How should I permanently store digital photographs?

In article ,
says...
As DVDs go from single to dual-layer capability,
engineers would dearly love to drop the requirement
to be able to read CD data.

No they wouldn't.

Seriously, optical media is optical media. It's all read the same way -
with lasers. Legacy support is REALLY easy.

So I think it is YOU who doesn't know what they're talking about.
--
http://www.pbase.com/bcbaird/

In article .com,
wrote:

I stored my Quicktake pics to two different media.
1. Ricoh CD-R disc
2. 640MB MO disk.
MO is better time proven than CD-R technology and the lack of fierce
price war should keep the quality high(MOs are very expensive, ~$40 for
five 640MB disks). They're often used in medical, banking, government
data which should ensure the availability of playback device into the
future.

Oh, Ho! Someone finally mentioned MO!

This was my choice for long-term storage a couple of years ago. I
actually have quite a bit of data on 230 MB, 640 MB, and 1.3 GB MO
disks.

These disks have a widely-reported (but obviously untested) lifespan of
100 years. But their market penetration is so poor even the largest
vendor (Fujitsu) is already cutting back on the models they
manufacture.

I keep an unused spare drive for my own purposes, but there aren't
going to be any MO drives around WAY before that 100 years is up. And
since the technology is quite different from CD-R (or anything else)
there's no chance compatibility will be added to another type of drive.

My noble photographic efforts should be readable for another generation
or so, but what's that? On the history channel last night, they were
digging up and reading documents from 3000 years past...

David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
Don Lathrop writes:

My point was that CD technology is already obsolete,
and the difficulty is retaining backward compatibility.

So you assert, but you give no evidence.

That was in the citation from the OP. The comment
I was disputing maintained that keeping existing
technology in new devices is easy.

Nobody has produced a DVD drive that doesn't
read CDs yet. Why not, if the compatibility costs
them a lot? There'd probably be a market.

Market for DVD-only devices? That's my point,
that this will probably occur, especially if the OP's
(or previous P's) citation is correct and dual-layer
becomes widespread.

What do you mean it's not feasible to record it onto
CD? It's actually fairly easy. And MP3 isn't particularly
inferior, especially compared to vinyl -- if you pick the
right bit rate.

Vinyl and MP3 faults are different in kind, though, aren't
they? If you pick a high bit-rate MP3, why not just
use WAV?

But support for the old formats won't be dropped
particularly quickly; it's a sunk cost, and dropping it
will cause screams.

Yes, but again, that's my point. If you don't maintain
your end, you'll lose the ability to manipulate the data.
Just now, there is a consortium of photo companies
working to standardize the RAW format. Suppose they
agree on a standard, and within two years, say, it comes
into widespread use. Within five, say, it's universal. Then
it's upgraded. Everyone buys the plug-ins, PS puts it into
base code, and by 2012, current RAW is forgotten.

Now, your kids in 2020 go back over your carefully-
tended digital files and find all these Christmas shots
from 2004 and start bringing them up in PS v.27.
But they won't load.

It's not enough to just have the data on a medium that
is readable by your hardware. It has to be compatible
with your software as well.

Sure, but that's not a problem, and won't be in the
forseeable future, unless you pick stupidly. TIFF and
JPEG are really pretty safe.

"Foreseeable future" isn't a problem, and it's not
what I'm talking about. I'm talking about that which
we don't foresee, like 2020. Think JPEG will be
readable in 2020? That's only 16 years from now.
If you have a four-year-old child now, in 2020,
that child will be in college. Suppose s/he wants
to look at baby pictures for an English autobiography
project, and tries to pulls up your collection.

If you have ever gone to the trouble of rerecording
analog Hi-8 video to MiniDV (I have), you know
what a major pain that is, and how time consuming.

That's a realtime copy, and it's a pain. Very different from
converting a batch of files on the computer.

If the batch conversion program can read the older
formats, you're correct.

I have also converted 16mm film to VHS, then to MiniDV.

The loss of quality from analog to digital is great. Factor
in the time involved, the expense, and many people will
simply not do this chore, and lose their data.

Funny, I see it as a big *increase* in quality. And, most
especially, stability.

Once it's into digital, you're fine. But each analog conversion
is lossy. Going from 16mm to VHS requires projection
and capture, which is lossy. VHS to MiniDV requires
analog transmission, which is lossy. You certainly don't
gain anything until it's digital, and the stability is at a
lower level of clarity.

I can read PCX files with several pieces of software
I have on the system.

So can I, but for how long? Look at something as simple
as MS Word. Each version is different, and backward
compatibility is a big problem for users. MS Backup
is almost useless over time. I mentioned Wang WP
apps. There are older word processors for which
conversion utilities can't even be found anymore. You
may find Wordstar converters, but how about Paperclip
or PFS Professional Write?

Yes, a digital archive requires some attention.

That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying it's impossible, only
that you must be aware of changing formats, hardware,
and applications, and must watch media, storage conditions
and indexing schemes -- all at the same time. A slip in
any of these and you can lose access to the ability to
manipulate and/or view/print your images. Not this year,
or next, but over the next decade or two. You can't
just dump everything on CDs and store copies at the
folks' house, as one poster suggested.

I'm a home user with, oh, something like 20,000 images on the hard
disk, indexed, labeled, etc. It's easy, so far. When some of the
formats start to age out, there will be some lumps in the workload;
but I don't think that TIFF or JPEG will start to age out during my
life. If they do, I'll cope.

And you have a good scheme, and take reasonable care,
and are aware of the issues. That's all I'm saying. There
are plenty of folks who are not in your league, and who
think simply storing data on backup disks is all they
need to do. Those people will be in for a surprise when
they're in their dotage, and want to show the grandchildren
what the house looked like twenty years ago. They'll
pull out CDs to find them delaminated. If the CDs are
OK, they won't be able to find a reader. If a reader is
available, the formats will be obsolete, and they won't
be able to find software to access it. If they can access
it, they won't be able to edit, print or view. If they can,
well, then I'm wrong.

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 20:10:29 GMT, "Jeremy" wrote:


"Big Bill" wrote in message
.. .

If that's Jim McGee's article as he
http://www.vividlight.com/articles/1513.htm

Sorry about that--you are correct, it WAS the VividLight article that I was
referring to.


I think he's working under some false impressions.
One of the worst is where he talks about the development time and
money needed to continue to put CD reading capability into future DVD
drives. That's just wrong; the R&D's already been done.

He cites a couple of examples where compatibility was maintained for a short
time as one format transitioned into another. Later, the compatibility was
withdrawn. His point was that manufacturers will make what is cheapest, and
they will not necessarily build in backward compatibility once it is
unnecessary to do so. (Remember the Canon breech mount? Or 78 RPM records?
By the late 60s, most high fidelity turntables were playing 33 and 45 only.)

But, as I pointed out, there was an overlap of *years*.
Of course technology is replaced by newer technology. That's a given.
Complaining that the older technology goes the way of the dodo is only
pointing out the obvious. Since it's a known thing, it should (indeed,
*must*) be taken into account. Thus, it's up to the owner of the data
to do this by transferring the data to the newer technology.
An article complaining about the fact that technology advances doesn't
mean that current technology is somehow inherently bad, it should
instead point out the need to keep current.

The point is that we must not ASSUME that what exists now will survive well
into the future, especially if the technology improves and makes today's
technology obsolete. (I wish I could still get mercury batteries for my
Spotmatic meter. . .)

"We" don't. Maybe you do, but "we" don't. We understand that progress
marches on.

It's just a matter of bringing *already present* technology into the new DVD
drives. This is being done now, and costs are still going down for the
new drives; obviously, including the ability to read CDs isn't the
financial burden he makes it out to be.

They are compatible NOW--no contest on that point. There is no assurance
that they will be compatible 30 years from now. In fact, I'd be surprised
if DVDs still exist as they do now. The trend is to make everything
smaller. We'll probably be storing files on media no bigger than a postage
stamp in the next 20 years. Believe me, they will NOT try to make that kind
of media backward compatible with today's CDs.

And that is, as has been pointed out, part of progress marching on.
DVD drives won't disappear overnight.


It's easy to predict failure, but will the failure he predicts
actually come about? I doubt it, at least not as he predicts.

The archivist must take stock of the risks. Otherwise he runs the risk of
preserving today's information is a way that cannot be decoded easily.

Well, Duh! That's the point, isn't it?

There is already an obscure (but growing) field called "Digital
Archaeology." Technicians are trying to read obsolete file formats and
convert them to current ones. And we are talking about a technology that is
no more than 50 years old! If we are having these problems NOW, imagine
what it will be like in 50 more years?

If data owners don't do what's needed, how much import do they give to
the data?
Archaeologists constantly decry the fact that data wasn't preserved
from thousands of years ago. This is not a new thing at all. Data is
lost with time.


Yes, there are formats that aren't being used anymore; however, there
are *years* of overlap, giving pleanty of time to do the transfer.

That is a very short time, when we are talking about a long term time
horizon. I have no doubt that big institutions will be able to decode old
files, but the typical consumer will probably just throw the showbox full of
obsolete media into the trash, rather than mess with it.

That's a loss, I'm sure. All those pictures of Aunt Mabel lost
forever. Even the one with the pole growing out of her head. :-)
But this has been going on for as long as there has been data to lose.
It's not a new thing. The responsibiluity to preserve data hasn't
changed because the media has changed.

The other problem that even institutions face is how to cope with the
demands of migrating an ever-increasing amount of files. What if there is a
budget crunch? Will they continue to commit money and labor to keeping that
old stuff alive? They never really had to deal with this before--they just
housed the original books, manuscripts, photos in a building (like a
library) and it could just sit there. Perhaps they had to provide some
temperature and humidity controls (what did libraries do before they had air
conditioning? The material still managed to survive).

Those old books aren't available to just anyone, and many are so
deteriorated that they can't be handled at all.
If those companies think the data needs to be transfered, they will
find the means to do so; the alternative is the data will be lost.
Are you positing that we should store all our data on paper?


The fact is, if you search the literature, you will find that our most
prestigious institutions are struggling with this problem. And the amount
of digitized information continues to grow exponentially. They can't cope
with what they have now, and they will have many times more of it within
just a couple of years.

My point is that many amateur photographers are under the mistaken
impression that they are creating digital images that will last a lot longer
than did the analog prints that their parents and grandparents made. They
do not take into consideration that their work will require maintenance
(migration of file format and media format) as time progresses.

One woman in an online genealogy group boasted that she had just completed a
project of scanning all her important family historical documents--birth and
death certificates, newspaper clippings, obituaries, marriage certificates,
photographs--and she finished by saying that she had shredded and disposed
of all the paper originals. I cringed when I read that.

I think you can do some good by spreading he word that data needs to
be transerred to new media as needed. But I also think you're being
alittle to Chicken Little-like in your current appeal for - what?
Going to paper?

--
Bill Funk
Change "g" to "a"

David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
Don Lathrop writes:
Ken Weitzel wrote:

Don, I too have a large collection of old records - even
a couple of old shellac 78's. And old 45's. I've copied
them all to CD's, and am very pleased with the results.
If you can hear/don't like the compression aspects
of mp3, you can even do it uncompressed.

If you'd like to consider taking the task on yourself,
feel free to mail me; I'll be more than happy to share
what I've learned.

I've saved a copy of your post, and I'll probably email
you after the holidays. I've considered running the output
of my turntable+amp to my computer soundcard line input,
then using scratch/pop elimination software to create a WAV
file, then burning the WAV to CD. I haven't tried it, but
assume that's all a well-proven path. What stops me is
the time it would take. That's what I meant by it not
being "feasible" for me. I suppose if I did one album a week,
in few years, I'd have my collection done. Just in time
to transfer it all over to ... gamma ray wafers?

Same amount of time it took me to tape them in the first
place, but happening all at once. And doesn't require my
full-time attention.

Tape? All at once? I don't understand this. I'm talking about
going from vinyl LPs to CDs. How can you batch that through
tape unattended?

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 17:46:03 -0600, "Farga Palenga Jengis"
wrote:

Big Bill

I think he's working under some false impressions.
One of the worst is where he talks about the
development time and money needed to continue
to put CD reading capability into future DVD
drives. That's just wrong; the R&D's already been
done. It's just a matter of bringing *already present*
technology into the new DVD drives.

With respect, you don't know what you're talking
about. Keeping existing legacy technology in an
advancing product is a difficult and destructive
ball-and-chain around the ankle of development
engineers. Look at all the problems caused in Windows,
for example, trying to maintain DOS compatibility.
As DVDs go from single to dual-layer capability,
engineers would dearly love to drop the requirement
to be able to read CD data.

With respect, I think you aren't understanding the two technologies;
with Windows, the backwards compability is a reaql hardship, and
affedts the basic way Windows works.
With DVD players, it does no such thing.

You can't just say "the R&D's been done." No, it
hasn't been done for every new track width and
velocity, every new rotational speed, every new
pit-and-land configuration, every new laser frequency.
Each time changes and advances are made in optical
storage technology, the engineers have to figure out
how they can squeeze a CD reader into the new box.

The basic R&D's been done. Yes, some tweaking is needed; read what I
wrote.

Sooner or later, and I predict sooner, like Redmond
finally shot DOS in the head with XP, Phillips and
Sony and Toshiba, et alia, will shoot CD in the head
and drop it in the dumpster.

No doubt. But not for DVD drives.
Possibly for blue laser drives, but that's a new technology, and
progress marches on.

What's keeping CD alive? Installed base? No, the
advantage to the manufacturers is in replacing the
installed base. Music? MP3 and on-line distribution
is killing the CD in the marketplace. It's not even
an efficient distribution medium anymore, since the
price of DVD has dropped below a dollar. Why
hold onto a 650MB medium when a 4.7GB medium
is almost as inexpensive? Software? It's already
distributed on DVD, and there's no advantage
to distributors in using CDs.

What's keeping CD alive is economics -- the
economics of replacement. As soon as enough
people have saved up to replace their CD drives
with DVD, and the computer makers have sold
enough computers with CD-DVD combos, and
then DVD alone, you'll see the balance tip and
wave bye-bye to CD. I'd predict about three years
before it starts to fall. Within six, it'll be gone.


--
Bill Funk
Change "g" to "a"

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 17:46:03 -0600, "Farga Palenga Jengis"
wrote:

Big Bill

I think he's working under some false impressions.
One of the worst is where he talks about the
development time and money needed to continue
to put CD reading capability into future DVD
drives. That's just wrong; the R&D's already been
done. It's just a matter of bringing *already present*
technology into the new DVD drives.

With respect, you don't know what you're talking
about. Keeping existing legacy technology in an
advancing product is a difficult and destructive
ball-and-chain around the ankle of development
engineers. Look at all the problems caused in Windows,
for example, trying to maintain DOS compatibility.
As DVDs go from single to dual-layer capability,
engineers would dearly love to drop the requirement
to be able to read CD data.

With respect, I think you aren't understanding the two technologies;
with Windows, the backwards compability is a reaql hardship, and
affedts the basic way Windows works.
With DVD players, it does no such thing.

You can't just say "the R&D's been done." No, it
hasn't been done for every new track width and
velocity, every new rotational speed, every new
pit-and-land configuration, every new laser frequency.
Each time changes and advances are made in optical
storage technology, the engineers have to figure out
how they can squeeze a CD reader into the new box.

The basic R&D's been done. Yes, some tweaking is needed; read what I
wrote.

Sooner or later, and I predict sooner, like Redmond
finally shot DOS in the head with XP, Phillips and
Sony and Toshiba, et alia, will shoot CD in the head
and drop it in the dumpster.

No doubt. But not for DVD drives.
Possibly for blue laser drives, but that's a new technology, and
progress marches on.

What's keeping CD alive? Installed base? No, the
advantage to the manufacturers is in replacing the
installed base. Music? MP3 and on-line distribution
is killing the CD in the marketplace. It's not even
an efficient distribution medium anymore, since the
price of DVD has dropped below a dollar. Why
hold onto a 650MB medium when a 4.7GB medium
is almost as inexpensive? Software? It's already
distributed on DVD, and there's no advantage
to distributors in using CDs.

What's keeping CD alive is economics -- the
economics of replacement. As soon as enough
people have saved up to replace their CD drives
with DVD, and the computer makers have sold
enough computers with CD-DVD combos, and
then DVD alone, you'll see the balance tip and
wave bye-bye to CD. I'd predict about three years
before it starts to fall. Within six, it'll be gone.


--
Bill Funk
Change "g" to "a"

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 19:53:19 -0600, "Don Lathrop"
wrote:

You mention vinyl. I have LOTS of vinyl, and it is
simply not feasible for me to tape it -- who uses tape
anymore? It's difficult to find good metal tape anywhere.
It's not feasible to record it onto CD, either. So I'm
stuck with the vinyl. Some of my LPs aren't available
on CD or the (inferior) MP3. So I keep a turntable
and a stock of styli.

Why is it not feasible to record it to CD?

--
Bill Funk
Change "g" to "a"

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 19:53:19 -0600, "Don Lathrop"
wrote:

You mention vinyl. I have LOTS of vinyl, and it is
simply not feasible for me to tape it -- who uses tape
anymore? It's difficult to find good metal tape anywhere.
It's not feasible to record it onto CD, either. So I'm
stuck with the vinyl. Some of my LPs aren't available
on CD or the (inferior) MP3. So I keep a turntable
and a stock of styli.

Why is it not feasible to record it to CD?

--
Bill Funk
Change "g" to "a"

On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 02:51:57 -0600, David Dyer-Bennet
wrote:

I still have functional 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives (all my computers
have 3.5" floppies, you need them for emergency boot and recovery),
and two functional zip drives. No Sparq, Peerless, or Jazz, I never
did own any. I'm starting to think of cleaning out my 5.25" software
collection and using the drawers to hold CDs, but haven't done it yet
-- it'll be a LOT of work.

You don't need floppies for emergency boot any more, unless your
system can't boot to a CD.
I still have a ZIP drive, mainy because there are those in our UG
who've gotten rid of their drives, but held on to their disks, and
need to have data transferred to CD.

--
Bill Funk
Change "g" to "a"