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Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

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Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#41

Post by andrewstuart »

There would be all sorts of weird stuff on them.

Young people probably would not know that watching VHS tapes anything could happen because they got reused.

So you'd be watching a movie and halfway through it would suddenly switch over to a shuttle launch or a music video or a documentary or something cause someone decided to record something else at that point.

I once recorded a three hour British detective show. I watched it for three hours and it got to the final scene to reveal whodunnit and the tape ran out.

It's great that they are archiving the old content but I don't miss VHS in the least.

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#42

Post by a1369209993 »

reificator wrote: post #27
Seenso wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They’re not too expensive, the writers are available, they’ll last, and they could be reverse engineered if discovered in the future. IIRC, the writers for M-DISCs are special, but the reader can be any DVD or Blu-ray drive. Honestly, I think the biggest consideration for digital archival media isn't so much the longevity of the media, but the future availability of equipment to read it. That's one of the biggest b…

> the decoding software is very common. [Citation needed]

> [Citation needed]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy

There you go.

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#43

Post by Seenso »

pmiller2 wrote: post #38
Seenso wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have 30 year old CDs that play as good as the first time, as well as older vinyl discs. Mass produced CDs are produced using a different process than the one consumer CDR writers use, and they are thus a much more stable storage medium. The data-containing layer is literally formed out of metal using a kind of mold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_manufacturing#Ele... CDRs are written by altering a lay…

You can extend the lives of writable and rewritable optical media by proper storage. The key is to avoid light and heat as much as possible, to keep the dyes stable. I'm not sure about 30 years, but you can probably get 10 out of properly stored optical media. See the following advice: >A disc should always be handled by grasping its outer edges, center hole or center hub clamping area. Avoid flexing the disc, exposi…

> You can extend the lives of writable and rewritable optical media by proper storage. The key is to avoid light and heat as much as possible, to keep the dyes stable. I'm not sure about 30 years, but you can probably get 10 out of properly stored optical media.

Though, if you care about longevity, it might be better to use a technology like M-DISC. It uses a different recording technology to "[burn or etch] a permanent hole in the material, rather than changing the color of a dye."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC#Materials_technology

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#44

Post by aetherspawn »

pmiller2 wrote: post #35
reificator wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the decoding software is very common. [Citation needed]

You want a citation for the claim that many people are literate and/or can visually process images?

It’s a joke.

Because some people can’t read. Har har har :)

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#45

Post by themodelplumber »

andrewstuart wrote: post #41

There would be all sorts of weird stuff on them. Young people probably would not know that watching VHS tapes anything could happen because they got reused. So you'd be watching a movie and halfway through it would suddenly switch over to a shuttle launch or a music video or a documentary or something cause someone decided to record something else at that point. I once recorded a three hour British detective show. I…

> I watched it for three hours and it got to the final scene to reveal whodunnit and the tape ran out.

I ran into one of these on Youtube just a couple of weeks ago. The reaction in the comments was something less than amused.

(Bittersweet memories of taping over some of Mom's seemingly non-important video in order to record...what was it, the first X-files episode? A _Wings_ episode about a favorite jet? Something like that. But man, she was not happy.)

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#46

Post by themodelplumber »

jcomis wrote: post #24

I love stuff like this. Here's one of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/user/5ninthavenueproject

You reminded me of this spy film, which starts with a shot of a VHS recorder!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqFYFT1nqp8

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#47

Post by orbital-decay »

allovernow wrote: post #3

How does one archive data for long term storage in 2020? From what little I've read, all of the media accessable to the layman has an archive lifetime of less than 30 years before physical degradation- NAND, tape, disc, whatever. That makes for a brittle civilization when the vast majority of our knowledge is stored on media and would be unrecoverable just 3 decades after a global calamity.

Digital storage depends on a long and complicated chain of formats, standards, technologies, businesses, software, services etc which come and go every decade or two, or even more often. Any of it is lost, and your archive isn't an archive anymore. So to store something long-term, you have to eliminate single points of failure, such as encodings, formats, and even human languages. It can be completely non-obvious, and the physical media isn't the most important one.

Naturally, "civilizational scale archival" is only feasible for a proper archival organization such as a museum, a library or an archive. As a person, you can't have this. You can use the archival-grade media like M-Disc, but don't expect to put something on it and recover it 50 years later easily. You have to design the process to validate and migrate the data every once in a while. Digital storage can't offer something comparable to a simple printed photo.

> when the vast majority of our knowledge ... would be unrecoverable just 3 decades after a global calamity.

The vast majority of our knowledge is encoded in the societal and economic context. There's simply no way to translate it to any media, and any disruption would be the end of it.

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#48

Post by pmiller2 »

allovernow wrote: post #33
quag wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After going down this rabbit hole, I concluded that M-Disc is the right trade off at the moment. They’re not too expensive, the writers are available, they’ll last, and they could be reverse engineered if discovered in the future. The second choice is using hard drives (easily available) and every so often power them up and copy data to new drives. If you have a small quantity of data, then encode and laser print ont…

I also came across M-Disc but iirc there is no real verification of the longevity claims outside of marketing from the manufacturer. >The second choice is using hard drives (easily available) and every so often power them up and copy data to new drives. I suppose the question is whether doing so could remain under the error correction threshold indefinitely, since there will be errors accumulating both during copying…

I came across this, which describes a "torture test" more rigorous than most accelerated life tests: https://www.zdnet.com/article/torture-testing-the-1000-year-....

TL;DR: The CD-R's didn't survive the process, but the M-discs did, with their data intact.

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#49

Post by themodelplumber »

smhenderson wrote: post #5

I'm almost afraid to write this as I fear it will be removed soon and am surprised it hasn't been already but this was the first thing I looked for... https://archive.org/details/star-wars-ONTV-Early-80s/Star+Wa...

If you haven't already, search for "vhsrip" on the same site...
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