Maybe not as bad as NASA misplacing the lunar landing tapes but I recently needed some footage for a project that I was working on and someone had recorded over the section of the tape I needed.
Fortunately a helpfull soul had a backup copy and was able to provide me with the footage I needed.
To me this is a perfect example of why a digital workflow is needed when working with multiple organizations and massive amounts of footage. Backing up hard drives and restoring lost files is a lot easier than finding lost footage on a backup video tape.
I suggested that this company may want to investigate using a system like Final Cut Server. I like the whole idea of asset managment and editing by proxy. In this day and age there really should be a way to grab everything digitally. Tapes are so prone to damage and age at least a bit more than hard drives I would think. And with hard drives the 1s and 0s can be moved to a new medium much more efficiently than tape to tape. Remember floppy disks, syquest cartidges, zip drives? Even CDs and DVDs are being forsaken for hard drives and streaming content. Look at Apple tv and Netflix or even the DVR.
All this digitalization is both scary and efficient at the same time.
“…suggested that this company may want to investigate using a system…” sounds vaguely familiar. I seem to recall being involved in a very similar discussion with said company way back when…
Yep. New people in place and for some reason a recently changed attitude may help move along your suggestion. 😉