Category Archives: Video Archive

From SOTU to Mad Men

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I decided to dovetail the comment from the SOTU address last night about the best of Kennedy and Reagan with my love of the series Mad Men and ended up looking at some old campaign commercials:

In one episode the staff at the advertising agency of Sterling Cooper is asked to work for the Nixon campaign. They spend some time reviewing the competition’, meaning Kennedy’s, commercials. In an “AHA!” moment I realized that in all likelihood the producers of Mad Men got the footage from the Internet Archive from this compilation:

http://www.archive.org/details/Election_Ads

In it there is a commercial with Harry Belafonte. I just finished reading David Bianculli’s book about the Smothers Brother and Harry Belafonte’s appearances there. An Internet Archive search of the Smothers Brothers yielded a top result of “Tales of the Rat Fink: Trailer“.

Gotta check that one out.

-Jeff Kaplan

Here Comes the SUN!

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It’s been raining for 4 days in San Francisco (home of archive.org), and I’ve been wishing for sun all day so I figured a sunny little tour of the archive was in order.

Our Mr SunFirst off, if you’d like to learn a little more about the importance of our shiniest star, you can watch an entertaining educational film by Frank Capra called Our Mr. Sun, part of the A/V Geeks Film Archive.

To see some pretty pictures of what the sun gives us, check out this 1946 film from Del Monte, Gifts of the Sun from the Prelinger Archive.  If your tastes run more to the psychadelic, try Hymn To The Sun God.

If you prefer to get your information from NASA, check out these brief segments from the NASA LaRC Office of Education: The Sun, Sun Basics, Solar Flares and Other Sun Activity, Sun-Earth Connection, and Importance of Studying the Sun (which I really wish I could do right now).

Feeling a little wound up?  Try doing a Sun Salutation (or this significantly less serious version featuring “frisky dolls”).

If  you want to watch a cheesy horror movie that doesn’t really have anything to do with the sun, check out Terror in the Midnight Sun — according to IMDB, the movie’s tagline is “Monsters walk the earth in ravishing rampage of clawing fury!” so I don’t see how you can go wrong with this one.

Prefer westerns?  Try By the Sun’s Rays from 1914.

I’m sure you can find many more sun-related items in the archive, but I need to go sit under my full spectrum light therapy lamp.  Enjoy!

–Alexis

Relax, You're at an Intermission in a Drive-In

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These days, a good drive-in theater is a relatively rare gem to find. Although many have recently been resurrected and a DIY drive-in movement has even occurred, a drive-in is still often seen through nostalgic eyes rather than considered to be an everyday venue for movie screening. The collection of Drive-In movie ads that is on Internet Archive can bring you back to a time when you could watch a movie from the comfort of your car, visit the snack stand at intermission, and hang speakers from your car window.

Take a peek at some of the films shown during intermission:

  • “Step right this way, folks, for the most extravagant array of refreshment goodies ever assembled under one roof!”
  • “Public Demonstration of Affection } Will Not Be Tolerated Here (‘Nuff Said?)”
  • “If you like hot dogs, you’ll love corn dogs. Everybody does!”
  • The management urges you to go to church on Sunday
  • “Music to the ears of the hungry: the sizzle of a mouthwatering hamburger.”

    • Now go get yourself a snack, refrain from PDA, and visit your place of worship on Sunday.

    –Cara Binder

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    archive.org supports the new [video] HTML tag!

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    We now support the new [video] HTML tag when viewing movies from our site.

    You’ll need Firefox v3.5+ (full or beta release) or Safari v4+ for us to show you a “try the new [video] tag” section under the “click to play” video area.

    You can even persist a choice to always use it on our site (by us setting a cookie for you) (and you can change your mind and go back to the normal flash plugin based option).

    -Tracey Jaquith


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    Archive supports subtitles now!

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    Our flash-based player supports “SubRip” files (files with “.srt” extension). About a month ago, we updated our video pages to automatically support subtitles.

    One simply needs to upload a file with a “.srt” extension (in the SubRip format) along with the video file to get started. If the item includes multiple video files/tracks, you can make multiple .srt files, example:
    cow1.avi
    cow1.srt
    cow2.mov
    cow2.srt

    We support multilingual subtitling as well. Our suggested naming of .srt files for language-based tracks for the best display on our site is like:
    cow.mov
    cow.en.srt (english)
    cow.fr.srt (french)
    cow.hu.srt (hungarian)
    and our site will show a selector for the three different languages
    subtitle: [ en | fr | hu ]
    next to the video track in our player.

    Example short video with subtitling.

    Enjoy!
    –Tracey Jaquith

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    The Days of Sexy Cigarettes

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    Elegant women, strong cowboys, powerful executives, and Fred Flintstone smoked. Shouldn’t that make you want to, too?

    Cigarette ads once ran as frequently as alcohol ads run today. Today we see a voluptuous woman ordering a Disarono at a male-packed bar or a seemingly over-worked CEO kicking it on the beach with a freshly-cracked Corona, but not too long ago similar ads were run to encourage smoking. Although cigarette advertising seems in the not-so-distant past, taking a look at the ads themselves seems surprisingly shocking as we now live in a world that slaps “SMOKING KILLS” and pictures of black lungs on the packs themselves. Take a peek into the University of California, San Francisco Tobacco Industry Videos Collection to recall the days.

  • Phillip Morris sponsored I Love Lucy which scored them a pitch from Lucille Ball herself. “Don’t say cigarette! Say Phillip Morris,” Lucy exclaims to Ricky.
  • Similarly, Winston sponsored The Flintstones. The pitch comes in the form of a “Winston break” Fred and Barney take while their wives run around doing housework.
  • Pouncing on the untapped market of female smokers, Virginia Slims was always known as the woman’s cigarette. Here, it is marketed as empowering: “You’ve come a long way, baby. You’ve got your own cigarette now, baby.”
  • Marlboro, on the other hand, is the man’s cigarette. Out in Marlboro Country, this cigarette is perfect for the rugged cowboy who can wrangle wild stallions.
  • Wild horses were apparently quite the draw for male smokers. Mustang had a similar campaign, including the slogan, “If you think it would take wild horses to make you change, you’re right! You’re ready for Mustang!”
  • This Newport ad is a great example of the jingles and and songs used in all kind of cigarette ads.
  • In a much different approach, this ad shows the good people behind the tobacco and pipe industry, reaching for feelings of community and patriotism through the business of tobacco.

    • To hearken back some more, check out the UCSF Tobacco Industry Audio Recordings Collection and visit their homepage.

    –Cara Binder

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    Audio and Video improvements

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    Hi Patrons,

    Yesterday we made live a large update to the way we create the audio and video displayed on our site.  Most folks might not notice the changes, so here’s a rundown:

    For Audio:

    • We can now read and make mp3s from 24-bit Flac files. This has been requested for many years and we are thrilled to get it working.
    • The Ogg audio files that we create from audio files will now be using an updated “libvorbis” library.  (The library we were using before today was from 2001! 😎 )
    • We are no longer making 64kb MP3s (or zips or m3u playlists of those files).  This was a judgement call — given how poor the sound quality is for these files and the fact that most people are getting more and more bandwidth to their devices and computers.
    • Simplified back-end system, relying more and more on “ffmpeg” for format conversion.
    • We will now (try to) make derivatives from “.aac” (Advanced Audio Coding) files and “.ra”/”.rm” (Real Audio) files.
    • General ability to read more kinds of audio files more reliably.

    For Movies:

    • The Ogg Video files that we create from movies files will now be using an updated “libvorbis” library for their audio.  (Previously we were using the “non reference” library ogg encoder.  Now we are using the much asked for and newer “libvorbis” library).
    • Updated ffmpeg to v0.5. This allows for a much wider range of source audio/video containers and codecs.  We will be able to derive HD-quality video formats like DV-50 and DV-100.   (For those interested in ffmpeg, changelog).
    • Better detection of widescreen movies (so less of our movies on our site will incorrectly appear “squooshed”).
    • General ability to read more kinds of video files more reliably.
    • Noting the prior point, we were able to get streaming videos for about 170 TV archive items that we could not process previously.

    Enjoy!

    –Tracey Jaquith

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    "Back Into the Shared Culture it Goes"

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    Sita Sings the Blues is a refreshingly unique animation that has gotten a rise out of people on both sides of the open and shared culture debate. In the film, creator Nina Paley weaves together the strikingly personal story of her own divorce with the ancient Indian tale of Sita and Rama. Set to the alluring vocals of Annette Hanshaw, the soundtrack has elicited dispute over rights issues.

    Paley says on her Web site, “I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes. ”

    The Archive welcomes this piece of art with open virtual arms, hoping to share this bit of culture with as many users as possible, as Paley has intended. You can download the full length film here, get high-resolution stills here, watch the trailer here, and see an interview with Paley regarding the connection between expression and copyright here.

    While the cultural arguments have begun to define this work, the film stands firmly on its own as an utterly engaging and enjoyable piece of entertainment. The animation, which seamlessly flows between entirely different styles and story lines, is to be admired by even those who do not regularly seek out animated stories. Assuming the viewer is familiar with heartache and heartbreak (which they likely are), Rama and Sita and Nina and her ex-husband will be relatable in many ways.

    With more than 40,000 downloads on archive.org and nothing but rave reviews it is clear that Paley has created a stand-out film. Enjoy it on the Archive, or, perhaps it’s playing near you.

    –Cara Binder

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