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Ask HN: Best way to backup a 5 minute movie for 50 years?

5 points by orzig ↗ HN
I want future generations to be able see short moments from their ancestors, like my marriage proposal.

How can I reliably store for the very long term?

10 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 34.2 ms ] thread
edent
The best way is to become famous - then let museums and other cultural institutions store it for you.

The next best way is to realise that things like wedding videos get watched maybe twice - and your descendants likely won't care.

You could save the video in a variety of open codecs on multiple media and hope that at least one of them is compatible with machines in 10 years time (good luck finding a contemporary machine which reads minidiscs!)

Ideally, you would set up a legal trust which is tasked with shifting the media onto new formats every few years. That's complex and costly. And, even if you do find a law firm which isn't going to go bust, get bought out, or simply forget - you don't have any standing to sue. Because you'll be dead.

Finally, and this is similar to the first suggestion, you could create a tradition in your family to watch the clip every Xmas / solstice / anniversary. Keep that tradition alive for the next 50 years and I dare say it will become part of your family legend - similar to https://www.theguardian.com/environment/shortcuts/2017/jan/0...

eternalban
There will be a market for private curation and management of digital assets. OP is obviously a potential customer. Who wants to start a business..
edent
There have been several "we'll store your stuff til the end of eternity" companies.

But, in my estimation, they're little more than scams because the customer has no recourse once they've died. Just like cryogenic freezing - take the money in the sure knowledge that it doesn't matter if you don't uphold your end of the deal.

eternalban
Right, this is actually the only part of the bizplan that needs thinking. ianal, but surely there must be mechanisms to setup trans-generational contracts and agreements, for an honest bunch who wanted to run with this.

I think we need to solve this problem. The need extends beyond family and pet pics. A not-insignificant portion of human mind products are initially obscure and in private margins, waiting for subsequent discovery.

gabelschlager
Is it really that much of a problem though? I own PC games that are close to 25 years old at this point and have problems installing and playing them on the PC I build two years ago. I have hard drives and USB sticks that are from 2005 and still work fine (though obviously, all their data is backed up onto newer devices). CD-ROMs can still be easily bought and played.

As long as OP sticks to traditional and established formats and pays attention every 5-10 years to migrate their data onto their new PCs, etc. it shouldn't be that much of a problem.

eschneider
Write it to stable film stock. Seriously.
hotpotamus
Black and white would be ideal, I imagine. I've heard that there are salt mines full of color separation black and white film that serve as archives for large collections of films. And it makes some sense; it's a human readable optical medium, so you can always just look at it or scan it.
PaulHoule
I think writable blu-ray discs are pretty good but writable DVD are usually not so good in terms of longevity.
simne
16mm cinema film is extremely reliable. Especially b/w. And it is not rare technology and will be easy to read by future devices.