It may seem a paradox temporal space (now that we are in full hangover after the arrival of Marty McFly our present), but to save or create backup of our digitised content does not guarantee that the keep until the end of time. Can happen, and it happens more often than we imagine, it is impossible to find a video archiving it in a backup system designed to do just to never lose a file.

Let's do this. From the digitization of our content, these have become digital files. As I'm writing this post in a word processor that I will create a file, the digitization of a video I will generate a computer file with the extension MXF, MOV, MP4, etc...

Once we have computer files, it is not easy to keep them in a storage (hard disk, USB stick...) and even to make a backup on another system (external hard drive, LTO tape, data DVD, ODE...). With this, we feel safe and we believe that our video digitizing has become immortal and will live forever. We will therefore take a little bit of this belief with two reflections.

Some years ago, I explained that today it is more likely to read a handwritten letter, which he did in 1850 your great-great-grandfather, and that you have found in the bottom of an old chest of drawers, a document that made the year 1985 with your brand-new PC-8286 and the word processor WordPerfect of the time. Even if you have a copy on a disk in 5 ¼ with its corresponding backup in a ZIP drive. We've gained storage capacity, but we have lost in durability of the data in digital media.

Although you were able to mount a machine as the year 1985 you'd find with the difficulty of run the word processor. Do you remember the WordPerfect? And it is that you think of to emulate the hardware and software that you used once to create and save the digital file, but this topic is not so easy to fix unless you are the library of Alexandria, or the Metropolitan museum of New York.

That is to say, there are going to migrate the content from one to another support as the current become obsolete, and to do this it is best to base the storage media standard on the market and more widespread as possible.

An example would be the format of LTFS for the LTO. It is a standard format that allows you to read the tape from any station equipped with an LTO and with a standard software.

About LTFS I recommend this post by Bob Zelin. https://library.creativecow.net/zelin_bob/LTO-LTFS-Archiving/1

Surely more than one of you have a file-based tapes LTO3 and now has serious doubts about what to do. If I upgrade to the current format LTO6, the drivers are not going to read the old tapes.. but I can't stay on the sidelines because to every generation of LTO is going to be worse.

And the second reflection: a file stored in a file system tends to dwindle as the file grows. That is to say, if my content is not well identified with a metadata that describes it, it is best to delete it as that as you grow the file will be harder to find. Serious able to find this plane that I was on a raw material that we filmed 10 years ago and that is saved in a digital file of 530 TB and whose 10.600 files are not indexed and are only identified by a file name? With luck you'll be able to look in the folder structure that you created that contains 73 subfolders and that is managed by a team of 4 people, each of a department and with a criterion of cataloguing different. That is to say, you have asked that plane forever. Never more will you find. Best back to take the plane and go to burn it again.

In 2001, Unesco launched a program for the preservation of the digital heritage since they saw clearly that I was exposed to its disappearance due to technological obsolescence. http://www.unesco.org/new/es/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/preservation-of-documentary-heritage/digital-heritage/

In this program, the UNESCO gives a series of recommendations in this regard:

• Collaborate with producers (creators, and distributors) to implement rules that will prolong the life effective means of access and reduce the variety of unknown problems that should be treated

• Recognise that it is not realistic to try to preserve the whole and to select the materials that should be preserved

• Store the material in a safe place

• Control the material using structured metadata and other documents that will facilitate access and help during all the process of preserving

• To protect the integrity and the identity of the data

• Choose the appropriate means to provide access despite the technological changes

• Manage conservation programs to achieve their objectives in an economical, timely, global, dynamic and responsible.

In conclusion, to preserve content is not enough just to make a backup on the platform at a more advanced technologically, but there you enter the metadata structured (for example, depending on the model Dublin Core or the MPEG-7) that allow us to perform a successful search and then perform the migration necessary technological automatically to ensure the preservation with the least possible costs.

And if you don't we always be a last option. Grab the Delorean and travel to the past to retrieve the video, bring it back to our days, and to find a player, U-matic...