Media medium

            There is a recent article on the entertainment business blog Business Exchange  about a DJ and music producer named Carl Cox. It can be seen at http://blog.allusb.com/2011/08/carl-cox-all-roads-lead-to-the-dancefloor-usb-album-debut/

            This article describes how Carl Cox has just released a new album exclusively in a USB format instead of the more conventional CD. The article goes on to describe other groups who have done the same thing. It also describes some of the numerous advantages including bonus photos, music videos, links to online material, and a memory capacity that can hold a far greater amount of music than the conventional compact disc.

            I find this particularly interesting due to the fact that the music industry tends to lead the film industry in technological advance. Right now most people in the film industry are focused on the film distribution capabilities of the cloud. However, customers have already issued a wide range of dissatisfied criticism against the idea of having all of the media they have purchased kept on a server that they do not personally control. The fears of mass file deletion, selective media censorship, and poor long-term site maintenance are at the top of the list.

            These are issues that can easily be avoided by following the example of Carl Cox and many others in the music industry. It would also present a number of serious advantages that most movie enthusiasts would enjoy.

             You see, a conventional DVD can only hold 4.7 Gigs of data. The raw digital footage that movies are edited in runs at approximately 1 Gig per minute. This means a full feature film would need a digital storage medium of roughly 90 Gigs for full resolution. This is why Blue Ray is so popular. A Blue Ray disc can hold up to 27 Gigs of memory.

            However, a search on USB drives will bring you to the illustrious Lexar Corporation. Lexar produces USB jump drives that reach storage capacities up to 128 Gigs. That’s roughly 5 times the capacity of a Blue Ray, which in turn has 5 times the capacity of a conventional DVD. In short, a high-end USB drive could hold 27 movies at the standard compression rate of one DVD. Or, it could hold one feature film at the full digital resolution that normally only the editor gets to see.

            Switching film sales to USB would be great for movie enthusiasts who want the best image quality possible. But, it would be even better for production companies that would be able to maintain existing distribution systems for highly lucrative returns with an actual reduction in manufacturing costs and time since USB drives can be loaded faster and cheaper than discs can be burned.

            The question is: will they bother following the logical advance into this medium, or will they just do what they are told by the corporate lobbyist with the most expensive suit?