Long Live Television Tape!
By Angelo Sacerdote, BAVC Preservation Specialist
I learned how to splice super 8 film when I was a kid. In college, I learned how to edit video with an edit controller and a pair of U-Matic decks. I’m glad I never had to work with 2 inch Quad video (we have a dusty old Quad deck in our basement, if anyone wants to make an offer).
Today, many editors are starting off with Final Cut Pro, digitizing DV tape over firewire. With the advent of formats like IMX and P2, editors are soon going to skip tape altogether.
Many of us are used to thinking about hard drives as something you buy once in a while to edit on, something to be reused after the current project is over. Now that we are starting to embark on shooting in tapeless acquisition formats, we need to think of hard drives as the new tape. Now when you start a project, you must budget in the cost of hard drives as your permanent storage. As it turns out, it is cheaper to do this than to buy traditional video tape. For every “tape” you should have a backup “tape”. (more…)
Add comment July 9, 2007
