[Leica] Re: File format converting

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

On Aug 15, 2006, at 8:23 AM, lDon wrote:

> Larry,
> No, it is not brain surgery but you have to have some knowledge and  
> choose
> opportune moments to change formats.  For example, the Blue-Ray format
> appears to be winning the new DVD wars so in a year or so I will buy a
> burner and reburn all my CD's and DVD's to that format.  I suspect  
> that CD's
> only have a couple of years life left before you start to see non  
> backward
> compatible DVD/Blue Ray reader burners on computers.  As the music  
> industry
> goes completely online rather than CD there will be the same  
> pressure to
> have a CD drive as there is currently to have a floppy drive on new
> computers.
>
> Therefore, all those CD's that John Q has had burned at the drug  
> store will
> be mostly useless coasters in ten years.  The sad part is that John  
> Q has
> faithfully stored copies in the safety deposit box and they will be  
> safe,
> but mostly useless in twenty years.
>
> My question to the computer literate would be what is going to  
> replace USB
> or 1394 connections?  Will Wi-Fi take over so no cables at all?
>
> Don


Don,

I know the pain of converting one file format to another. In the 60s  
I faced the problem of converting the whole data base of U.S Merchant  
seaman's accident and injury records from IBM cards to computer  
readable tape. The 1.5 million 80 column cards were delivered to me  
in a moving van. I had the task of feeding the cards in small batches  
to a card reader where they would get transfered to my university's  
mainframe and written to tape. The only available machine time was  
after midnight on Jewish holidays.

In a few years the 8 track tape was unreadable, so the data was  
rewritten to 8" floppy discs. Eventually it was transfered to 5"  
discs and then 3.5" discs. A roomful of them. Fortunately we missed  
the 2" disc period. (Yes, there were 2" floppy discs.) Finally when  
CD burners became available, the data was written on those lovely  
little platters and now occupy only a 5'  long shelf.  Why did we  
keep this data so many years? They offered the entire medical history  
of 180,000 seamen, working in a controlled environment, for their  
whole career. It was (and still is) invaluable for researchers.

The interesting thing is that each format had a half life of about 10  
years. If you wrote a file on a specific medium when it  first became  
widely available, twenty years later you would be hard pressed to  
find a reader for that medium. The first Mac, introduced in 1984  
(Remember the hammer swinging commercial?) marked the general  
adoption of the 3.5" disc. By 2004 it was hard to find a new computer  
which would accept such discs. Burnable CDs are about halfway through  
their life span. DVDs probably have 15 years to go. Blue-Ray may be  
the successor but I still have a Sony BetaMax in the garage. You  
can't be sure until it sells for less than $100 at WalMart. Vertical  
writing on magnetic media, holographic recording in solid plastic,  
etc. are still in the laboratory but you can't be sure which one will  
break free in the near future. Perhaps writing on tea leaves.

The cable connection problem is minor compared with the recording  
medium wars. RS 232 connectors are still being used 50 years after  
they were first introduced. The dual pronged electrical wall plug is  
over 100 years old. The Brits use the same bayonet socket they did  
when Swan invented the light bulb. USB and Firewire connections will  
probably still be around but they may carry different information at  
different speeds. Wi-Fi is already showing signs of age and the IR  
connection that was heralded as the future of wireless inter  
connection has already disappeared.

So keep your precious image fiiles in CD or DVD format for at least  
the next ten years. You will have plenty of  time to save the files  
on any new format that emerges. Thankfully digital files can be  
transfered without too much loss of data. Besides, if faced with data  
medium obsolescence, John Q can have his drugstore CDs transfered to  
new image storage media by any number of commercial firms if he is  
willing to pay the price. You can still get it done with 8 track  
computer tapes and big floppy discs. I've even had my 8 mm movies  
converted to DVDs.

Larry Z