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It's not even useful for porn. I know from experience that as soon as you pull out your dick people will figure out you're looking at porn.
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Jan 5, 2014 18:14
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Germstore posted:It's not even useful for porn. I know from experience that as soon as you pull out your dick people will figure out you're looking at porn. Never thought it would be necessary to clean pancakes off my laptop screen. Hats off to you sir. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 5, 2014 18:19
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JediTalentAgent posted:That's the one. Digging through Stick videos I came across this wonderful thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbdmzIVRNxs
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Jan 5, 2014 18:34
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Tuxedo Ted posted:I could see it used at hospitals and clinics and such to keep patient data away from folks who'd misuse it. They take that stuff pretty seriously and already use those special screen filters on monitors to make it a blurry mess to anyone not standing directly in front of it. Honestly my satisfaction with my doctor would improve 100% if she whipped out a pair of badass aviators every time she looked at my chart.
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Jan 5, 2014 18:49
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Okay. Mr. Clam, *puts on shades* IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'VE ENTERED THE DANGER ZONE.... for type II diabetes, you should consider exercising more.
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Jan 5, 2014 18:52
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Tuxedo Ted posted:I could see it used at hospitals and clinics and such to keep patient data away from folks who'd misuse it. They take that stuff pretty seriously and already use those special screen filters on monitors to make it a blurry mess to anyone not standing directly in front of it.  In a world, where only one man has discovered the secrets to knowing who has embarassing rashes.
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Jan 5, 2014 19:16
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Has no one mentioned the Mellotron yet? It's a keyboard that plays individual reels of pre recorded tape. I absolutely love this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrXtmKGkSa4
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Jan 5, 2014 20:34
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Can someone find a video more English than that?
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Jan 5, 2014 20:36
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Fozaldo posted:Has no one mentioned the Mellotron yet? It's a keyboard that plays individual reels of pre recorded tape. I absolutely love this video. I can't imagine these would stand the test of time very well, being on tapes and all. Wikipedia posted:older Mellotrons should not be immediately used after a period of inactivity, as the tape heads can become magnetized in storage and destroy the recordings on them if played. 
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Jan 5, 2014 23:04
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Aristophanes posted:I can't imagine these would stand the test of time very well, being on tapes and all. They now make a digital version.
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Jan 6, 2014 01:26
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Fozaldo posted:Has no one mentioned the Mellotron yet? It's a keyboard that plays individual reels of pre recorded tape. I absolutely love this video. No Mellotron mention is complete without Rick Wakeman. This is from a Yes concert and is excerpts from his album The Six Wives of Henry VIII. The live playing and the album is essentially keyboard porn. Wakeman's rig was legendary back then. He still uses a large variety of keyboards in concerts. The whole album is up on Spotify and so is this (Yessongs). Some of the pre-recorded strips start playing at 2:45. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W69rdh0dD44 In concert, c. 1974:  Wakeman was also instrumental in the development of the Birotron.  There was incredible demand for it, but for a variety of reasons, very few were manufactured. Wakeman estimated that no more than 8 were fully made and his number seems to be accurate. Of the 8, it's possible that are none are in perfect working order. Wikipedia posted:It is unclear how many sounds were put onto 8-track tapes for use in the machine. Some sounds that have been found on tapes are 'mixed choir', 'violin', 'organ', 'cello', 'flute', 'viola section', 'mixed strings', and 'mixed brass'. There are probably more as three different versions of the instrument were produced.
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Jan 6, 2014 04:21
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That thing sounds like it was used to soundtrack every 70's European horror movie ever...
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Jan 6, 2014 04:27
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RC and Moon Pie posted:
He is the Space Wizard.
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Jan 6, 2014 05:32
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Wakeman looks like a jrpg boss. That is playing his own goddamn boss theme. Holy poo poo.
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Jan 6, 2014 08:50
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Axeman Jim posted:People have been trying to jam synths into guitars for decades, and it still hasn't caught on. The first problem is that a guitar makes for a rubbish MIDI controller, just like any other string instrument, as its output varies in frequency constantly (through vibrato, string bending, imperfections in string quality and intonation and just plain ol' being out of tune), which maps really badly onto MIDI, which is designed for whole notes. So guitar synths have a horrible tendency to "hunt" between MIDI notes as the A/D converter keeps changing its mind about what note you're closest to, changing your sweet vibrato into something that sounds like it should be fixed to the roof of an ambulance. Awesome, I had only seen a few of those before. (Though I have to disagree with you on the first Vox you posted, you just have to be dressed right for it look cool.) These are still in production, but optical pickups. There's nothing wrong with the idea itself of using light to detect string vibrations. The idea was introduced by Ron Hoag in 1969, but right now the only way to get one is by buying a LightWave Systems guitar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_hls5mBHzc It doesn't sound terrible, but it sounds metallic and cold compared to a decent acoustic guitar. The fact is that there isn't a guitarist out there who will say they feel limited by the technology or sound of magnetic pickups or fully acoustic guitars. Their imperfections and discrepancies give them tone, character, and personality. Okay, optical pickups are "completely resistant to magnetic or electric interference," but that's a problem for your amplifier.
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Jan 6, 2014 12:50
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Mellotrons are pretty awesome. This is an equally awesome homemade/custom mellotron project that deserves checking out if you dig that kind of thing.
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Jan 6, 2014 15:32
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That's pretty cool. I enjoyed his drum machine as well.
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Jan 6, 2014 15:46
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RC and Moon Pie posted:
That was an awesome read. Thanks!  I feel sorry for Biro who lost everything in a failed project to create the newest most advanced analog keyboard based on 8-track tapes juuuust before digital synthesizers became available.
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Jan 6, 2014 16:19
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axolotl farmer posted:That was an awesome read. Thanks!
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Jan 6, 2014 16:25
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Sham bam bamina! posted:The worst thing is that digital synthesizers were absolute poo poo until the '90s but managed to displace the older keyboards almost overnight because they were "cutting-edge". The '80s were a real dark age for popular musical aesthetics. Yeah, all these albums sucked: http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2014/01/06/top-100-albums-of-the-80s/ The synths were absolute poo poo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_XLOBDo_Y Phanatic has a new favorite as of 18:22 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 18:20
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Since people are talking about outdated musical instruments I may as well mention the Casio VL-Tone: If you've heard the song "Da Da Da" then you probably know this was used for it (or you watched Homestar Runner a lot). It's a keyboard and a calculator combined.
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Jan 6, 2014 18:47
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Luisfe posted:Wakeman looks like a jrpg boss. That is playing his own goddamn boss theme. Holy poo poo. He's gonna merge with all those keyboards, and attack for mega-damage.
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Jan 6, 2014 18:52
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Phanatic posted:Yeah, all these albums sucked: For content, an '80s digital synthesizer that I actually like a lot! The Ensoniq ESQ-1:  Designed by Bob Yannes, the guy behind the C64's "SID" sound chip, and basically his magnum opus as an engineer. What's interesting about it is that it uses both digital and analog sound manipulation, giving it a greater range of sounds than pure analog synthesizers and more warmth and depth than most contemporary digital synthesizers. Funnily, given that the ESQ-1 had strong ties to the C64's sound chip, Apple ended up licensing the synthesizer's main chip for use in their IIGS computer (a weird, Amiga-like evolution of the Apple II that was eventually abandoned in favor of the Macintosh). This video shows off some neat sounds (and some really dorky ones, I'm afraid, but it's the best that I could find on YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2V0c3gPb2Q Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 04:56 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 19:02
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Luisfe posted:Wakeman looks like a jrpg boss. That is playing his own goddamn boss theme. Holy poo poo. I didn't see it at first. Now I cannot un-see it. Thank you, goon sir.
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Jan 6, 2014 19:14
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Zeether posted:Since people are talking about outdated musical instruments I may as well mention the Casio VL-Tone: You can even create custom sounds for it, by typing a number into the calculator and storing it in memory.
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Jan 6, 2014 21:52
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Phanatic posted:Yeah, all these albums sucked: For those who don't have the time to work through that list of top 100 albums of the 80s, save yourself 5 minutes in the knowledge that apparantely every single Cure album released in the 80s falls somewhere in the top 20 or 30 (evidently there were quite a few). Intertwined with every Depeche Mode album released in the 80s.
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Jan 6, 2014 22:00
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Zeether posted:Since people are talking about outdated musical instruments I may as well mention the Casio VL-Tone: I actually found one of these in its original vinyl pouch. Paid about $20 for it. My friends made me put it away because they were sick of me playing Da Da Da
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Jan 7, 2014 08:46
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How about some bicycle technology? Now, some maybe thinking, "It's a bike, isn't it? Don't they just get lighter, maybe have more gears?" Others maybe thinking I'm referring to machines like the old high-wheelers and dandy horses that the modern bike is descended from. In truth, those are mostly considered steps along the way. When I think of something obsolete and failed in the world of bikes, I think the early electronic drivetrains. In a traditional bicycle groupset, you select your gears through a shifter that adds or releases tension from a cable that's hooked up to a derailleur. In an electronic shifting system, your shifters send a signal to the derailleur telling it where to go and how much. Now, with an electric motor that moves the derailleur to the right place every time, there's much less to worry about, right? Instead of the shifters, the cable, the housing, and the derailleur itself being in perfect harmony, just get the derailleur in adjustment, and it will take care of the rest. That's the theory, anyway... SunTour BEAST  In 1990, established component maker SunTour gaves us the BEAST (actually, it was Browning, who should have stayed out of bikes) front chainwheel system. For the uninitiated, front shifting is kind of a pain, especially if you have three chainrings (sprockets, front cogs, "those big gears in the front"), as it's hard to get the derailleur in a spot on either the biggest or smallest ring without it rubbing against the chain. Also the transition can be somewhat harsh, and can cause the chain to drop (although, to some mountain bikers, just looking at your drivetrain makes the chain fall off). It's function was something like a railway switch, although Disraeli Gears explains it better here: http://www.disraeligears.co.uk/Site/Browning_derailleurs_page_2.html It failed because it was too expensive, too failure prone, and had too many specialized moving parts. For all their faults, a front derailleur is really simple. Mavic ZAP  In 1992, Mavic, a respected manufacturer of various components, and who certainly wasn't afraid of trying something new now and then, gave as the Zap, which focuses on the rear derailleur instead. You had two buttons, a gear-up and a gear-down, which was connected by wire all the way back to the rear derailleur. The front shifting was controlled by a conventional shifter on the downtube, as seen here:  so not really that different from a conventional setup, but you no longer had to reach down to shift, a real asset when in a tight pack or when you need to brake and drop down a couple of gears to quickly spin back up to pace (the shift buttons are the little bump behind the right brake lever, although you could place the behind the left, too). Here's a closeup: http://imgur.com/vFUVRrD Unfortunately, though some kinks were worked out, it was unreliable, with the system not being nearly robust or waterproof enough to handle professional racing. Some of this can be blamed on the homecooked rear derailleur design Mavic used, which involved pushrods and ratcheting pawls (Note: I've been screwing around with bikes for a couple decades and currently work in a bike shop, and I've never heard of these concepts being used regarding a rear derailleur, which is basically a spring and a couple wheels held in the right place). The acual explanation of its mechanism can be found here: http://sheldonbrown.com/brandt/electronic-shifting.html Waterproof is also a big factor: bike races run rain or shine, and many failures were reported in inclement or even overly humid weather, according to some reports. There were also issues of shifts buttons sticking, and either burning out the mechanisms or simply being stuck in too tall or low a gear. Mavic Mektronic So the Zap system was a flop, but Mavic survived. However, the only lesson they seemed to take from the whole venture was that more ambition was needed to succeed. So, in 1999, they gave us Mektronic, which not only was a complete system (front and rear) but was wireless! And as a plus, looked like it was designed by Batman, complete with integrated computer:  The downside is that Batman knows about fuckall regarding bikes. Again, we have missed shifts, but not responding when it should was now just one of many options. Something was funny with the processor, because it would execute instructions seconds to minutes away from when you pressed a shift button. Shifting is more or less an instantaneous response on a cable system, because you're pulling or releasing a cable directly attached to the derailleur. Nothing happening on a shift means the peloton leaving you behind on a climb on speeding away on a decent or for the final sprint. It also means planting your face on your handlebars when suddenly it decides to shift after you stood up to mash some gears up that climb. That was just one of its many miracles. It would also do the wrong action, or shift all the way to one side when passing certain radio transmitters (no encryption on that bad boy, what, are you sending state secrets through your shifters). More to be found in this article: http://www.velominati.com/technology/mektronic-and-the-electronic-revolution/ My favorite part being: quote:Another problem with Mektronic was it’s gargantuan size. The levers were too long and were banned by the UCI as they offered a non-regulation aerodynamic hand position (the unfortunate pro teams who were sponsored by Mavic raced an even uglier stubby version of these levers). The derailleur was enormous, with a bulbous extension to accommodate the ratchet pushrod that provided the shifting mechanism and which was prone to snagging other items around the bunch like wheels and rider’s feet. It flopped even quicker than its predecessor because, again, the failure rate was too high for something that was already proven to work in a simpler way for ages. This isn't to necessarily say that electronic shifting is obsolete or failed. Shimano and Campagnolo have given us amazing electronic qroupsets that are super light, fast, robust (cyclocross champs have been riding them, and that's a lot of mud and sand), and even equipped with failsafes that automatically put the bike in a middle gear to let you limp back home. However, Mavic's case seems to prove that if you don't have the right patents in your pocket, it's really hard to innovate. There are definitely more of these kind of things in the world of bikes. My favorite: CNC machined mountain bikes with miles of chain and gearboxes galore  in fact, mountain bikes are where are the real obsolete goodies tend to be found
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Jan 7, 2014 10:07
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Failed and obsolete bicycles you say?   The Itera plastic bicycle. Built from composite ABS/fibreglass and launched with a huge marketing campaign in 1982. It was ugly, heavy, wobbly to ride and prone to breaking, especially in winter when cold weather made the plastic brittle. On top of that it was expensive, even though one of the goals of making a plastic bicycle was to reduce production cost. It came as a kit that required assembly, and just like IKEA in the 80s the kits were often missing key parts. About 15,000 of these plastic abortions were produced before the company went bankrupt in 1985. Collateral Damage has a new favorite as of 18:06 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 10:31
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VL-Tone (yeaaaaah!!) and weird bike parts. This thread is the best. I would bring up Biopace but you can still get fabulously expensive Rotor Q Rings that are effectively using the same idea, so I suppose it's not necessarily obsolete or failed. strangemusic has a new favorite as of 17:50 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 17:47
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strangemusic posted:VL-Tone (yeaaaaah!!) and weird bike parts. This thread is the best. Biopace, that's a good one. Oval shaped chainrings to eliminate dead spots in the pedal stroke. As strangemusic pointed out, it's actually in practice today, but Shimano's idea was a lobed ellipse, as they put it  The thing is they were well manufactured, and Shimano is something like the Sony of the cycling world, in that they can try to introduce a lot of things on a huge level and come out okay even if it's a failure. A lot of mid to premium bikes had these as OEM, and like I said, they werenn't plagued with failures. Some people complained of knee pain, and there was some chain dropping and chainring rubbing on the front der, but not enough to fail on an epic scale. It just went by the wayside. The newer systems, like Rotor's Q-Rings, are massively more elliptical, and effectively gives the rider to different chainring sizes on the same ring. It's a neat idea, maximizing the most powerful part of the stroke while allowing for mini recovery periods. A truly amazing failed bit of technology is the Houdaille Power-Cam crankset.  If the large chainring looks especially big, that's because it is. A typical road chainring has either 52 or 53 on a standard and a 50 on the newer compact, and those are about as big as it normally gets in the cycling world (outside of motorpacing bikes and special project machines). These had teeth counts in the 60s! The "Powercam" acts by shifting the crankarm out of step with the chainrings which does...something. Having never seen one in action, I can't rightly say how it actually operates, but the theory is that it lets you push bigger gears with the same amount of effort. I got this picture from a Craigslist ad, in which a complete bike equipped with this was available for $200. I'm kicking myself for not picking it up, and by kicking myself, I mean I'm glad I didn't waste my rent money on that whacky piece of poo poo. Fake edit: Occasionally, customers not familiar with Biopace chainrings will acquire a used bike with one, and not too long ago, I had a guy who believed that HE was the reason the rings were oval, as he "had been pedaling pretty hard on it the past couple days." He'd been cycling for all of a week prior to this.
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Jan 7, 2014 20:40
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Mouthguard Chump posted:The "Powercam" acts by shifting the crankarm out of step with the chainrings which does...something. Having never seen one in action, I can't rightly say how it actually operates, but the theory is that it lets you push bigger gears with the same amount of effort.
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Jan 7, 2014 22:01
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Wow, I've spent the last few days reading through this whole thread, and there's a lot of amazing stuff in here. While I did enjoy the train derail, I find obsolete media particularly interesting. I figured I could post some film specific stuff, as I worked at a huge film archive last year and did an analogue restoration of a small collection of nitrate film from the 20s. Film is an unwieldy medium as it takes a whole lot of space and is heavy as gently caress. I've moved a ton of it around on shelves and I wish the digital age a warm welcome. I'm not sure how much the layman knows about film and its deterioration over time, but stored under correct conditions it is actually fairly resilient. In a long term perspective analogue film is actually still considered more reliable and cheaper even than digital storage. However, stored under the wrong conditions it deteriorates fast and in awful ways. The colours degrade, it becomes brittle, it shrinks, it smells, it becomes sticky, infested with various molds and fungi, the film grains crystalize and fall of the celluloid or create weird spots and warps the image, or the whole reel could turn into a solid celluloid brick etc. The acidic smell of deteriorating film shot on acetate stock (vinegar syndrome), is pretty loving bad for example. However, nitrate film is a whole other story. Some of you might know that this poo poo is highly flammable, can self-ignite and is sort of explosive in powder form. While at the archive I was set to assess the quality of the titles that had been deemed in truly bad quality a few years back, and see whether it was in any condition to be saved still. It was about a 100 reels of nitrate and I set to work without a mask the first day. Bad idea. You see badly deteriorated nitrate looks like this:   (These reels are far from the worst ones I dealt with. The worst ones would be filled with dust and blackish fungi all the way up to the rim of the can. You couldn't even see the actual film reel before you dug around in the dust. I didn't snap photos of those as I was trying to vacuum all the dust of asap though. That is not to say that this reel right here is not in abysmally bad shape) As I mentioned, this stuff is highly flammable, but I'm fairly certain it's not healthy to breathe it in either. Combine a dust-filled reel like that with having to use force to open a rusted shut metal can, and the result is a cloud of poisonous/explosive dust. Did I mention that deteriorated nitrate film smells too? It does, and it smells magnitudes worse than the acidic smell acetate gives off. It's this sort of sweet and rotten smell - something like honey and rotting meat. The stuff I worked with had been stored basically outdoors (in a boathouse) for almost 80 years when it arrived at the archive, so we didn't really expect there to be anything but blank celluloid and dust left. Luckily, the rusted shut cans had actually helped shield the film from the surroundings and a lot of footage could still be salvaged. I'm not going to bore you with details of the restoration work, like days of fixing lovely splices and sprocket holes, but I will post some obsolete equipment!  This beast is the Colormaster I used for colour grading the footage (not entirely sure what the English term for this done on the light levels on b/w footage is). Some of it was too badly deteriorated (brittle) to be ran through the machine. Luckily the brittle reels were very short, and we could do general colour/light values for the entirety of the reels, using single frames. This thing uses floppy discs to store the colour/lighting values throughout the film. During printing you insert the floppy into the printer (on the topic of printers: the chemical smell/fumes of wetgate fluid is loving intense too. I was dizzy after a couple of reels), which then adjusts the strength of the different lights as the film is run through. It is all very nifty. The fact that this thing still used floppies amazed me. There are newer color graders with usb and poo poo, but apparently they are pricy as gently caress and floppies still do the job just fine. I guess they won't be or really need to be replaced anytime soon, but it had still been a lot of years since I used (or even held) a floppy disc. One of the really interesting aspects of working in a film archive, is that basically every piece of equipment and stuff you deal with are obsolete. There are bizarre formats you have no idea how to play back for example (weird glass plates, strange colour types, esoteric framerates, etc.). This gets complicated when you take the archival mission into account - we want to restore it (not improve it) to its original form. When stuff breaks down, you are in deep poo poo if you are not able to fix it yourself. Expertise had to be flown in from afar whenever this happened. Furthermore the price of film is rising and it is getting harder and harder to get hold of good stock. The price of kodak duplication positive stock per reel is just mad. I hope this post is not too ranty and incoherent, but it is getting sort of late over here. Truck Stop Daddy has a new favorite as of 03:25 on Jan 8, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 00:19
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OttoVonBismarck posted:Wow, I've spent the last few... *snip* Thanks for that post, very enjoyable 
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Jan 8, 2014 02:19
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Hell of an entrance. 
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Jan 8, 2014 03:10
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Celluoid and film has always been a really explosive combination. So many old theaters were burnt down due to the lamp setting fire to the film. Some of the early theaters eventually built doors that would close off the projection booth in the hopes of starving the area of oxygen and saving the whole theater - on occasion trapping the poor projectionist to roast alive. I've always been staggered by hearing stories of old old editors smoking in the editing room during the days of celluloid film, or learning how to properly hold a bit of film in your mouth facing the right way so it wouldn't get moist and rip bits off your lip. Before Bakelite, Celluloid was the plastic of it's day often being used as an ivory replacement. For instance one use was billiard balls where they would routinely explode from impacts.
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Jan 8, 2014 06:40
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OttoVonBismarck posted:Wow, I've spent the last few days reading through this whole thread, and there's a lot of amazing stuff in here. While I did enjoy the train derail, I find obsolete media particularly interesting. I figured I could post some film specific stuff, as I worked at a huge film archive last year and did an analogue restoration of a small collection of nitrate film from the 20s. I'm super curious about film preservation, so thank you. Your writeups at any level of detail will not be turned away.
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Jan 8, 2014 06:52
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OttoVonBismarck posted:I worked at a huge film archive last year Why did you leave this job?
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Jan 8, 2014 07:23
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I've got a couple of nitrate reels I run at home occasionally (Newsreels). The danger is often over-hyped, In an advanced state of decomposition sure it's unstable. But a reel in good nick will run fine, not to mention that nitrate is stunning and I've yet to see black and white look as good on safety film. The projector I use (Philips FP3) has a fusible link to the motor and lamp and guillotine to the magazine. I wouldn't run it on a projector that wasn't built for it. e: It's also worth mentioning that this particular projector has an incandescent lamp rather than carbon arc or xenon. I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be running it in my house with a carbon lamphouse. OttoVonBismarck posted:The acidic smell of deteriorating film shot on acetate stock (vinegar syndrome), is pretty loving bad for example. I love this smell, it's the smell of me about to get the film really cheap, run it a few times and then trash it or offload it to someone else. Ron Burgundy has a new favorite as of 11:19 on Jan 8, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 11:13
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Ron Burgundy posted:I've got a couple of nitrate reels I run at home occasionally (Newsreels). The danger is often over-hyped, In an advanced state of decomposition sure it's unstable. But a reel in good nick will run fine, not to mention that nitrate is stunning and I've yet to see black and white look as good on safety film. Huh, I assume you are in the US. Over here you are legally obliged to turn in nitrate film to the national film archive for safe storage. This is in part due to the volatility of the nitrate itself, but perhaps more importantly due to the fact that most nitrate film found over here are historically interesting and should be properly preserved for posterity. Both acetate and nitrate can do fine in lovely conditions for long periods of time, but once the deterioration process begins there is no way to stop it and the information on the reels will be lost relatively fast. (There are ways of deep freezing film, that can sort of halt or pause the process. Deep freezing is generally not very good for the material and a sort of last resort that requires a bunch of equipment). You could argue that the whole flame hazard thing is overstated when it comes to nitrate, and, to be honest, it is not very likely to happen. However, if people have reels of this poo poo just lying in the attic not knowing what it is, stuff could go seriously wrong. The thing about nitrate fires is that they are violent fires that literally can't be extinguished. The whole thing will go up in a total blaze very fast. Almost explosive self-ignition can even happen if the can is completely sealed and gasses are allowed to build up inside. To limit possible damages in a worst case scenario, nitrate film is usually not stored in huge vaults like acetate, but rather in smaller cells. If a can were to ignite, however unlikely, it is probable that you'll lose most of the stuff stored around it or the entire cell. I assume you know all of this, but do you know whether the newsreels in question have been preserved at an archive? Newsreels are actually particularly difficult stuff to deal with from an archival point of view, as the footage is very rarely complete. Seeing as the footage often was of a general nature, sections would be cut from the negative and reused in different films. Newsreel negatives were basically used as stock footage, and as a result are a total mess to work with. It's a shame, but the cultural heritage stored on nitrate is rotting away rapidly. The chances of discovering lost stuff on nitrate (outside of archives) are tiny and in a few years it will all be gone... If you have unique stuff (both on acetate and nitrate), I would donate it to an archive for proper storage. Film needs proper climate controlled environments. Nitrate film looks very good indeed, it is actually superior tech in many ways. The blacks are great and the contrasts are amazing. On image quality on film in general, I would like to add that pristine 35mm prints look absolutely mindblowingly good. I sat through a lot of quality control screenings with the senior lab technicians and archivists, and I was truly amazed by the amount of detail and "resolution" of really old footage. Mind you, this was "0-day" prints made from our own preservation duplicating positives. To be honest the move to digital amazes me somewhat, as the current standard in cinemas over here is 2k. 2k looks fairly well on a television screen, but it has nothing on a 35mm print. 4k looks comparable though. Here's a small 480p snippet from one of the reels I worked on (handheld unedited footage): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmQ9ffD2j0 Consider that the reels looked like this when we started working with them (post-vacuuming)... The lid had to be cut open on this one. The outer layers of the reels were washed blank, but the inner parts of the reel were salvageable.  DNova posted:Why did you leave this job? Truck Stop Daddy has a new favorite as of 19:15 on Jan 8, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 19:13
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