Computer help: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents?
- 5/1/09 10:39 AM
Paper
by rbsjrx - 4/25/09 5:48 PM In reply to: File formats.. Here today gone tomorrow. by hawk318"Short answer... If you want to make sure someone can read of view your items.... Use both electronic and 'Good old Paper!"
True, but first you have to ask yourself whether contributing to the continued deforestation of an overcrowded planet is worth it to save your deathless prose? For most of us, the answer will be that very little of what we generate meets that objective test.
Good info here, but one piece bad
by digitaldon - 5/1/09 6:51 PM In reply to: File formats.. Here today gone tomorrow. by hawk318Post #40 stated: "As far as photo's (3 generations worth)I've saved them all in:.jpeg (which will lose some quality over time each time it is opened)"
Simply opening or displaying a JPEG image does not harm the image in any way. Saving a JPEG repeatedly during the same editing session (without ever closing the image) will not accumulate a loss in quality. Copying and renaming a JPEG will not introduce any loss, but some image editors do recompress JPEGs when the Save As command is used. To avoid more loss you should duplicate and rename JPEGs in a file manager rather than using "Save As JPEG" in an editing program.
Degradation of JPEGs
by RobertdeStrang - 5/2/09 1:17 PM In reply to: Good info here, but one piece bad by digitaldondigitaldon writes:
"Saving a JPEG repeatedly during the same editing session (without ever closing the image) will not accumulate a loss in quality."
i.e. if I edit, save several times, then exit the edit I only incur loss of quality once - but if I do the same edits by repeatedly editing, saving, and exiting I will accumulate loss in quality?
No offence, digitaldon, but can someone confirm this? It's just that I haven't read this fact before.
Paper's Revenge!
by vattan2005 - 5/1/09 7:33 PM In reply to: File formats.. Here today gone tomorrow. by hawk318Great idea, but paper can fade. I still like the idea of holding something tangible in my hands. I do prefer books to a plethora of screens full of data.
What about microfiche?
by BigGuns149 - 5/2/09 12:46 AM In reply to: File formats.. Here today gone tomorrow. by hawk318Acid free paper is nice, but microfiche is a *lot* more practical space wise and stored properly we know for a fact that it can last decades, which is more than we can say about various theoretical lifetimes on newer digital mediums.
jpg myths
by dg27 - 5/2/09 4:23 AM In reply to: File formats.. Here today gone tomorrow. by hawk318>>>.jpeg (which will lose some quality over time each time it is opened)
Your misstatement about the degradation of jpgs is a commonly held myth. They will not degrade each time they are opened. They will degrade each time they are opened, EDITED, and saved. There are workarounds.
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/formatsjpeg/a/jpegmythsfacts.htm
A Small Correction
by Flatworm - 5/2/09 7:06 AM In reply to: File formats.. Here today gone tomorrow. by hawk318Files stored in a lossy compression format like .jpeg (or more commonly .jpg) do NOT diminish in quality each time they are opened. They DO lose quality each time they are opened and, whether you modify them using a graphics program or for some other reason save them as new .jpg files. If you don't overwrite the original file it will not lose quality; the new file, or the old file if you overwrite it, will lose quality because it is subjected to a new lossy compression procedure that introduces additional artifacts.
But merely opening .jpg files for viewing (or copying them, sending them to others, printing them, etc.) does not introduce any new additional compression-related artifacts into the file itself. As long as the file is not recompressed and rewritten, no quality will be lost.
File formats.. Here today gone tomorrow.
by reed256 - 5/4/09 7:20 AM In reply to: File formats.. Here today gone tomorrow. by hawk318I had not heard the opinion that JPEGs lose quality each time they're opened, though I can imagine that they might change each time an application saves them.
Anyone else care to weigh in on this topic?
jpeg files
by Samuel.M - 5/10/09 6:59 AM In reply to: File formats.. Here today gone tomorrow. by hawk318hello hawk318! jpeg files lose quality after some time? Yikes!Is this true? Every time you open a picture it loses its quality? Kindly explain! Tx!
Damn Good Question
by Artist3d - 4/25/09 5:17 PM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have similar archives going back over 20 years especially through the earlier years, Atari, Amiga and finally to PC and it was nice to see things level out a few years ago in terms of basic image formats and text files. In particular JPG, TIF, BMP and PNG. Text files Universality seems less so and video, probably the least Universal format(s) possible given PAL NTSC and HD formats etc.
One rule of thumb is to choose a lossless format for digital image files so that they can be continually upgraded if they fall out of favour. I have found PNGs at 100% quality are by far the best compressed form of storage, followed by 100% quality JPGs if space is an issue with storage.
For text files I am more and more finding that RTF files have weathered the multiple versions of programs better than even versions within an actual piece of software like Word.
PDF I stay away from as it is a HOG in any and all respects. I regularly de-install Acrobat Reader in favour of a little 1 meg. PDF reader called Foxit Reader. But one can only imagine from all the updates Adobe makes to Acrobat just how insane it will be to read old PDF files years from now.
Digital archiving to disks (CDrom, DVD or Blue Ray) is probably the most useless long term storage of all as you need to not only store the disks but the machines that play them. But the most likely to endure the test of time is probably genuine hard drive backups, much easier to migrate up from as time changes may demand.
I am thinking 1Terabyte drives or better should be good for most applications and if and when things change dramatically there will be a period where transfer and migration will be safe.
Personally I choose 100% JPGS for my images, 100% MPEGS for my videos and RTF files or plain ASCII Text for written material. All stored on large hard drives.
Paul Marcano
LUMAR Digital Archive Services
A couple of minor quibbles
by rbsjrx - 4/25/09 5:44 PM In reply to: Damn Good Question by Artist3d"For text files I am more and more finding that RTF files have weathered the multiple versions of programs better than even versions within an actual piece of software like Word."
Despite its Microsoft origins and lack of an official standard, RTF is a good choice for interoperability between WP applications. Most WP's do support it. If all you need to do is to be able to read a document in the distant future, it's not bad choice. Where RTF is not so good is in font support. RTF offers support for font families so that it can approximate the look of the original in case the selected font isn't available on the reading system, but that approximation can affect many things, e.g. pagination, which totally change the look of the document.
"PDF I stay away from as it is a HOG in any and all respects. I regularly de-install Acrobat Reader in favour of a little 1 meg. PDF reader called Foxit Reader. But one can only imagine from all the updates Adobe makes to Acrobat just how insane it will be to read old PDF files years from now."
Adobe may own the PDF rights, but it has signed them away by freely licensing it as an international standard. Third-party PDF software will stick to the ISO standard, regardless of whatever Adobe may do in the future, so it's a safe choice. The reason PDF files are so large is that they _do_ embed font information in the document so it will look _exactly_ the same on any reading system.
"Digital archiving to disks (CDrom, DVD or Blue Ray) is probably the most useless long term storage of all as you need to not only store the disks but the machines that play them."
Agreed... The best place to store your backups is on a server somewhere. I have local backups stored on my PC (on an external HDD) and on my LAN (NAS), as well as remotely on my domain server. I also have scads of backups on everything from 9-track tapes to Zip disks that I accumulated before learning this valuable lesson. Some of these (e.g. 8" floppies), I would be very hard pressed to be able to read today.
No need to quibble
by yasinghMD - 4/26/09 4:13 PM In reply to: A couple of minor quibbles by rbsjrxThe solution is quite simple, may be too simple.
I will repeat it with a little more detail.
1. There is no question that you must save a copy of important files on, at the least, two different media types, viz. DVDs and external hard drives, the best option available at present. Tape should not be considered any longer, just copy it to another media asap.
2. Life is too short to keep updating the file formats. No one may even want to see them after you die. Instead, save the software needed to open the files formats that we use today. Convert only the files in current use, when necessary in the future.
3. Some software will be incompatible with the future hardware. For example, installing windows XP on a computer with SATA drive and no floppy is a major pain already. So tuck an unused laptop (or a similar future device) away with all these programs installed and ready to use. Do so every 10-15 years.
This last item makes everyone apprehensive and thus, the quibbling. But old laptops are too inexpensive to, in my opinion, waste time converting old files to new formats.
What happens when...
by rbsjrx - 4/26/09 8:35 PM In reply to: No need to quibble by yasinghMD...Windows itself goes away? In the ~65 year history of the computer business, one lesson should be obvious - proprietary operating systems eventually go away. Even staid old IBM realized this and has reinvented itself with an emphasis AIX (Unix by another name). This is history. More importantly, this is how progress works. As the market matures, computers and their software (including OS's) become either commodities or services. When that happens, prices plunge, the initial business models fly out the window, and companies have to find some new ways to make their money.
My personal expectation is that Microsoft will eventually give up on the desktop market and merge Vista/Win7 with Xbox. By shifting the emphasis from general purpose computing to multimedia, revenues and margins will be on track to take them through the next decade or two.
I know what you mean............
by yasinghMD - 4/26/09 10:06 PM In reply to: What happens when... by rbsjrxMy first exposure to the home computer was an Atari that my sister bought. It used an external cassette tape recorder for media.
I think you are actually searching for a universal format for a time capsule, and there is no such thing, except for, durable print on a durable paper, consisting mostly of pictures and diagrams because, even a language could be obsolete at some time.
In my case, any file format that may be obsolete, on an obsolete media (a DVD for example) could be viewed in the laptop that I would have preserved from that era. (I have not yet reached a point to take that step. Everything I have so far is readable on current computers.)
The only other choice that I can think of, would be to catalogue and arrange your entire collection and then, establish a protocol to, periodically, convert and update each file type and media. Choice of file types would be a continued debate in view of continual change.
May be someone can come up with a better solution.
Mrege Vista.Win7 into XBox?!!
by vattan2005 - 5/1/09 7:30 PM In reply to: What happens when... by rbsjrxIt better not be. I hope it occurs to Microsoft that some people, such as myself, couldn't give a damn about XBox. Games are not for me - but I do love everything else the computer does.
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