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Those moldy old masters with the dried out splices and edge damage and hub drop that have been sitting on the bottom shelf in the back of the warehouse for God knows how many years are the biggest challenge when it comes to an archive preservation project, right?
This would seem to be the case, and to a certain extent it is. There is however a major "gotcha" that has become apparent in media asset management. The newer physical storage formats, far from being foolproof, present their own sets of challenges. Some might even say problems.
One of these is removable hard drives. During the last ten years or so, it became common practice to save media assets to removable hard drives. As time went on we discovered that these nifty modern digital storage devices often didn't serve this purpose as well as we had hoped. Sometimes they dropped data, crashed, or simply wouldn't spin up. It became clear that they did not like to just sit on a shelf, but had to be exercised….somewhat akin to horses that spook easily when not ridden often enough. This exercising process of course costs money, so the tendency was/is to leave them alone.
What to do once a problem has been identified? Migrate to a format designed for long-term data preservation. IM/XDS is currently involved in just such a project for a major Hollywood Studio that backed up (as did many others) their movie soundtracks to removable drives. They discovered as time passed the data drop, crashing and spin up problems along with other more mundane things such as missing transformers and power cords.
This Studio's choice, of course, is to protect its archives, and the solution it has chosen is a multi-year project to migrate all its drives to LTO4, a magnetic tape based format designed for high density long term storage with proven shelf life of thirty years. IM/XDS is currently performing this process at a throughput of two to four gigabytes per minute. They have opted to store only one soundtrack on an LTO4 cassette rather than combining them, although the data capacity of the LTO4 could in some cases accommodate more than one. A check-sum verification process is performed prior to and at the end of the transfer to guarantee that all the program material has been transferred exactly, bit for bit. Any drive that shows an existing problem triggers a call to the client and is not transferred without further instructions. The transfer is also monitored in-process by software displaying the operational specs, throughput speed, warnings or errors and current status. These procedures enable utilization of the maximum storage capacity of the LTO for consolidation of a single soundtrack that previously required multiple tapes rather than a single LTO4.
So, in this case experience has proved that a problem is indeed an opportunity in disguise. Assets are being verified, preserved and consolidated in a single process without ever having to leave the secure physical environment of the Iron Mountain Film & Sound vaults.
Other Xepa Updates
Xepa Digital Studios has been busy over the last quarter, contributing the audio to a couple of popular commercials that we should all be familiar with:
First, the Pepsi "My Generation" montage of the past century set to The Who's "My Generation." This is the one where as the years roll by the Pepsi container changes as well, ending with "Every generation refreshes the world…now it's your turn."
And then the ubiquitous Swiffer spot featuring the song "Baby Come Back" by Player.
Both of these were re-mixed by Xepa Digital Studios. And Xepa has been mixing more than just commercials. The Guitar Hero and Rock Band series of games, as outlined in the previous issue, continue to keep Xepa busy.
The studios have recently updated their PC Lab into a Data Lab that is compatible with both Mac and PC. This facility will be utilized not only for audio and graphic work, but to expand into data migration as well.
Recently progressing to LTO4 (a magnetic tape designed for high density long term storage) capability, they are well-prepared to serve our clients' needs in the area of high-density digital migration and preservation. LTO4, the latest version of the LTO brand, is backwards compatible in three generations. |
