding onto the material in order to wait for better techniques to become available. Case in point, this recent restoration of Morecambe and Wise by BBC R&D: http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2017-12-morecambe-wise-video-fi... They laser cut the film apart, then used X-ray microtomography to sc…

It's not uncommon to see vital documentary footage that was crudely digitized twenty or more years ago, to a resolution that was less than standard TV resolution at the time. It looked okay on TV then, but looks horrible now, and the originals are lost forever (since that was the point of digitization, to save rent money in the long run.)

Re: CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they’re digitized

#63

Post by Nomentatus » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 1:42 AM UTC

ajnin wrote: post #61

wazoox wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the logic behind the choice of MPEG2 8mb/s @MPML: you're full (SD) resolution, full color, so you're better than the source (for instance, U-Matic is ~200 lines of ~250 points and a 4:2:0 color space). However, the switch to HD broke all expectations, because the low resolution of U-Matic captured in full SD and upscaled to HD is awful . Somehow that doesn't work out; you must capture even the very low resol…

It's not that bad if they're keeping the originals. Scanning in 4k HD in 1998 would not only have produced files too large to be processed and stored practically by computers of that time, but there was no scanning equipment capable of that. Also gives them a nice justification for their budget year after year.

But that would have destroyed the incentive - to save on rent for future decades.

Re: CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they’re digitized

#64

Post by linsomniac » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 2:32 AM UTC

sfifs wrote: post #51

linsomniac wrote: post #49

What was that book where they were digitizing books by shredding them and then vacuuming them up and digitizing all the scraps as they passed through the vacuum hose to reassemble digitally and then OCR?

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge

That sounds correct, thanks!

Re: CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they’re digitized

#65

Post by GhostVII » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

ambentzen wrote: post #16

zokier wrote: post #15

Assuming that the digitization is done diligently, committing to long-term maintenance of the originals would be borderline hoarding.

If that is the case, lets take a picture of the Mona Lisa and shred the damn thing. All that maintenance and security is just a waste, right?

The value of the Mona Lisa is in the physical object. The value of the broadcast archives is the information they store. So storing the archived in a different format makes them more valuable, but storing the Mona Lisa in a new format removes the only thing giving it value.

Re: CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they’re digitized

#66

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

lou1306 wrote: post #40

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, ask the same question about a mediocre portrait picturing someone of no [recorded/remembered] societal note by an artist no-one knows anything else about and I'd say "absolutely". Take pictures, make them available to the public, give the original away - use the remaining 99% of the upkeep costs for something else. When a robot/printer is able to make a perfect replica of the Mona Lisa down to the brush strokes…

High-res scans of sculptures are already a thing [0]. Just send the polygon mesh to a 3d printing and presto, you get your own David by Michelangelo. However, painting would be waay more difficult, especially in cases (such as Van Gogh) where the artist deliberately applies thick layers of paint. (I find the idea of intentionally destroying the originals to be ludicrous, but hey, more future-proofing is always good)…

Polygon printed plastic is nothing like chiselled marble, and that's going to be super hard to replicate because of the random variability.

What is it about original artwork that makes it so important as to need eternal preservation?

Re: CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they’re digitized

#67

Post by wazoox » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

ajnin wrote: post #61

wazoox wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the logic behind the choice of MPEG2 8mb/s @MPML: you're full (SD) resolution, full color, so you're better than the source (for instance, U-Matic is ~200 lines of ~250 points and a 4:2:0 color space). However, the switch to HD broke all expectations, because the low resolution of U-Matic captured in full SD and upscaled to HD is awful . Somehow that doesn't work out; you must capture even the very low resol…

It's not that bad if they're keeping the originals. Scanning in 4k HD in 1998 would not only have produced files too large to be processed and stored practically by computers of that time, but there was no scanning equipment capable of that. Also gives them a nice justification for their budget year after year.

In 2003 I did a consulting gig for the _Forum des Images de Paris_ who planned to convert their movie archives to digital. Back in early 2003, scanning the existing video and film stock in HD of any kind (720i/p or 1080i/p) was incredibly expensive and not generally available (most post houses simply hadn't any HD scanners or video capture cards yet, except for high-end film work); I unfortunately had to advise them to stick to SD...

Re: CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they’re digitized

#68

Post by lou1306 » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #66

lou1306 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-res scans of sculptures are already a thing [0]. Just send the polygon mesh to a 3d printing and presto, you get your own David by Michelangelo. However, painting would be waay more difficult, especially in cases (such as Van Gogh) where the artist deliberately applies thick layers of paint. (I find the idea of intentionally destroying the originals to be ludicrous, but hey, more future-proofing is always good)…

Polygon printed plastic is nothing like chiselled marble, and that's going to be super hard to replicate because of the random variability. What is it about original artwork that makes it so important as to need eternal preservation?

> What is it about original artwork that makes it so important as to need eternal preservation?

In David's case, maybe the fact that Michelangelo was able to carve it out of a fragile and partially sculpted block that at least two other great artists refused to use. It's an engineering feat at least as much as an artistic one.

Re: CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they’re digitized

#69

Post by foxyv » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 2:39 PM UTC

Quwic wrote: post #44

pilsetnieks wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with compression, data can be lossless and still compressed. That's why a FLAC file can be three times smaller than an otherwise identical WAV file.

The problem is that the compression algorithm may disappear or be faulty

Not if you store the algorithm alongside the media.

Re: CBC is destroying its broadcast archives after they’re digitized

#70

Post by Runderwood » Wed, May 02, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

International Archival Standards call for preservation of analog originals, or the most recent copy of those original programs.CBC's destruction of program archives (following digitization) is a breach of the Public Trust.