Preservation Strategy – Chapter 2
Posted by Blu-ray Duplication Admin |
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Jan
Preservation Strategy Blog
In this series of blogs we would cover various aspects and considerations for your memories and family history and legacy preservation strategies.
Chapter 2 – Why is strategy necessary?
You have read the first chapter and ready to go. You probably already knew how easy and accessible the Internet is and how effortless you can share your family videos with your extended family and friends. You probably also knew that the VHS, Betamax, DV, 8mm, vinyl and all older media technology is rapidly going away. You possibly also learned about the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs if you haven’t learned of it in school – and so you say to yourself “ok, I’m ready to go. I’m ready to transfer my video to DVD, or PC, or computer, or whatnot. Why do I need a strategy? Can’t I just do it right away?â€
Well, you could, but you won’t necessarily get the best results. Our commitment is to getting you the best results – results that will preserve your family history and memories for generations to come, and that will also fulfill your needs in full.
Let us throw a few terms into the mix – Quicktime, ProRes, H.264, MPEG, lossless compression, component video, HD. Now, you may have heard these terms and you may have not. These are actually fairly basic terms and not necessarily the complex ones that exist in today’s media world. The point is to demonstrate that there is more than one option today when it comes to preserving your family history, and you will greatly benefit from being educated.
We at Advanced Media, are committed to educating our customers and provide them with a strategy that will work for them. The most important part of the strategy, is that it must be fool-proof and redundant. A strategy that is not fool-proof an/or redundant, is essentially risky or ineffective.
As a basic step we like to break down the process of video transfer to a “hard†strategy and a “soft†strategy:
“Hard†| “Soft†| |
Quality: | Compressed | High |
Form: | Tangible | Virtual |
Storage: | Local | Remote |
Use: | Current | Future |
Access: | Secure | Exposed |
If you take a moment to examine those distinctions, you may start to notice that the process of video transfer could be multi-faceted and not as one dimensional as you may have originally assumed. For example, how would you describe the process of transferring a VHS tape to DVD? Since the end result is in compressed quality, the form is tangible, the storage is local, the use is current and the access is somewhere between secure to exposed, it would primarily fall under a “hard†strategy. On the other hand, 8mm film transfer to computer file, will fall under high quality, virtual (file), may be stored on the cloud, could be on H.264 file and online, and therefore will fall under the “soft†strategy.
As a rule of thumb, you always want to have one component in the hard area and another in the soft area in order to have a successful preservation strategy. Remember, if you don’t have a well balanced strategy, you are risking the loss or compromising of your family memories, history and legacy.
The main benefits of combining strategies, is that by using them in advance, you can actually not only achieve far greater results than you initially perceived, but you could also save money in the long run.
Please call one of our media specialists at (323) 469 0707 or at toll free (855) 551 5857 for a free consultation, or simply contact us here for more information.