Tape Transcription for Seismic Data

Tape transcription and remastering mitigates one of today’s biggest oil and gas data management challenges – the vast amount of different media and data formats used throughout the history of subsurface exploration.

Seismic data is extremely valuable and rarely ever destroyed. To make this information useful in today’s environment, Katalyst Data Management provides seismic tape transcription and remastering services to transform this data into a new media format for reprocessing or interpretation.

Katalyst has the largest capacity and capability to read, recover and remaster data from any magnetic media or disk ever used throughout the industry’s history of recording seismic data. From original analog tapes to new 3592 technology, Katalyst can handle all of your data requirements, no matter the recording technology. Our tape transcription services include:

• Bit-for-bit tape copies
• Demultiplexing
• Reformatting
• Navigation merges
• No permit exclusions
• Complex data extractions or cut-outs

Remastering Seismic Data Quality Control

Through our acquisition of Oil Data, Katalyst obtained proprietary software which enables us to read all standard SEG formats as well as most oil companies’ internal formats. Katalyst offers a complete set of tape transcription and remastering services from bit-for-bit copy, reformatting and demultiplexing of old legacy seismic data formats, to standard SEGY. Our advanced quality control tools ensure the trace data is converted properly and all header information fully populated.

Tape Transcription from Legacy to Modern Media

Katalyst has the ability to read nearly every type of magnetic media in the history of recording seismic data.  Visit our Tapes and Media Formats page for a comprehensive list of the legacy media types that we support:

• 3592, 3590, 3490, 3480 Cartridge Tapes
• LTO, LTO3, LTO4, LTO5, LTO6, LTO7 Cartridge tapes
• 9 Track and 21 Track Reel tapes
• 8mm Exabyte
• 1/2 inch magnetic tapes reels, cartridges or cassettes
• 1/4 inch magnetic tape cartridges and cassettes
• Optical Media – CD, DVD, HD-DVD & BLU RAY
• 4mm/DAT/DDS – Digital Audio Tape/Digital Data Storage
• Removable disks and other media types

Seismic Data Recovery from Legacy Media Issues

Katalyst has specialized equipment and personnel which permit us to handle the following types of problems frequently encountered with legacy media:

• Stiction (media binder deterioration)
• Wide, narrow or damaged tapes
• Amplitude recorded outside drive ANSI specifications
• Density recorded outside ANSI specifications
• Parity errors
• Tape skew

Physical damage to tapes is a problem that we deal with on a regular basis. In some cases, the damaged sections of a tape must be removed before splicing back the undamaged sections of tape.

For more information on our tape transcription and remastering services, please contact us.