
The Internet Archive Wants to Digitize 40,000 VHS and Betamax Tapes (2014) - edward
http://www.fastcompany.com/3028069/the-internet-archive-is-digitizing-40000-vhs-tapes
======
caseysoftware
I worked on the digital archiving project at the Library of Congress. In that
case, it was mostly wire spool recordings, wax cylinders, and LPs, but many of
the same principles apply:

\- This media can be fragile. Less so with VHS or Betamax, but it's something
to keep in mind.

\- It's not usually just a single copy and drop it into an archive. Most of
the time, they'll want a super high quality, uncompressed master for long term
preservation. This is with the hope that they never have to go back to the
physical media.

\- Once they have that copy, they create lower quality versions for day to day
display, usage, study, etc.

\- When you consider the "work" (in the artistic/archival sense, not the
effort sense), it's not just the video. Quite often they'll want image scans
of the media itself, container, etc. This is because the video itself may have
been suffered damage due to physical damage.

\- Next, you need to document the whole process down to the brand and settings
of every single device. If it's known (or discovered later), that a particular
piece of equipment distorts media (plays faster/slower, changes color
palettes, etc), you need to know that and _potentially_ correct for it at a
later time.

\- And finally, don't forget the metadata! A collection isn't useful if
someone doesn't capture the who, what, and when. This is often the most
painful part because the settings above are often set once and forgotten. This
requires manually transcribing information written on the media, watching it,
or a variety of other methods. Most libraries farm this out to interns. My new
company - Clarify.io - hopes to help with this aspect.

If you're interested more in the mechanics, please feel free to let me know.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Would you consider doing a reddit AMA? HN doesn't quite seem like the right
place/format for it.

Although, I'm gonna cut right in line and ask: what's the most interesting
thing you've archived? If you're not sure what we'd find interesting, some
suggestions are - content, medium and difficulty.

~~~
caseysoftware
I've considered it before but wasn't sure anyone would care. Now as I'm seeing
more of these archiving efforts discussed, I'll consider it. :)

For the most interesting thing, I'll share two answers:

\- First, there were the truly historic pieces of media. Things like Thomas
Edison's first motion pictures and reporters' wire spool recordings of D-Day
hours after the invasion "ended" were always the most amazing. You read about
this stuff, but hearing it is something else entirely.

\- On the other end of the spectrum, you have to remember that everything that
has a registered copyright has been sent to the Library of Congress. That
includes porn. My group didn't archive it but the group down the hall had to
catalogue it. No, they didn't have private offices. ;)

~~~
weisser
Wow what an interesting coincidence...I just moved to Austin and am working on
preserving some extremely historic recordings. Emailing you now!

~~~
pavel_lishin
Could y'all try to find a way of getting an AMA link back to HN if you end up
doing one? This is fascinating stuff.

~~~
weisser
I'll definitely be doing an AMA about my specific project. I'm not at all an
expert in the field but I'll share the story and my experiences.

------
pbreit
Hmmm, I thought there might be more information on what programs are included.
And was also expecting some sort of probably sad discussion on content
ownership.

On a side note, the Internet Archive HQ building is pretty cool:
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/300+Funston+Ave,+San+Franc...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/300+Funston+Ave,+San+Francisco,+CA+94118/@37.782264,-122.471903,3a,75y,85h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1shGwqNTJFL21Clj5EwZey6Q!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26output%3Dthumbnail%26thumb%3D2%26panoid%3DhGwqNTJFL21Clj5EwZey6Q%26w%3D374%26h%3D75%26yaw%3D85%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D120%26ll%3D37.782264,-122.471903!7i13312!8i6656!4m2!3m1!1s0x80858717ad44722f:0xe43bf935ed8ed372!6m1!1e1)

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WalterBright
Why does it cost $12 per tape to digitize it? I recently digitized a giant
pile of old home movies, and all it took was an $80 usb video capture device,
$20 thrift store VCR, and a few minutes each. About every dozen tapes I had to
take the cover off and clean the heads, but that was no big deal.

Some older tapes will need a time base corrector to rebuild the sync signals,
but they aren't that expensive.

~~~
ytdht
$12 per tape is cheap to make it available to everyone...

~~~
WalterBright
Despite my message, I am very happy that these tapes are being made available.

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userbinator
This seems like a trivially parallelisable problem. You can buy used VCRs by
the pallet cheaply[1], although servicing and possibly retrofitting them into
good condition is probably the major bottleneck here.

[1]
[https://govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=1045&acct...](https://govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=1045&acctid=2489)

~~~
jdboyd
Many of the tapes are BetaMAX.

~~~
johansch
There are maybe about 100 betamax VCRs for sale on ebay at the moment.

[http://www.ebay.com/sch/VCRs-/15088/i.html?_nkw=betamax](http://www.ebay.com/sch/VCRs-/15088/i.html?_nkw=betamax)

------
redcalx
I envisage much grainy audio of intellectual (or pseudo intellectual?)
discussions featuring on soundcloud sad-core and post rock accounts.

