VHS video digitization is unique in very particular ways. Due to the amounts of data being processed, a parade of equipment is required. Even more, its required to work in concert. The potential for headaches is vast. Today we used the combination of a VCR to read the cassette, a DV camcorder acting as intermediary--analog to digital convertor, a mac running Imovie, and finally an external drive to capture and store the raw digital video but the permutations and types of components that can be used are boundless. There are few computer centric tasks that illustrate a data flow as explicitly as capturing video. You can almost see the bits as they are cajoled to span their electronic equals and moved from the popular magnetic storage of one decade to another.
Analogue to digital video capture is interesting because its requires so much processing power with arguably the least payoff per amount of work done. Because of the complexity of video synced with audio it is difficult, time-consuming, abstruse to enhance or repair in ways that most audio or paper documents just are not. This is attributable to the difficulty in abstracting video. Paper documents can be abstracted, through sophisticated software, into movable text. Audio is abstracted into a waveform--though maybe the waveform and current technology only permits so much manipulation while opening the door to unnecessary or unintentional distortions. But video does not lend it self to easy visual simplifications. Most often, therefore, it is merely captured, converted and cashed (stored). The properties stem from video's immense data load. This will inevitably be mitigated with advancements in computing power and innovations in video processing and editing software. It does make the mind wander to the innate complexities of other types of media, popular today, and implications for preservation. Some media forms will not only require vast computation to process and archive but networks and maybe even distributed computing systems. The facile example is online games.
