A searchable library of forgotten public-domain film clips from 1915 onward | Hacker News Reader

A searchable library of forgotten public-domain film clips from 1915 onward

movingimagearchive.com

218 pointsmomentmaker28 comments

This is a much worse version of destockd.

https://www.destockd.com/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49689005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49599206

thanks, this website in OP's post was horrible performance wise

This is really lovely. I think it's pretty obvious that it bases on sources like Internet Archive and the Library of Congress, but it does add value.

I just wonder if it can survive - is there a business model here? If not, it's just a tech demo and then it doesn't have value as the hosted version, it would have it if the whole processing/indexing pipeline was open sourced so that anyone can host it themselves and pay for their own infrastructure.

> but it does add value

There is SO MUCH value to be added on top of archives. Browsing archive.org kind of sucks, but there is so much amazing material on there.

Curation makes all the difference.

Page loads way too slowly IMO. Even the youtube page loads somewhat slowly, but it is about 10x faster than that webpage. There is no need for these fancypants animations really. I am not going to wait for slow animations to finish.

I don't see how to access the search function. All I see are example videos.

Right above the thumbnails is a search input. On the top right is also a link that says "Search" that takes you to it.

A super sloppy vibe coded theme. That's why.

Just found an amateur video of San Francisco from 1940: https://www.movingimagearchive.com/sources/amateur-film-san-...

And 1932! https://www.movingimagearchive.com/sources/san-francisco-by-...

SF in 1906, "Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire", at https://archive.org/details/TripDown1905 and better copy at http://www.archive.org/details/TripDownMarketStreetrBeforeTh... .

That is scary, how these strange ... cars try to sneak up on the hill-like streets in San Francisco.

If you are feeling inspired by the project to edit a found footage awesome thing, here's https://mobygratis.com - an amazing gift to filmmakers and a pretty snazzy listening experience for (semi-)library music.

Apply stabilization to these would be a big improvement. Crazy what we tolerated back then.

I guess someone will need to clone this site with a search function, categorization, and proper pagination. Nice attempt, though.

Sounds rally cool. How and where are the movie clips collected, and how is it verified that they are in public domain?

Many of these are sourced from the US Government, which means public domain. They also have links to the sources below so you can verify source and copyright.

The searchability aspect is key here. Imagine the historical insights or creative re-uses this unlocks.

This looks like a collection of clips from the Internet Archive. "General Aviation - Fact or Fiction" is on the Moving Image Archive at [1], and the full version is in the Internet Archive at [2]. Most of the content is from the Internet Archive. What's the point?

At least they don't slap their logo on public domain material, like Periscope Films does.

[1] https://www.movingimagearchive.com/sources/general-aviation-...

[2] https://archive.org/details/gov.ntis.ava12749vnb

BTW they don't hide the source of the videos. Scrolling down on the video page links to the collection and source.

Depending on how they serve these clips (do they save them locally etc.) the point could be to take load off the internet archive.

The other point might be to provide better search capabilities than IA, also taking load off. Sometimes verifying something actually is Public Domain on IA can be work in itself, putting more work on a primary resource. In short it seems to me these people are doing a good thing.

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