Video Preservation

Here at Open Eyes Video, we have video recordings dating back to 1973, so clearly, the issues of preservation, archiving, restoration, and legacy video equipment operation and maintenance is important to us.

We have recordings in half inch reel to reel (EIAJ-1 standard), Betamax I, U-Matic (3/4"), 8mm, Hi8, and now mini-DV and DVCAM recordings.

The forgotten factor.

With every video tape or cassette sold in the past few decades, the manufacturer included a slip of paper with instructions on how to keep the recording from harm. There will little picutres of magnets, drops of water, dust, etc.

What they forgot to tell you has to do with the machine you need in order to watch (and hear) the recording. You can keep those tapes in a vault in perfect climate controlled clean room conditions, for all that it matters. If you don't have a working machine on which to play them, forget it.

The problem is, as a medium declines, the machines involved get less and less expensive and more and more poorly made. After all, anyone buying one must be doing so simply because they can't afford the latest newest technology, right? Machines of the "old" technology are considered impractical to ever repair. If it breaks, just throw it out. But once you do, you might as well throw out your library of recordings along with it.

Well, you can't save everything, right? Perhaps not. But if you do want to save something that is important to you, it might serve you well to make a plan as to how to you are going to preserve it and the equipment to play it, at least long enough to transfer it to a more modern medium.

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