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I became aware of a huge trove of forgotten 1960s-1970s Atomic Energy Commission videos sitting in a basement at the National Archives on 16mm film. I started f
by acidburnNSA 4y ago
I became aware of a huge trove of forgotten 1960s-1970s Atomic Energy Commission videos sitting in a basement at the National Archives on 16mm film. I started filling out forms and personally funded the digitization of one of them [1]. Then, I leveraged how awesome it was to convince a utility in Nebraska to fund the digitization of another 2 (which were relevant to them) [2]. Roughly $900 a pop, but so worth it.
Now I just have to find funders for the next ~90.
[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/zppr.html https://whatisnuclear.com/zppr.html
[2] https://whatisnuclear.com/news/2023-03-13-hallam-historical-films-scanned.html https://whatisnuclear.com/news/2023-03-13-hallam-historical-...
- SoftTalker 4y agoPeriscope Films does a lot of this, they have a lot of old 16mm government and military films on YouTube. I don't know if they have other stuff behind a paywall.
- acidburnNSA 4y agoYes they're great. They put their watermark on them and post them on youtube, which is huge amount better than nothing. Some of my favorite old vids come from them. You can guy unwatermarked ones from them, which I guess is how they sustain. I'll take it I guess. They hadn't gotten to these extra obscure AEC ones yet though.
- wingworks 4y agoWow, thanks so much for doing this. And in 4K too! It's a shame there isn't any govt org that is working on digitising (and making public) all these old govt films.
- midoridensha 4y agoIs there really any point to digitizing 16mm film to 4k, instead of 1080p? The initial quality of 16mm film is so bad, I don't see how 1080p is really limiting.
- acidburnNSA 4y agoI figured that since the scanners had that option, I'd just take it for starters and find out myself if the FHD version I'd process looked worse or not. It wasn't that much more expensive. I also got the ProRes lossless format (345 GB) rather than having them compress it for a similar reason. I compressed it with ffmpeg on my computer and am pretty sure it looks fine with h264. If I do more of the I may still ask for ProRes, compress myself, and then discard the ProRes files if it works ok.
- wingworks 4y agoidk, I like it. Even from 16mm source I feel there is a meaningful difference.
- acidburnNSA 4y agoWe'll have to run an ABX test for video!
- acidburnNSA 4y agoMy pleasure! I think there are just so many obscure ones that they wait for people who care to come along and fund them. I guess it works ok, as long as we come before the films degrade.