Speed corrected WW I films

[Regulus 1]

Well, I'm no Sir Peter Jackson lol, and I do not have the technical possibilities he has at all, but here's a number of almost 50 speed corrected movies, mostly from the US national archives and German ones, which are in the public domain.

 

Tonight another one will be added, 23 minutes on the liberation festivities of Mons in 1918.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzXztlJjLammuKYPv3F5BjrqnQCjKNALv

[depaor01]

Thanks for sharing. It was always a source of puzzlement as to why late 20th Century professional technology was unable to adjust to the older frame speed. Surely a means of slowing the spindle running the sprocket that engaged with the holes at the edge of the film spool would not have been difficult to incorporate into the apparatus.

Dave

[Interested]

Fantastic sequences, haven't watched them all yet though.

[Regulus 1]

Glad you both did like them, thanks ! 

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

On 15/12/2018 at 14:54, depaor01 said:

Thanks for sharing. It was always a source of puzzlement as to why late 20th Century professional technology was unable to adjust to the older frame speed. Surely a means of slowing the spindle running the sprocket that engaged with the holes at the edge of the film spool would not have been difficult to incorporate into the apparatus.

Dave

You didn't need late 20th century technology to do that Dave, 19th Century technology was adequate.

Late 20th Century  film was shot at 24 frames per second, generally shot and projected by an elecrically driven motor, so shooting and projection speeds were consistent. And 24fps was  fast enough generally to project smooth movement.

Early 20th C film was shot at around the 18fps rate, but importantly on a hand cranked camera, so quite often, the rate was slower, 15 or even 12fps. Playing that film back to maintain a consistent smoothly flowing image was possible, but tricky, and even when the shooting and projection speeds matched, the image could be jerky. Additionally, old filmstock degenerates, and quite often the sprocket holes have become distorted.

 

But, playing a film shot at say 16fps, on a standard 24fps projector, would speed the film up by 50%.

So, for a long time, it was a trade off between having a jerky image, or everything playing at high speed.

This was compounded from the 20s onwards with talkie films. Here, the soundtrack was recorded as 'Sound on Film' a visual image on the edge of the film, and in order for the soundtrack to sound normal, the film had to run consistently at 24fps.

And a further confounding issue was when films were broadcast on TV (UK frame rate 25fps).

 

In recent times, the problem has been solved digitally by speed correction technique called pulldown .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine#2:3_pulldown

A ten second clip of old film filmed at 18fps would contain 180 frames but would play back on a recent projector (24fps) in 7½ seconds.

Effectively, what the software does is create a digital file containing an extra 60 or 70 frames, to pad out the film length to 240 or 250 frames , so it plays back smoothly and at the correct speed in 10 seconds,