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The hidden costs of digital

The Afterlife Is Expensive for Digital Movies in the NY TImes, citing an AMPAS report, says the cost of storing a film master print is $1,059/year while storing a digital master costs $12,514/year. Add in all the ancillaries - raw footage, scripts, stills, audio - and the price increases $486/year for film but adds $208,000/year for digital.

Digital data needs to be continually migrated to new media, and converted to new formats to prevent obsolescence.

The risk in the film industry is the loss of work primarily from small and independent producers who cannot afford storage and migration.

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