Re: [ARSCLIST] Digital Audio Preservation Question

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 13/04/08, Richard L. Hess wrote:
> At 09:01 AM 2008-04-08, Don Cox wrote:
>> On 07/04/08, Tom Fine wrote:
>>> Hi Brandon:
>>> 
>>> Can you cite a reasonable scenario where there will be an ability
>> to
>>> read bits and bytes in the future but the whole idea of CODECs was
>>> forgotten?
>> 
>> The idea may not be forgotten, but specific codecs and file format
>> decoders can be almost impossible to obtain.
>> 
>> There are already many image formats that are as good as lost.
> 
> That's fascinating, Don! I didn't know that. I thought PhotoShop 
> could still read PhotoCD files -- which are about as dead as I can 
> think of in the image area. As long as I've been looking at images 
> (since circa 1990), GIF JPEG TIFF and now PNG have made up the vast 
> majority of what I've seen.
> 
> Almost all camera RAW image formats are currently readable, but not 
> all are open hence the www.openraw.org initiative.
> 
> What formats were you thinking of that are unreadable today?
> 
Photoshop no longer reads IFF images, although there are other programs
that can.

Nothing that I know of can read the images that were produced by an
Apple ][ based graphics system that we used around 1980. There are many
custom graphics setups from that period whose output will be lost unless
somebody managed to convert it in time.

Even reading cp/m data disks at all is very difficult. 

And we are talking about a period that is considered quite recent in
audio recording terms.

Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx