SNIA Developer Conference September 15-17, 2025 | Santa Clara, CA
Robert Hummel
President
Group 47, Inc.
ROB HUMMEL is President of Group 47, the company behind DOTS; the 100-year plus digital preservation media. His career has revolved around Cinematography, motion picture labs, formats, restoration, archiving, animation, post-production, digital cinema, visual effects, and Stereoscopic 3D. Recognized as a SMPTE Fellow, he has reputation for coming up with solutions to motion picture technical challenges. His career began in the Camera Department for Technicolor, working closely with cinematographers, editors, and producers overseeing dailies processing, and shepherded films in post production up to answer print. He also served in production, postproduction and technology positions at Disney, DreamWorks, Sony, & Warner Bros. At Warner Bros. he also oversaw digital restoration of “Gone with the Wind,” and “The Wizard of Oz,” among others. Hummel spearheaded tests and seminars on different film formats and comparisons of early digital cameras vs. film. Awarded NATO’s Pioneer of Digital Cinema, he led Technicolor’s establishment of some of the first Digital Cinemas (precisely, screens 13 through 47). He has served on DCI, and the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards Committee, Science and Technology Council and co-chaired its Public Programs Committee, and hosted several programs. He edited and contributed to the 8th edition of the American Cinematographer Manual, and is currently co-editing the 11th edition.
Related Sessions
DOTS - A Simple, Visual, Method for Preserving Digital Infomation
DOTS is the only digital storage designed to be read with a camera employing standard image processing techniques. Data is recorded visually on patented phase-change metal alloy tape at a microscopic density that rivals the capacity of current magnetic tapes. DOTS can record any digital file format, visible text, and imagery on the same media. Using a visual method to represent the data ensures, as long as cameras and imaging devices are available, the information will always be recoverable, and backwardly compatible to the 1st generation. DOTS™ is Write-Once Read Many (WORM) storage, tamper-proof, cannot be erased, and supports external compression and data encryption, making it a secure and robust archive technology. It is non-magnetic, chemically inert, immune to electromagnetic fields (including EMP), and can be stored in normal office environments or extremes ranging from -9º to 66º C (16º to 150º F) With visual technologies such as photographic prints or negatives and paper text documents, one can look directly at the medium to access the information. With all magnetic media, complex optical, biologic, or holographic storage, a machine and software are required to read and translate the data into a human-observable and comprehensible form. If the machine or software is obsolete or lost, the data is likely to be lost as well. It is critical that the method employed to protect the data must be unencumbered by complicated technology. DOTS is designed to ensure both those preservation and comprehension demands can be met. The presentation will not only explain how DOTS works, but also explain that taking advantage of DOTS visual characteristics, we have come up with a patented method for preserving digital images and sound that ensure they will always be readable for hundreds of years without any file format or operating system dependencies.