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Andrew,<br>
<br>
Boy, I am coming across as a wet blanket in this discussion, but ...<br>
<br>
Andrew Armstrong wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4A7005F0.9010604@aarmstrong.org" type="cite">
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<br>
<br>
Films also have the future advantage of going all-digital, which will
cut the preservation costs there down significantly.</blockquote>
Actually, in the near- to mid-term, this is significantly RAISING the
cost of preservation. I have seen a report by the archivist of AMAS
(from about two years ago), which put the cost of industrial-strength
management of current-gen digital-film masters in the seven figures
range -- for one title! I think he was using the example of the most
recent Spiderman film, which generated a digital master that was
something like 2 TB in size. The bit-depth of theater-quality film,
plus various tracks of audio and other information, results in a huge
bitstream. His point was that studios are likely only to bear these
costs while films make money, so there is real danger of loss. <br>
<br>
Comparatively, storing a canister of film is cheap. Even archives of
nitrate masters (and I have been to a couple) in what are essentially
concrete warehouses seem inexpensive by comparison, at least on a
per-title basis.<br>
<br>
Henry<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
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<div><font face="Georgia">Henry Lowood, Ph.D.</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia">Curator for History of Science &
Technology Collections;</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia"> Film & Media Collections</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia">HRG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia">Stanford University Libraries</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia">Stanford CA 94305-6004</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia">650-723-4602; <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:lowood@stanford.edu">lowood@stanford.edu</a>; <a
href="http://www.stanford.edu/%7Elowood" eudora="AUTOURL">http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood</a></font>
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