Hi, Lou,

I read the article pretty carefully and yes, it was a coverup. I am so 
fed up with spin (alternative facts, lies, whatever). Perhaps at the 
time of the fire--to put this in the best light--the higher ups didn't 
know, but apparently it wasn't for want of being warned by Randy 
Aronson, the head of the archive at the time of the fire. He confirmed 
to Jody Rosen what had been lost.

It is a travesty and exposes the risks that are inherent in attempting 
to preserve media.

One thing in the article that caused me some concern is their reliance 
on LTO tape. I got the sense that at least some of it was LTO tape on 
shelves and not in a managed robotic archive. LTO is only readable back 
two generations--a point made in the article.

There is no totally secure way of storing data, although high quality 
cloud providers come close. Dropbox is on AWS and Backblaze maintains 
their own data centres. But this is expensive.

Of course, "we have duplicates of everything" could mean they still have 
a scratched LP in their home library -- let's fix it in post.

Unhappily,

Richard

On 2019-06-13 1:01 p.m., Lou Judson wrote:
> <https://www.foxnews.com/story/fire-at-universal-studios-destroys-famous-sets-videos>
> "We have duplicates of everything," said Ron Meyer, NBC Universal president and chief operating officer. “Nothing is lost forever."
> 
> Hah. and this from two days after:
> <https://abc7.com/archive/6180786/>
> "Roughly 40,000 to 50,000 videos and reels were in the video vault, but there are duplicates stored in a different location, said Ron Meyer, NBC Universal president and chief operating officer. Firefighters managed to recover hundreds of those titles from the vault.”
> 
> Sounds like coverup to me. Where is Ron Meyers now?

-- 
Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
Aurora, Ontario, Canada                             647 479 2800
http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.