Re: [PLUG] How to Store Video Files for 25 Years?

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 12:31 PM Michael Lazin <microlaser@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I was skeptical of the practicality of your suggestion Brent so I tested it.  I turned a picture of me in Heidelberg Germany into base64 at the command line and did a line count with wc -l and was surprised that it was only 296 lines of base64 code.

Base64 is 6-bit encoding (as suggested by the name), so it takes up
25% more space than the original file.

I wouldn't recommend the above strategy for a 25 megapixel raw photo.

A program designed to output data to paper is going to generally be
superior to just printing base64.  Presumably the former will include
error-correction and optimize everything for scanning.  Since damage
to paper tends to impact a region of the page, error-correction that
takes this into account is going to be superior to an approach that
assumes that errors will be completely randomly distributed.

However, I will note that any of these strategies still require having
the software to read back the data at a future point in time.  base64
is generic enough that this is more likely than with some specialized
tool.

Again, as I suggested before redundancy and tools like par2 can be
used to add in integrity and robustness where they aren't already
covered.

Oh, and 25 years is getting on the longer side for even paper.
Definitely store that under proper conditions and use acid-free paper
and non-fading ink/toner all that stuff.  25 years ago was 1993.
Think about paper you might still have around from that time, or
really anything else.  Certainly the technology existed back then to
create stuff that lasts, but unless the investment is made to actually
use it properly it doesn't matter.

-- 
Rich
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