Category Archives: Video Archive

Eels as party favors?

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Playing toques in Plaza Garibaldi on June 26 (photo by Scarlet Sanschagrin)

I was in Mexico City a couple of weeks ago, and we went to Plaza Garibaldi where all of the mariachi hang out, waiting to be hired.  There are great bars on the plaza where you can sip tequila (NOT shoot it – don’t get me started!) and listen to mariachi music all evening.  If you’re feeling a bit fatigued and thinking it might be time to call it a night… just wait until the guy with the toques comes along!

Toques is a game where everyone in the group holds hands and the lucky people on the end hold onto metal handles attached to a machine.  The machine is basically a car battery, and the operator slowly cranks up the voltage which courses through everyone’s bodies until the first loser lets go.   (I’m not saying that playing this game is good for your health, I’m just saying it exists!)

Imagine my surprise when I ran across Electric Eel (1954) today on the archive and realized the primitive genesis of this electrifying game!

Whether you go with toques or an electric eel, there’s nothing quite like a few hundred volts to perk you up for the rest of the evening.  Trust me.    — Alexis

better mp4 (h.264) derivatives at archive.org!

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Late last week, we pushed live a new video deriving technique, as well as in the process updated our audio/video file reader, ffmpeg.

New items will benefit from this newer method, and prior items can be re-derived by users if they desire (probably by the end of the year, we will rederive all our movies automatically).

The video will have significantly less “noise”, a higher PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio), and less”blocking” — all at similar or faster deriving speed to build and the same bitrate and filesize!

example new derivative frame

example new derivative frame

example old derivative frame

example old derivative frame

We now open the source video file up with ffmpeg, resize and convert it to raw video, and pipe it to the most recent build of “x264” tool (opting for baseline profile for iPhone, etc. compatibility).
For the very curious (and the very geeky 😉 here is a how we make our h.264 MPEG4 video files now:

• ffmpeg -i camels.avi -vn -acodec libfaac -ab 64k -ac 2 temp.aac
• ffmpeg -an -deinterlace -i camels.avi -s 320x240 -r 20 -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -f rawvideo - 2>/dev/null | ffmpeg -an -f rawvideo -s 320x240 -r 20 -i - -f yuv4mpegpipe - 2>/dev/null | x264 --bitrate 512 --vbv-maxrate 768 --vbv-bufsize 1024 --profile baseline --pass 1 /dev/stdin --demuxer y4m -o temp.h264
• ffmpeg -an -deinterlace -i camels.avi -s 320x240 -r 20 -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -f rawvideo - 2>/dev/null | ffmpeg -an -f rawvideo -s 320x240 -r 20 -i - -f yuv4mpegpipe - 2>/dev/null | x264 --bitrate 512 --vbv-maxrate 768 --vbv-bufsize 1024 --profile baseline --pass 2 /dev/stdin --demuxer y4m -o temp.h264
• mp4creator -c temp.h264 -r 20 t2.mp4
• mp4creator -c temp.aac -interleave t2.mp4
• ffmpeg -i t2.mp4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy -metadata title="Camels at a Zoo - http://www.archive.org/details/camels" -metadata year="2004" -metadata comment="license:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/" camels_512kb.mp4
• mp4creator -optimize camels_512kb.mp4

–Tracey Jaquith

Nuclear Summit and Marionettes

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In light of the recent nuclear de-proliferation summit in Washington, D.C., I thought I’d bone up on pre-cautions in case things don’t work out.

Today’s question is: Can paper maché marionettes survive the bomb? Let’s find out:
Rural Civil Defense TV Spots 1965: http://www.archive.org/details/rural_civil_defense_tv_spots_1965

A good fact to remember: your livestock can survive fallout. Mmmm…steaks and chops that glow in the dark.
And, In case you were wondering, fertilizer can act as protection from the bomb.

Some of my favorite snarky reviewer comments:

“A series of helpful[?] ads to instruct farmers how to survive a nuclear attack. Not only would this not help the farmers, considering how slowly he goes down the stairs, it doesn’t even help puppets.”

“Filmed in less-than-super marionation. Puppet design by Mrs. McGreevy’s Third Grade Class.”

“Well, when these PSAs were designed, obviously the creepiness factor was considered to get people to pay attention.”

“So…. did anyone notice the random squirrel (8:27)? I couldn’t stop laughing!”

“Aside from the random squirrel, the best part is when that guy falls down the stairs and the camera just lingers as he lies motionless. Its almost as if you’re waiting for him to get back up but then he just lies there and you say ‘No, he’s dead…’.”

“See it to believe it, and even then who can believe it?”

-Jeff Kaplan

"Houston, we’ve had a problem"

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The now famous words spoken by Jim Lovell in 1970 in the ill-fated Apollo 13 flight. There was a reunion of astronauts and control crew to celebrate the 40th anniversary. NASAimages has many great photos and video from the flight. Here are a few of my favorites.

Video:
The news bulletin.
The duct tape fix!
Re-entry and recovery!

Images:
Tense ground control.
Success celebrated on the ground!

Check out more at NASAimages.org.

-Jeff Kaplan

NASA partners with Internet Archive to archive digital imagery

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nasaimages - thousands of images to discoverFrom Jon Hornstein at Internet Archive’s NASA images:

NASA gave a nice shout-out to the Internet Archive for helping them address their Open Government Initiative requirements. http://www.nasa.gov/open/plan/records-management.html

Here’s a couple of choice quotes . . .

“. . . (the Internet Archive) serves as custodian of much of NASA’s current and legacy digital imagery records. In addition, IA will help digitize NASA’s historically significant, analog images for inclusion on the Web site, enabling digital archiving with the National Archives and greater public access to these records via the IA Website.”

“Strictly on its own initiative, IA recently began to capture NASA’s publicly posted social media content. NASA is considering exploration of how this activity might be leveraged for records management purposes.”

There’s always cool stuff to be discovered at NASA images: http://nasaimages.org

-Jeff Kaplan

New York City

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Just back from a sightseeing trip of New York City. After visiting so many famous landmarks I decided to check out what we have at the Archive.

I dig the riveting machine in this movie of the construction of the Empire State Building: http://www.archive.org/details/making_a_skyscraper_empire_state_bldgB-29 crash Empire State Building 1945

There was tragic airplane crash into the Empire State Building in 1945: http://www.archive.org/details/Pa2107Empire

I loved the historic structures all over the city. Here’s a book about some of the more notable historical buildings: http://www.archive.org/stream/oldbuildingsofne00newy#page/142/mode/2up

I spent a weekend in Woodbury, Connecticut. It’s a very old area with many houses and buildings over 200 years old. I found this book about the history of the area: http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofancient01cothr#page/n3/mode/2up

When we returned to San Francisco one of our party discovered a dreaded Deer tick on her leg. I found this document on Lyme disease: http://www.archive.org/stream/lymediseasediagn00unit#page/10/mode/2up

Nasty little bugs to remove. Perhaps it’s time to consider an antibiotic cocktail…   -Jeff Kaplan

St. Patrick's Day at the Archive

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Let’s see what we’ve got for St. Patrick’s Day on the servers…..

Newsreel of the huge parade in New York City in 1939 (with some other interesting news of the day).
A tune featuring bagpipe and fiddle
A breathtaking image of Blarney Castle
And the obligatory St. Patrick’s Day screen saver featuring green beer and shamrocks
And I’ll close with an acoustic punk song “Pints Of Guinness Make You Strong”

I’m thirsty….

-Jeff Kaplan

Economic Crisis and the President's Response

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On today’s date in 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the first of his radio “fireside chats,” telling Americans what was being done to deal with the nation’s economic crisis.

Searching the Internet archive I found an audio file in the Old Time Radio section of that first fireside chat at: http://www.archive.org/details/1stFiresideChat193. Short and to the point with forthright honesty at 2:05-2:13.

We also have a number of movie clips of subsequent Fireside chats at: http://www.archive.org/details/WorldHistoryFranklinD.Roosevelt-SixFiresideChats1933-1938.

“It is your problem, my friend, your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.”

-Jeff Kaplan

Alice In Wonderland…a look back

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Twas Brillig!

With a yet another new version of Alice In Wonderland being released today in a theater near you, I thought I’d take a look back in the Internet Archive to see what we have.

Here is the first movie version from 1903: http://www.archive.org/details/Alice_in_Wonderland_1903

I liked this one a bit better: http://www.archive.org/details/AliceInWonderland1915_503. That’s one angry looking white rabbit.

Of course we have many texts. I enjoyed this one with the pen and ink drawings dispersed throughout: http://www.archive.org/stream/alicesadventwond00carrrich#page/n5/mode/2up

And if you have the time but don’t want to read, you might enjoy this reading by author Cory Doctorow: http://www.archive.org/details/AliceInWonderlandReadByCoryDoctorow

Last, here’s a live version of White Rabbit by Irish performer Cara Cowan: http://www.archive.org/details/BandwidthFilmsCaraCowan-WhiteRabbit_JeffersonAirplane_Part2of2_   white rabbit

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’

It’s down the rabbit hole for me….
– Jeff Kaplan