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Nashville library launches Memory Lab for digitizing home movies

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Re: Nashville library launches Memory Lab for digitizing home movies

#41

Post by sokoloff »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #27
all2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You gotta make money somehow. Maybe have an optional durable+accessible storage and portal (just a SaaS and optional harddrive that you ship out or update on occasion... a miniPC that pulls from the SaaS using rsync automatically?). You might be able to make this work if you sell enough of the SaaS subscriptions (12 bucks a month or 200 a year for perrenial backups -- ship us the device/etc. and we'll get the media i…

Physically recoiling at this ceo-scum response to OPs comment

If you read the first line as “make a handsome profit”, I get it, but if you read it slightly more charitably to mean “this service [permanent backup] costs real money to operate, so you need a way to fund that somehow”, it seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Servers, storage, power, networking, and cooling aren’t free; therefore neither is reliable indefinite storage of family memories in digital form.

Re: Nashville library launches Memory Lab for digitizing home movies

#42

Post by mackwell »

bitparadox wrote: post #21

I've started working through a backlog of a few hundred home movie tapes, mostly MiniDV, but a few dozen 8mm and Hi8. Fortunately I have a Digital8 camcorder I've been able to use for the analog 8mm tapes to interface with dvcam over ieee1394. A quick python script around dvcam lets me drop a tape in and type in the label on the tape, and it rewinds, captures the raw tape, transcodes it with ffmpeg, and adds it to a…

That’s the biggest issue with trying to deal with dv tapes - the hardware is simply not very robust. Most cameras will either start ejecting tapes, eating them, or get filthy and start reading poorly with dropouts or damage the next tapes… it’s the kind of task that just keeps having new roadblocks and gets harder with scale (unless you are able to repair the decks yourself or willing to just keep buying them - but they’re eventually going to become scarce as well). The software side is relatively simple but can also be complicated by dropouts / overzealous scene detection in some software for capturing - so sometimes you have to just let it happen and run a script to stitch all the files back together into one to maintain sanity.

Sorry I am now ranting, because I had a huge box of them to deal with containing a lot of memories and projects that were valuable to me personally, and I procrastinated for years but finally got it done. Glad I did and those tapes are long gone.

VHS / analog tapes have similar issues but the solutions are easier to acquire (millions of cheap vcr’s everywhere), and you can tap directly into the signal so it’s actually a rich and interesting community and challenge to improve it. MiniDV is just pain for those of us whose prime years shooting footage happened to be during its reign.

Re: Nashville library launches Memory Lab for digitizing home movies

#43

Post by mackwell »

philoticstrand wrote: post #24
bitparadox wrote: post #21

I've started working through a backlog of a few hundred home movie tapes, mostly MiniDV, but a few dozen 8mm and Hi8. Fortunately I have a Digital8 camcorder I've been able to use for the analog 8mm tapes to interface with dvcam over ieee1394. A quick python script around dvcam lets me drop a tape in and type in the label on the tape, and it rewinds, captures the raw tape, transcodes it with ffmpeg, and adds it to a…

Any chance you would share your script? Also do you deal with audio sync before or after ripping? I have a similar project in my backlog, ~100 Hi8 and Digital8 tapes to digitize before they get too old and fragile. I already have a Digital8 camcorder and the requisite FireWire cable plus TB2 and TB3 adapters for connecting to my Mac or PC. Just need to get off my ass and start!

100 tapes is quite a mountain to climb. I would consider finding a discount code for a service like southtree (or similar) and sending at least some of them to be processed that way. I did most of mine manually but had to throw in the towel for some tapes and send them in and I found that they often had like 50% off promotions and discounts for higher scales.

If you are down for the challenge / 100 hours of capture, go for it but just wanted to throw that out there because I hate to see media be lost to the sands of time.

Re: Nashville library launches Memory Lab for digitizing home movies

#44

Post by sib »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #11

I would love to figure out a not-for-profit business model to help people preserve their personal physical and digital records (think Grandma's iPhone w/ 90GB of photos and videos of the family on it as well as the old family albums, video tapes, films, etc). I suppose there's a component of citizen journalism and historical preservation in my thinking, too. This work isn't just for families, but also serves to docum…

If you're in the US, just send it unencrypted over the internet. The NSA will kindly archive it for you and then you can submit a FOIA request whenever you need access to it.

Kidding. Sort of...

Re: Nashville library launches Memory Lab for digitizing home movies

#45

Post by manofmanysmiles »

tuna74 wrote: post #39
manofmanysmiles wrote: post #25

I'd love to walk around with a Hi8 camera and 4K camera with a rig to record identical frames, and get a few hundred hours if footage and train a model to do intelligent upscaling and cleanup of old footage. Possibly a 3D printed rig with a semi-transparent mirror + some crowdsourcing and this could really work. It's in my backlog.

You won't capture identical frames to old footage. If you want to do AI slop, just do AI slop. Old media will have flaws, errors and low resolution (both spatial and temporal). Putting an AI filter on top of that will only make it less correct.

Hmm so you don't see any value?

I was thinking if you used the identical old hardware, you'd get something close enough.

Personally I prefer to watch analog with an all analog signal chain, but am still curious what would happen if you tried this.

Re: Nashville library launches Memory Lab for digitizing home movies

#46

Post by bitparadox »

philoticstrand wrote: post #24
bitparadox wrote: post #21

I've started working through a backlog of a few hundred home movie tapes, mostly MiniDV, but a few dozen 8mm and Hi8. Fortunately I have a Digital8 camcorder I've been able to use for the analog 8mm tapes to interface with dvcam over ieee1394. A quick python script around dvcam lets me drop a tape in and type in the label on the tape, and it rewinds, captures the raw tape, transcodes it with ffmpeg, and adds it to a…

Any chance you would share your script? Also do you deal with audio sync before or after ripping? I have a similar project in my backlog, ~100 Hi8 and Digital8 tapes to digitize before they get too old and fragile. I already have a Digital8 camcorder and the requisite FireWire cable plus TB2 and TB3 adapters for connecting to my Mac or PC. Just need to get off my ass and start!

I thought I had it in git, but it must be on the Zimaboard I was using that's packed away right now

It wasnt a anything special; Cursor could probably make a better one in one shot.

I recall fighting with ffmpeg for a long time trying to fix audio drift in the transcodes, and I think I settled on handbrake-cli (which I think just does ffmpeg itself) because I was getting decent results.

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