California's Golden History

The great state of California is the most populous in the United States and one of the largest, with a rich and complex history dating back before the country's founding. For several decades, a relatively obscure series of television shows created by a TV personality and Tennessee transplant named Huell Howser explored some of the most fascinating little-known nooks and crannies of the Golden State.

Digital Revolution digitized and preserved the entire Huell Howser PBS TV show collection for Chapman University. Created out of KCET-TV in Los Angeles, the shows were produced to run on PBS TV stations throughout California.

The collection contains over 1,100 programs including his first series from 1987, Video Log. It also includes subsequent series California’s Gold, California’s Missions, Visiting with Huell Howser, Road Trip with Huell Howser, California’s Golden Parks, California’s Green, California’s Water and his final series Downtown.

His most well known show California’s Gold was produced for 18 seasons. Mr. Howser passed away over three years ago, but the content he created is a timeless reminder of California's wildly diverse history, culture and personality. From exploring Spanish missions to tracing California's water from the Colorado River to the Hoover Dam, Huell Howser was a warm and friendly guide through his adopted state's  idiosyncrasies and is remembered fondly by a generation of Californians. His shows still air regularly in syndication across the state.

“The video tape formats were all digital betacam and betacamSP. They are evaporated metal based tapes that hold up better over time than oxide based tapes like ¾” Umatic, 1” or plain old betacam. So the digital files look great,” said Digital Revolution CEO Paul Grippaldi.

Digital Revolution’s directive from Chapman University was not only to digitize the tapes into 10-bit uncompressed files, but also to extract the closed captions that were recorded into the programs. Then MP4’s were created for Word Press Web Player and married with the captions. The end result was Chapman University uploading the entire Huell Howser collection onto the University’s website. The viewer now has the option to watch the shows with captions, making them ADA compliant.

Seventeen of the shows were never closed captioned, so Digital Revolution captioned those shows and digitized them for the collection. In the end there was over eighty terabytes of data created. Digital Revolution not only put the files onto hard drives and back up hard drives, but also made LTO data tapes for long term archiving.

Chapman University has a wonderful Huell Howser museum at their Leatherby Libraries. It’s like taking a walk through California history. Now everyone can enjoy his TV shows for decades to come.

Digitizing Chevron's Media Legacy

There are many challenges in digitizing a media collection that spans 4 decades. Such was the case for Digital Revolution in digitizing Chevron’s vast media library.

Step one was for Chevron to choose which elements to preserve and which ones to simply degauss and recycle. Chevron historian John Harper thoughtfully made those decisions.

“The Chevron Corporate Archive partnered with Paul’s team at Digital Revolution based upon their professional expertise and proven ability in the field of media preservation. As a result, we were able to recover, preserve and utilize hundreds of media assets that otherwise we could no longer access or efficiently leverage,” Harper said.

The elements had come into the archives from all over the world. They included media from companies that Chevron had merged with: Texaco, Gulf Oil and CalTex. Digital Revolution spent three weeks on-site at the Chevron Archives, bar coding each asset and creating an inventory list of the chosen media.

The collection included fourteen different video tape formats, five audio tape formats, three film formats and 35mm slides. The videos included PAL tapes from overseas. They were digitized in their native format in order to maintain quality. We cleaned and scanned over 50,000 feet of film in high definition 2K resolution.

Digital Revolution recommended making two levels of files:
Video & Film: Pro Res 422 for the preservation archival format and H264’s for easy office use
Audio: .WAV files for the preservation archival format and MP3’s for easy office use

Conscious of the fact that the work we do today will still be used decades from now, Digital Revolution’s goal in preservation is to get the best quality playback possible. Oxide-based tapes: ¾” Umatic, 1” Reel, Betacam video and some audio reel tapes in particular gain moisture over time. Therefore, we “bake” those tapes to get the moisture out before playback. Otherwise, the tape can get stuck in the machine or the oxide can rip right off of the tape as it is played, causing “sticky shed.”  As ¾” Umatic tapes decompose there can be a fine layer of oxide dust that forms on the length of the tape. As the tape plays in the machine it will cause a catastrophic playback head-clog. After baking the ¾” Umatic tapes, for many of them, we hand-cleaned the entire length of the tape with a moist alcohol cloth before playback.

We also had to perform tape repair and transplanted dozens of tapes into new shells.  The most common tape repair happens when the glue that holds the recording part of the tape to the leader dries out and comes apart. The case needs to be disassembled and the tape spliced back together. In order for some tapes to track properly the tape itself needs to be transplanted into a new shell. Especially with ¾” Umatic and VHS tapes, the moving parts in the shell can dry out and cause the tape to not roll properly causing poor playback results.

Some of the Gulf Oil tapes had mold build up and rusty parts from being stored in a damp environment. When working with moldy tapes, Digital Revolution bakes them and then hand-cleans them. Then we transplant the tape into a new shell. All but one Gulf tape played back. It was too decomposed to salvage.

Most tapes have not been played in years. Therefore, they can tighten up or have sticking points. In order to loosen them up and get a more even playback we fast forward and rewind each one before digitizing. If a tape is so decomposed or damaged that we believe we will only get one good play from it, we capture it on first playback.

In working to get the best possible playback Digital Revolution has:
Machines with manual tracking, skew functions and adjustable audio output capabilities. We also have multiple machines of each tape format so if we are not getting good playback on one machine we can try others that may play a particular tape better.

As we digitized Chevron’s assets we also updated an Excel spreadsheet with metadata for each element.

When we were finished with phase one of digitizing Chevron’s media collection we had over 40 terabytes of data. We made two sets of hard drives and a set of LTO data tapes for long term archiving. When we were satisfied that we had a digital replica of the media collection, we degaussed and recycled the tapes.

For more information on how Digital Revolution can help with your media archive, contact me personally: Paul Grippaldi - paul@digitalrevolution.tv, 415-398-1200.

Moldy Tapes

Greetings, Digital Citizens! Welcome to Digital Revolution's new blog!

Mile End Films is making a documentary about actor Burt Reynolds and asked us to perform video tape transfers and media preservation for seven 3/4" Umatic Tapes. These tapes were particularly old and several had some mold build-up from being stored in a damp environment. With 3/4" Umatic tapes dating back more than 30 years Digital Revolution performs the following preparation: Bake, Hand Clean, and Transplant the tape reels into fresh 3M Broadcast Color Plus shells. All of these procedures need to be done carefully and thoughtfully. In the case of moldy tapes we use gloves, a mask and hand clean the entire tape with an alcohol cloth.

-Baking gets the moisture out of the tape so that it doesn't stick in the machine or rip oxide off of as it is played.

-Since oxide based tapes decompose relatively quickly, cleaning them keeps the machine playback heads from clogging and makes for a more residue free transfer. Alcohol acts as a good cleaner and kills mold.

-3M Broadcast Color Plus tape shells are made of all plastic non-moving parts so the tape tracks properly in them. We have them in stock as part of our transfer tools. Other tape shells have moving parts and springs that can dry out over time and cause poor tracking during playback.

The client's file format preference was Pro Res 422HQ. They were happy with our first set of digitized tapes. They had been having transfers done in other parts of the country as well. We told them to send us all of their “hopeless” tapes.  They did. Two dozen more ¾” Umatics, all of them with severe moisture or mold build up. The programs were of particular interest to the filmmaker and included The Mike Douglas Show, The Tonight Show, Awards Shows, Riverboat, Love American Style, Burt Reynolds late night shows etc.

The tapes spanned 1977-1983 and were manufactured by various companies including Sony, 3M and DuPont.  Some of the tapes we had to bake longer than normal and hand clean several times because of the excessive mold & moisture. However, we were able to get all of them to playback except for the two DuPont Tapes. There were many companies that went into and out of the video tape manufacturing business over four decades. Our experience tells us that Sony, Fuji, Maxell, 3M (Scotch), Ampex & Quantegy last the longest.

Keep your eyes peeled for this upcoming documentary. It should be very entertaining!

For more information on how Digital Revolution can help preserve your media archive, contact me personally: Paul Grippaldi - paul@digitalrevolution.tv, 415-398-1200