Filtered
I'd like to add, reference yesterday's post, I don't really like taking a video camera and/or still camera to kids' events. I'd rather just relax, watch, enjoy, treasure the memory. But somehow you feel driven to record it, so you've got something to look at after. I suppose I hope that in 20 years Didi and CJ will be able to rediscover their childhoods. So it won't have quite the same magic as 8mm film does, but mini DV is the 8mm of the future.
I was smart enough, when I got the DV camcorder, to transfer all of the footage I had on analogue Video8 tapes, before selling on the old camcorder. I've probably got about 25 hours of mini DV footage by now. I edit it down occasionally to 5-minute iMovies, which we put on DVD, but I'm determined to keep the original tapes.
Tapes are cheap, universal, fairly reliable. I'm storing them in an aluminium case (I'll need a bigger one soon), and I suppose it would be the object I'd try to remember to save from a burning building, once the actual people were safe.
But given the rapid development of technology and the determination of Sony to bugger up everyone's attempts to create long-lasting universal standards, we'll have to give serious thought to the future storage of all these memories. I'm fundamentally against DVD camcorders, because there is no agreed standard for DVD, and because the disks are too small for slot-loading computer drives, and because the disks only store 20 minutes of highest-quality video, and because the standard battery only lasts about 30 minutes. I think all these flaws represent a great barrier to success.
But listen to me; I'd have probably chosen Betamax over VHS. The trick with technology is under no circumstances be an early adopter. No matter how it makes you appear to the outside world, be a late adopter. That way you pay less, you make fewer mistakes, and you're more likely to future-proof your recorded events.
I'm already fairly unhappy at the sheer number of digital photos I've got. They're on CD, they're on DVD, they're on my hard drive. It's a long way from the Oxo box full of snaps that my mum and dad had; a long way from the box of 35 mm slides.
What I foresee is that, every 5 years or so, people are going to have to do mass transfers from one (dead or dying) medium to a future dead medium. I'll get a DVD recorder and transfer my 25 or 30 hours of DV footage onto DV, unedited, so it's there for the future. And then a few years after that I'll copy it all onto the postage-stamp sized plastic card. It's all ones and zeros, so it should remain fairly portable.
That is, unless we are invaded by nazi aliens to whom the concept of ones and zeros is foreign, and they impose their own numbering system upon us.
I was smart enough, when I got the DV camcorder, to transfer all of the footage I had on analogue Video8 tapes, before selling on the old camcorder. I've probably got about 25 hours of mini DV footage by now. I edit it down occasionally to 5-minute iMovies, which we put on DVD, but I'm determined to keep the original tapes.
Tapes are cheap, universal, fairly reliable. I'm storing them in an aluminium case (I'll need a bigger one soon), and I suppose it would be the object I'd try to remember to save from a burning building, once the actual people were safe.
But given the rapid development of technology and the determination of Sony to bugger up everyone's attempts to create long-lasting universal standards, we'll have to give serious thought to the future storage of all these memories. I'm fundamentally against DVD camcorders, because there is no agreed standard for DVD, and because the disks are too small for slot-loading computer drives, and because the disks only store 20 minutes of highest-quality video, and because the standard battery only lasts about 30 minutes. I think all these flaws represent a great barrier to success.
But listen to me; I'd have probably chosen Betamax over VHS. The trick with technology is under no circumstances be an early adopter. No matter how it makes you appear to the outside world, be a late adopter. That way you pay less, you make fewer mistakes, and you're more likely to future-proof your recorded events.
I'm already fairly unhappy at the sheer number of digital photos I've got. They're on CD, they're on DVD, they're on my hard drive. It's a long way from the Oxo box full of snaps that my mum and dad had; a long way from the box of 35 mm slides.
What I foresee is that, every 5 years or so, people are going to have to do mass transfers from one (dead or dying) medium to a future dead medium. I'll get a DVD recorder and transfer my 25 or 30 hours of DV footage onto DV, unedited, so it's there for the future. And then a few years after that I'll copy it all onto the postage-stamp sized plastic card. It's all ones and zeros, so it should remain fairly portable.
That is, unless we are invaded by nazi aliens to whom the concept of ones and zeros is foreign, and they impose their own numbering system upon us.
posted by Anonymous at
Friday, December 12, 2003
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