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| LOC Facility Copes With Plethora of Formats |
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Technologies for capturing and storing sounds and
moving images first came into being more than 100
years ago and have been constantly evolving. This
makes the jobs of Library of Congress audio/visual
archivists and preservationists both interesting and
challenging. While it is relatively easy to extract content
from a 35mm motion picture footage or a
Betacam SP cassette, this not true for many other
materials at the Culpepper, Va., facility.
Part 2 of 2
Part 1, “Digitizing History,” appeared in the December 2009 Government Video.
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One of 14 special turntables for playing back disk
recordings, on a heavy stone base and isolated
from vibration by an air bag. PHOTO: JAMES E. O'NEAL
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by James E. O'Neal
WELL-AGED TECHNOLOGIES
Thomas Edison made his first audio recordings in
1877 and later turned this technology into a commercial
product. His company captured a very wide
variety of audio and marketed its recordings primarily
in the form of wax cylinders with vertically modulated
grooves.
The company finally exited the recording business
in 1929, but not before it produced an extremely large
number of recordings. While many Edison cylinder
recordings still exist in fairly good condition, the same
cannot be said about the devices for playing them,
with the reproducers that do turn up usually not being
functional. To complicate matters, the cylinder recording
industry used recording speeds that ranged
between 90 and 180 rpm. Groove pitch and depth
varied also, along with the diameter of the cylinder.
The LOC plays back its cylinder recordings with a
machine that would have been unavailable even to
the extremely wealthy during the heyday of the
Edison technology-the Archeophone cylinder reproducer.
It’s driven, not by a clockwork mechanism, as
was standard on most Edison machines, but rather
by a microprocessor-controlled electric motor. The
device can reproduce virtually any cylinder format
with fidelity undreamed of a century or so ago.
An equally sophisticated technology for recovering
content from slightly more modern recording
media-phonograph discs-is also part of the LOC’s
tool set. This is a very high-tech turntable crafted on
a limited basis by Simon Yorke Designs.
Only a very small number of these specialized
turntables have been produced and the LOC has 14
of them. They allow fine tuning of platter speed
from 78 rpm down to 1/100 of an rpm and are constructed
on a high-density slate base for stability.
The entire turntable rests on an air bladder, which provides isolation for building noises or other vibrations
that might interfere with the best possible
reproduction of a phonograph recording.
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Playing back
EIAJ half-inch
open reel video
recordings is
part of a day’s
work at the
Library of
Congress
Culpepper
facility.
Machines such
as these make
it possible. PHOTO: JAMES E. O'NEAL
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These turntables are used with special preamps
equipped with equalization pre-sets for all known
recording curves, and also allow users to dial in a
custom EQ to accommodate any oddball recordings
that might be encountered.
PAPER MOVIES
Recovering images and sound from motion picture
footage is somewhat easier for archivists, as
16mm and 35mm formats were standardized by
most movie production companies decades ago.
And while telecine equipment of one sort or another
has been available for this task since the dawn of
broadcast television, the LOC relies on a state-ofthe-
art DataCine device, which not only provides
film to tape transfers, but is also capable of creating
2K high-resolution digital images.
More arcane film formats do exist and the Library
is also equipped to deal with most of these. One of
the more interesting resembles standard 35mm
motion picture footage, but began arriving at the
LOC more than 100 years ago on paper, rather than
conventional film stock.
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Although the motion picture companies stopped sending paperbased
prints to the LOC in 1912, The need to recover images from
them still exists. Migration to conventional film stock is made easier
with this special scanner. PHOTO: JAMES E. O'NEAL
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As U.S. copyright laws predated the motion picture
industry, celluloid film was not a recognized
medium for submission of works to be copyrighted.
This required early film makers to pull positive paper
prints from their negatives. Laws were updated in
1912, reflecting the growth of the cinema industry
and recognizing motion picture film stock as suitable
medium for copyright, but not before the Library had
amassed a large number of paper prints. Years ago,
these images had to be printed frame-by-frame onto
film stock in order to be viewed as a motion picture.
This process changed with the advent of specialized
equipment that is able to rapidly
convert these streams of paperbased
images into a motion picture
format. A special scanner generates
digital files that can be cleaned up or
otherwise restored, and the resulting
files are then transferred back to
motion picture stock via a film
recorder. Even though the recovery
and transfer process is somewhat
involved, these paper positives have
proven to be a blessing in disguise,
as in some cases the 35mm nitrate
stock from which they were printed
has decomposed to the point that the
paper imagery provides the best-or in
some cases the only-version of some
early motion pictures.
HALF A CENTURY OF VIDEOTAPE
During the last few decades, videotape recording
has replaced film in many applications. While in theory,
recovering magnetically stored images should present
no real challenge, due to the numerous and rapid
developments in video recording technology since its
introduction in 1956, the playback of some videotapes
is complicated due to the very large number of recording
formats developed. Also, support for many video
tape formats-in terms of machine and parts availability,
as well as personnel with necessary maintenance
skills to keep the VTRs running-is waning, especially
since the shift to a “tapeless” television environment.
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The Art Deco
theatre is one of
the few theatres
today equipped
to project
potentially
dangerous
nitrate-based
film. PHOTO COURTESY COMMUNICATIONS ENGINEERING INC. (CEI)
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However, the Library has secured a substantial
number of video recorders in various formats and
embarked on a long-term program to migrate content
to digital storage while it can still be recovered.
An offshoot to this videotape migration program
was the development of automated or robotic
machines for coping with the massive amount of
videotape accumulated by the LOC. These devices
are known as SAMMA robots and were developed
by Jim Lindner, an expert in the field of A/V preservation
and founder of SAMMA Systems (acquired in
2008 by Front Porch Digital).
The machines were designed expressly for high-volume
automated migration of cassette tape content at
the LOC and other organizations with huge video
libraries. The robots automatically perform inspection
and cleaning operations, issue a “pass/fail” flag for
individual cassettes, and then play and digitally encode
the recording if everything passes muster. Each of the
robotic units can accommodate either 48 U-Matic
tapes or 60 Betacam cassettes and they’re content to
work on a 24/7 schedule, requiring human intervention
only for unloading processed cassettes, loading in new ones and some occasional maintenance. The collection
size at the LOC is so vast, even with multiple
SAMMA robots working round the clock; it will still
take years to migrate everything to digital storage.
NOT JUST A REPOSITORY
While its primary mission is stewardship and conservation
of the nation’s audiovisual treasures, the
Culpeper facility is more than an extremely large
media library and workplace for those involved in
preserving the great audio/visual past. It has other
functions too.
One of these is the public display of some of the
facility’s content. A specially designed 200-seat replica
of a 1930s Art Deco motion picture theater is also
part of the Culpeper campus. It’s authentic down to
lighting fixtures and specially woven carpet pattern.
A specially constructed electronic organ was also
included in the design, and was styled to replicate its
piped ancestors, with the console rising out of the
stage depths on an elevator-controlled pedestal.
The theater was designed to accommodate 16mm,
35mm, 70mm optical prints, as well as digital cinema
offerings. The projection booth is one of an extremely
small number that can safely handle nitrate-based
prints. This capability allows the side-by-side screening
of an original nitrate print with a fully restored safety
film base or even a digital cinema version.
The theater is opened to the public on a regular
basis, with free screenings of classic films from the
library’s collection.
James O’Neal is the technology editor of TV Technology magazine.
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