[game_preservation] iPhone Game Preservation

[Andrew Armstrong]

Absolutely, it's just an interesting figure the "production assets" 
numbers - Monsters Versus Aliens is all just 3d stuff too (I imagine all 
the Pixar movies are this or larger too). Also, notably, 3d films are 
likely going to produce at the very least a duplicate master - so even 
cutting out the pre-production and original assets for these things, 
there will be a 2d and 3d version, doubling up the size (or, for the 3d 
one, I suspect trebling it - so 6TB instead of 2TB! - although I am not 
savvy enough on the 3d techniques, I think it needs the ~60fps to do 2 
halves of 30fps per eye using the glasses). I doubt you can make the 3d 
version from just the 2d one easily, so there is going to be yet more 
problems in the future for films.

And the question "what is worth preserving from whatever standpoint", 
well, tough call. Cut film, deleted scenes, alternative angles and shots 
- knowing how the editing, filming, B-reels, outtakes, repeated shots, 
storyboard shoots, test shots, location finding, film dailys, camera 
setup and repeated takes all went is, for those interested in making 
films, and critics too, I am sure is highly useful if available - 
although a massive amount of material to store raw. At least as you said 
with DVD's and bonus content, this is being retained more often. 
Possibly one way around that is to not store it as perfect quality, 
which can easily lower it into GB's instead of TB's. :)

Parallel to games, I suspect the amount of raw data produced when going 
through pre-production to the final product space-wise is going to still 
be in the TB ranges, since to actually make use of a version of a game, 
a snapshot is needed of every asset used to run it at that time, making 
the GB's readily sore. No hard and fast rules there though on how much 
it is unlike film which is more measurable per-minute numbers, and not 
many companies work on keeping such versions working in the future 
(packaged betas and alphas are likely kept around though).

Some number crunching will be useful in the future, might revisit this 
topic if the different people who do digital-based preservation 
(whatever it actually is) can provide the info available with estimates 
for those others who might want to do it in the future - best practices 
of digital preservation too, which a big part is going to likely cost 
serious money to do well :)

Possibly also would be nice to know the kind of ballpark for not-perfect 
archival managed backup/preservation systems - so some figures can be 
given to companies doing their own versions, or at least an idea about 
what they need to do to have a reasonable amount of coverage from data loss.

Andrew

Jerome McDonough wrote:

> There is a *huge* difference between the amount of storage needed in 

> production/post-production and what ends up in the final master for 

> delivery to theaters.  Any movie will generate a ton of assets that 

> don't make it into the final cut (although increasingly they do show 

> up in DVDs post-release).