Working Company Cats - Cat Locator Reviews

Video Technology Observations & things to consider

Since the 1970s, the electronics industry has been trying to persuade everyone to throw out their old cumbersome movie film cameras and buy "state of the art" camcorders to preserve family histories. Compared to film, videotape is cheap, relatively easy to edit, and with no projector bulbs to burn out......  no problem to set up and watch. The industry claimed that the new video technology would allow them to share with their descendants, priceless documentary footage of births, bar mitzvahs, marriages, and other memories, say 30 or 40 years down the road. Many salesmen of the era often claimed they'd last indefinitely !  

Here it is coming up on 35 years later, and if you're taking that advice, you'll be better advised instead to start keeping a written diary instead of a video record. Few people outside the industry know that the life expectancy of videotapes is much shorter than originally predicted -- perhaps as short as ten years. Recent technical reports by Sony ®, Ampex ®, and Agfa ® corporations and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ®  suggest that their lives are but a fleeting thing. Any video over 10 years old is simply surviving on borrowed time.

The main problem with videotape is simply bad chemistry. It's not a manufacturing defect per se, but rather the way in which a magnetic tape is constructed. The binder layer (the layer that contains the magnetic particles) is fragile. High temperatures and humidity can play havoc with it, causing the urethane particles in the coating to react with water infiltration (a process known as hydrolysis), break free, and migrate to the surface of the tape. The next time the tape is played, the oxide particles, no longer encumbered by their binder, peel off - -  taking with them all evidence of baby's first steps, Dave's graduation, Laura's wedding, a priceless historical 60's broadcast or that zany  spur of the moment trip to Puerto Princesa. The only hope was to make a copy before the tape self destructed.

If time, bad chemistry or poor storage conditions fail to "get them".....

Then there are what I call the "Land Mines".....    Those typically fall into the unforeseen disasters category...

Fire damage
Flood damage
Landslides
Salt Water damage - either by Hurricane or by a boat sinking
Driven over by a truck (yes: it happens)
Dog "Chowed" the cassette (More common than one would imagine)
Video tape left in shirt pocket & went through the washing machine.....  (at least we didn't have to "clean" it much)
VCR "ate" the tape
A 3 year old fully armed; "locked & Loaded" with a Jelly Sandwich  (Yes: a creative 3 year old CAN fit half a jelly sandwich into a VHS Cassette !)

Up until recently with the advent of DVD, the archival of video was merely transferring it to a new higher format videotape. Yet all videotapes regardless of their bandwidth or recording technology have a short lifespan by their very nature and thus, this was only a temporary solution to the problem of true long term archival storage.

The most serious problem of transfer to another tape format every few years, was compounded by the inevitable analog losses incurred for each successive generation or copy made (A copy of a copy of a copy syndrome). With the advent of digital technology, future image copies are just that - perfectly cloned copies of the digital data. Add to that the extremely long lifespan of a DVD, permanent archival is now possible at a reasonable cost that is well within the price range of even the typical home user.

Digital technology does have a "downside" that no one seems to address however.  Though the media in the case of a DVD should last 80 years or more based on manufacturer estimates if properly stored, and the digital data may be perfectly copied & transferred, the real problem is hardware obsolescence. Consider that only 20 years or so ago, the Bernoulli 10 meg removable computer disk drives were quite popular. Now very few in working condition still survive. The digital computer world is littered with dead formats. The once popular 8 inch floppy drive - the Burroughs 1 meg fixed head drive - the SyQuest 200 tape drive etc etc etc.  - know anyone who still has one ?.......  Somewhere around here are stacks of old IBM punch cards.  The cards & the data they contain are in perfect condition, but I know of no one that has an IBM punch card reader in working condition.  What few remain are relegated to the computer museums. The media survives, but the hardware on which to read it has long since vanished.  The popular CD's and DVD's of today will sometime in the not too distant future, become relics. The media will sometimes long survive any equipment designed to play it, if history is any lesson. Video formats have followed an identical scenario and the new digital formats of today are highly susceptible to early obsolescence as new technology emerges.

Luckily, the digital data on the DVD will be easily and perfectly copied to whatever new recording technology becomes available in the next century and beyond. Never before was this possible - at any price, as the technology up until now simply didn't exist.  What is truly astounding is the relatively low cost for which it can be done. Also mind boggling is that future generations even 500 years or much longer will be able to view any video transfer made to DVD today by simply having it losslessly transferred to a new medium, say every 20 to 30 years or so..

The technology couldn't have come at a better time, as videotapes - especially those reel to reel formats recorded in the 60's thru present are aging and degrading each and every day. The next few years are critical to the preservation of those images. The realization of a video shot today, 20 or even 30 years ago in some cases, surviving indefinitely is now finally possible !

The same is true for the corporate community. Much corporate history is sitting on piles of videotapes, scattered across a wide range of various and often times, obsolete formats.  Once those tapes degrade beyond any hope of capture, that video history is irretrievably lost forever.

Our experience in recovering severely damaged vintage tapes is our specialty.  We're not always successful as some are simply "too far gone" or have suffered serious physical tape damage. You can rest assured that if we can't recover it, then there's simply nothing much left to recover !

There may be no finer gift you could hand down to your future generations...

What Vintage Video Transfer Entails

Almost anyone can transfer a relatively new tape in good condition (yes, we do that as well), but it requires special techniques (as well as perhaps being a glutton for punishment) to recover, convert and transfer the older and often times damaged video tapes that are exceedingly old or have been improperly stored over the years. We routinely recover tapes that others have given up on and are one of the few houses in the country that have experience in vintage video Tape Baking and Tape Lubrication to overcome "sticky" tapes.  If we can't recover a precious tape, then there's nothing left to recover ! Most importantly, we support many of the old, rare, obsolete, vintage and antique video formats such as reel to reel  Two Inch Quadruplex, 1/2 inch EIAJ, Pilot Tone, Skip Field and many other vintage formats.

Even with new tapes, the transfer process is more involved than just plugging in all the "out" cables from the source deck into the respective "in" connectors on the destination & hoping for the best !  The real trick is getting some of the older tapes to even play at all. We employ a number of techniques to accomplish this goal.  Vintage tapes are first cleaned, re-packed, re-tensioned and then  baked and Re-lubricated if warranted. As some of the vintage tapes we receive are in poor condition, they must then be run first thru a tape cleaner/conditioner.  Most of the reel to reel tapes from the 60's and 70's will also require Tape Baking to remove the moisture and subsequent "stickiness". Some tapes will additionally require re-lubrication. All video is processed through a broadcast Time Base Corrector that synchronizes the video to a stable reference (called house sync) that effectively strips off the unstable sync and lays down new stable broadcast quality sync onto the output video, including a stable reference color burst with proper "front porch" and "back porch" timing. At the same time the now stabilized video is routed to a Process Amplifier (proc. amp) where video level, chroma gain, chroma phase, and setup levels are monitored on a waveform monitor/vectorscope and reset to proper levels. From there it goes (if warranted) thru a broadcast quality video noise reducer

The destination or "target", can be any format we support including DVD, DVD-RAM, VCD, SVCD or even standard computer files. Digital video transfer may also be made to DLT tape, S-DLT,  3480, 3490, 3490E, 3590,  3590B, 3590E, or 3590H  computer tapes (both pc and mainframe platforms) or to DVDRAM.

We also convert between NTSC (US Canada & Japan), PAL, PAL-M, PAL-N (Europe) SECAM or French SECAM   (Secam is prevalent in France and parts of Russia).

The video may be simply encoded to digital and transferred to a new format (the copy is an exact duplicate) or be digitally edited to remove breaks, unwanted scenes and damaged areas encountered. By editing, a wide range of special effects and scene transitions can be created for a truly professional result.

The edited video may then be transferred to any of the numerous formats we support.  Optionally, we will create chapters or even create a fully interactive DVD from the edited program... a process known as authoring.

Video tape degrades over time and it's life expectancy typically varies from 5 to 35 years depending on a number of variable factors - after which, the video will not be capable of being played, and all that it contains will be simply lost forever. A DVD by comparison, lasts an estimated 80 to 100 years by all manufacturers' estimates if handled and stored properly !  Being digital, the 1,000th time you view the DVD will be just as clear and clean as the day the DVD was created ! If you desire a truly timeless  archive of your videotape lasting well beyond 80 years, then DVD is still the answer... for as new technologies emerge in the coming century and beyond, the transfer of digital data from the DVD will be able to be losslessly copied to the new medium, resulting in a virtually timeless archive. It is now possible to preserve video for many future generations or to serve as a corporate history into the next millennium. There may be no finer gift you could hand down to your future generations and should be a most valuable part of your family tree....

Bob Pooler

Last Modified:  Apr 23, 2008

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