World's First Color Moving Pictures Discovered

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World's First Color Moving Pictures Discovered

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 13, 2012 @01:09AM from the with-or-without-a-u dept.

BoxRec writes "The BBC is reporting newly-discovered films made by pioneer Edward Raymond Turner from London, who patented his colour process on 22 March 1899." When Turner invented his process, though, existing projection systems weren't up to it; to see the discovered footage, British archivists digitized the film for computer playback. When you're used to old films being both black and white and jerky, it's amazing to see it in color and (relatively) smooth.

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Forgotten Silver by oneiros27 · 2012-09-13 01:18 · Score: 3, Funny

1899? That'd be even earlier than Colin McKenzie's film, which I believe was 1911 ... I'd have to rewatch Forgotten Silver to confirm it, though.

--
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
1. Re:Forgotten Silver by Waldeinburg · 2012-09-13 01:30 · Score: 1
  
  Hehe, I first watched Forgotten Silver on TV and missed the start, so I didn't get any hints that it was a hoax, and like many other people I did not pay proper attention to the comical or unreliable parts. Years later I saw a certain DVD on the shelf in a store and thought: "Hey, great, a Peter Jackson movie ... wait a minute, that story seems familiar ..."
2. Re:Forgotten Silver by jhoegl · 2012-09-13 01:31 · Score: 1
  
  LTFA reveals that the film was dated 1902.
3. Re:Forgotten Silver by Tablizer · 2012-09-13 06:28 · Score: 2
  
  Hurray color! Let's party like it's 1899!
  
  --
  Table-ized A.I.
And when you're used to modern video... by jeffb+(2.718) · 2012-09-13 01:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

...it's jarring to see a still image stamped with "this content is not currently available for your device". Nice illustration of 113 years of progress, BBC.
1. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by rolfwind · 2012-09-13 02:14 · Score: 2
  
  Thought the same exact thing. Don't know whichidiot marked you as a troll. On an iOS device myself. Happens way too often.
2. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 02:40 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Funny... works fine on my Linux box :P
3. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 02:49 · Score: 0, Informative
  
  The other user probably has the same problem as you do, an IOS device. It's foolish to blame the BBC when your non-standards-compliant web-browser can't render a site. Why do I see this foolishness from IOS users, while Android users seem to be able to understand that you won't get the full experience with every single website. For example /. is badly broken on Android, causing the comments to be displayed slider to not work, but the threads aren't full of whining Android fanbois.
4. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by Phreakiture · 2012-09-13 03:37 · Score: 1
  
  That's what you both get for using an iThing.
  
  --
  www.wavefront-av.com
5. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by rolfwind · 2012-09-13 03:51 · Score: 2
  
  Didn't realize this was a flash issue, 90% of the time it's youtube just doing the run around to please content providers (i.e. on music videos - plays on atomic web brower with different user agent). Not that it matters, found a better and playable video around here of this story.
  Not sure I would call flash a "standard" though.
6. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by Skapare · 2012-09-13 05:11 · Score: 2
  
  Flash is an abomination. Video doesn't need client side programming. It just needs a decent player like mplayer and a video file in a standard format (like Dirac, Theora, or VP8).
  
  --
  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
7. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 11:38 · Score: 0
  
  Agreed. I'm no Apple fan boy, but they had it right by calling Flash out on being garbage.
8. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by mug+funky · 2012-09-13 12:21 · Score: 2
  
  those three examples are no more standard than flash!
9. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by Per+Wigren · 2012-09-13 20:33 · Score: 1
  
  ...or, at least in non-UK Europe, the more common "this content is not available in your region".
  
  --
  My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Incredible by puddingebola · 2012-09-13 01:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's amazing. It's so amazing that I almost think the National Media museum is the victim of some kind of hoax. Reading about color in motion picture films, Wikipedia says hand colored films began in 1895 with Thomas Edison. This isn't hand painted though. Anyone with photography knowledge have an explanation?
1. Re:Incredible by EvilSS · 2012-09-13 01:32 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Looking at the clip it appears to use black and white film, but with a rotating color wheel front on the projector similar to DLP projectors today. I assume one was used in front of the camera as well. I would guess that syncing issues were probably what killed it.
  
  --
  I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
2. Re:Incredible by wonkey_monkey · 2012-09-13 01:45 · Score: 2
  
  Wikipedia says hand colored films began in 1895 with Thomas Edison. This isn't hand painted though. Anyone with photography knowledge have an explanation?
  Explanation for what? None of those things contradict the other.
  It looks to me (having not listened to the audio track) like it was shot through rotating red/green/blue filters, which results in some slightly psychadelic colour trails on moving objects but some remarkably clear full colour on still objects.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
3. Re:Incredible by mcgrew · 2012-09-13 01:51 · Score: 2
  
  rotating color wheel front on the projector similar to DLP projectors today
  That was one tech they investigated when trying to invent the color TV back in the 1940s.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
4. Re:Incredible by Joce640k · 2012-09-13 01:51 · Score: 1
  
  I agree, you can definitely see some sort of RGB separation on the moving areas.
  It could easily be synced to the film transport. I don't see why sync would be a problem.
  
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  No sig today...
5. Re:Incredible by wonkey_monkey · 2012-09-13 01:54 · Score: 1
  
  through rotating red/green/blue filters
  Or cyan/magenta/yellow.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
6. Re:Incredible by nschubach · 2012-09-13 02:09 · Score: 1
  
  RGB : http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/PlanAVisit/Exhibitions/LeeAndTurner.aspx
  
  --
  Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
7. Re:Incredible by omnichad · 2012-09-13 02:41 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Sync is a problem because the objects are moving! The only way around it with B&W film is to have three simultaneous cameras shooting through color filters.
8. Re:Incredible by 91degrees · 2012-09-13 02:55 · Score: 2
  
  Well, the basic principle of separating red, green and blue, using filters and black and white film had been known about for a few decades by that point. Mainly this was used for still images though. Quite easy to do if you have a fixed camera and a fixed scene. Simply swap the filters around and take three shots.
  
  this is a way to automate the process to speed it up to film speed.
9. Re:Incredible by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 03:24 · Score: 0
  
  Called field-sequential color. It was CBS's proposed alternative to NBC's (eventual) adaptation of NTSC to color. It was actually approved by the FCC, but NBC's Sarnoff managed to kill it. Same method was used post-Apollo 12 for color transmissions from the moon.
10. Re:Incredible by jandrese · 2012-09-13 03:41 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Cyan/magenta/yellow is for subtractive systems, like print. This would use RGB because it is being effectively projected.
  
  --
  
  I read the internet for the articles.
11. Re:Incredible by mcgrew · 2012-09-13 03:50 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  Color mixing is different with pigments than with light. In pigments, the primaries are red, yellow, and blue. In light it's cyan, magenta, and yellow.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
12. Re:Incredible by Major+Bloodnok · 2012-09-13 03:51 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  There are stunning turn of the 20C images of Russia done by Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii at the Library of Congress using this process. He used three lantern projectors to display the pictures. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/gorskii.html Of course the great thing is we don't have the fading of color dyes like modern color film, so the color is as good now as it was when captured.
13. Re:Incredible by EvilSS · 2012-09-13 04:10 · Score: 1
  
  Each frame has to match to the correct color on the wheel, which means the projector has to match both the velocity of the film through the projector plus the position and rotation speed of the color wheel to the same parameters that the camera used. With today's tech that's not a huge deal. With a purely mechanical system in the late 19th century, I could see it being a challenge.
  
  --
  I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
14. Re:Incredible by Skapare · 2012-09-13 04:31 · Score: 2
  
  Or a color filter that rotates in some way. One way could be a strip of filter film in a loop (of some multiple of 3 frames) the same size as being shot (35mm ?) being rotated with a mechanism similar to the film transport mechanism. It just needs to syncronize the two film mechanisms together in the camera, and expose an extra marker somewhere to show where the start is. That or someone guesses the start later on through use of standard color chips in the slate. Once that is done, then it's just a matter of getting the projector synchronized. That would be a bit harder, but not all that much harder. If it can be started in-sync between film frames and color filters, and stay that way (not slip), then someone has to do it at just the start.
  
  --
  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
15. Re:Incredible by omnichad · 2012-09-13 04:38 · Score: 1
  
  With a rotating color wheel, each color frame is exposed at a slight delay from each other by necessity.
16. Re:Incredible by Skapare · 2012-09-13 04:39 · Score: 1
  
  Use the same mechanism that is used to transport the film, to transport color filters arranged in a film-like loop (multiple of 3 frames). Then interlock these mechanisms so you don't end up skipping or double shooting a color during shooting. Put color chips on the slate at the start and leave the camera rolling from slate to program. The film, of course, would be at the objective focal plane. The color filters would be out of focus just behind the lens (this would probably still handle an aperture up to f/1.0).
  Projection would then need to get the right color synchronization ... one of three states. A similar setup with an an unlock and rotate control for the projectionist to get the colors right could then be used in the projector.
  
  --
  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
17. Re:Incredible by Skapare · 2012-09-13 04:42 · Score: 1
  
  But with a color filter loop film, the filter frame would have the same mechanism that holds the film still for each exposure. Just run the two like mechanisms locked together from the same crank or motor. It would require twice the force to do it.
  
  --
  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
18. Re:Incredible by Skapare · 2012-09-13 04:44 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  If projecting three colors, even if in different time phases, you use red, green, and blue. Since those are primaries, this does give the best color saturation. But it also has the downside of reducing exposure more than secondaries (a problem that still exists even for today's digital camera through the tiny array of color filters).
  
  --
  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
19. Re:Incredible by omnichad · 2012-09-13 04:47 · Score: 2
  
  And between the time that red is exposed and then green is exposed, fast moving objects have moved. You're getting a different picture. It's not about the pictures being lined up.
20. Re:Incredible by the_other_chewey · 2012-09-13 04:48 · Score: 2
  
  Color mixing is different with pigments than with light. In pigments, the primaries are red, yellow, and blue. In light it's cyan, magenta, and yellow.
  Ah crap. You should really tell display manufacturers, they've been doing it wrong for decades!
21. Re:Incredible by TheSync · 2012-09-13 07:54 · Score: 1
  
  The only way around it with B&W film is to have three simultaneous cameras shooting through color filters.
  Which is exactly what Technicolor was, simultaneously photographing two consecutive frames of a black-and-white film behind red and green filters.
22. Re:Incredible by 91degrees · 2012-09-13 08:33 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  3 strip technicolor was actually smarter than that. It only used a single camera with two exposure surfaces. The image was split in two by a prism, with a green filter in front of one strip, a second strip that was only sensitive to a narrow frequency (in the blue range), and a third strip behind the blue strip and behind a red filter.
  
  Really ingenious. This means you're not trying to do the same camera operations at the same time with three separate cameras
23. Re:Incredible by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 11:13 · Score: 0
  
  Most of the other early color processes used a prism to split the image onto multiple frames, or used dual-layer film with a colored gel over one layer. Unlike the color triples we use now, they used opposite pairs of color (e.g. red and cyan), and tended to have problems with some colors.
  Yet another method used a mosaic of colored potato starch (roughly red, green, and blue) to filter the image.
24. Re:Incredible by mug+funky · 2012-09-13 12:33 · Score: 1
  
  ingenius until you decide you want to shoot the Bourne trilogy (quadrilogy?) in Technicolor... those things were HEAVY.
  people complain about how much a tricked out RED one weighs, but these things...
  try shooting 6 simultaneous 70mm films for technicolor 3D!
25. Re:Incredible by mug+funky · 2012-09-13 12:41 · Score: 2
  
  nah, if you're able to build a pin-registered gate at all (and run it at 24 fps without destroying the film), you've already got the skills necessary to add a filter wheel at the same speed.
  the engineering in old film gear is just phenomenal. awe inspiring that they could make all this stuff work together.
  even the capstan-servo telecine machines of the 70s (and still today) are incredible. they could get 1200 feet of heavy film to move at _exactly_ the right constant speed to get exactly 576 lines per film picture height as it moved through the gate, illuminated by a CRT synced to a black video input, and could do it even while letting the user zoom in and out and rotate the picture by tweaking the scanning pattern of that CRT. the film could even be stopped and the picture would remain the same (live, not buffered in memory) because the CRT knew when to switch to different scanning to get the same output picture on a still frame.
  and it did this without so much as going out by a fraction of a pixel, and it could do it day in, day out, for decades with little maintenance and with rough jerks like me using it.
  maintenance was done by jiggling or re-seating the huge circuit boards. occasionally a (huge) capacitor would blow up.
  film techies are Gods of precision engineering.
26. Re:Incredible by mug+funky · 2012-09-13 12:44 · Score: 1
  
  nope. other way round.
  but the problem is we're shooting negative film...
  however, light is light, and on it's way into the camera it has to go through RGB filters.
  film is developed, and you end up with the negative (CMY).
  film is _printed_ for viewing, and you're in RGB again.
27. Re:Incredible by mug+funky · 2012-09-13 12:46 · Score: 1
  
  you can squeeze extra dynamic range by reducing the density of the filter. you can correct for it with channel subtraction or in LAB space (so you can banish the noise to the chroma planes and keep a clean luma plane, where the detail is).
28. Re:Incredible by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 12:57 · Score: 0
  
  That was one tech they investigated when trying to invent the color TV back in the 1940s.
  This type of color television goes back to the 1920s. AT&T in the US developed a "picturephone" system that used rotating color wheels in the camera, and three primary-color neon lamps with a Nipkow disk in the receiver. Although he wasn't yet president, Herbert Hoover set some kind of record by having his image transmitted with this system. John Logie Baird also demonstrated such a color system in the UK in the 20s. It was old hat by the time CBS pushed it.
29. Re:Incredible by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 13:00 · Score: 0
  
  Successive frames are shot through red, blue and green filters. Synchronization is fairly easy because the filter wheel and shutter are geared together. But this method results in color ghosting on fast moving objects, which was also a problem with the CBS color TV system.
30. Re:Incredible by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 20:23 · Score: 0
  
  Those are not primaries! Green is not a primary, Yellow is. You get Green from mixing Yellow and Blue.
31. Re:Incredible by moogaloonie · 2012-09-13 22:35 · Score: 1
  
  Yellow is a primary of pigment while green is a primary of light.
32. Re:Incredible by mcgrew · 2012-09-14 02:17 · Score: 1
  
  They're using the right colors, just slightly naming them wrong. magenta is a purplish red, cyan is a greenish blue. (I learned this stuff in an undergrad physics class, one of the most interesting classes I took. The part with lasers and holograms was especially cool.)
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
33. Re:Incredible by mcgrew · 2012-09-14 02:32 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, that's how film works, but mix cadmium red with cadmium yellow (the reddest and yellowest pigments) and you get bright orange. Mix cadmium red and cobalt blue and you get a deep purple. Mix cobalt blue and cadmium yellow and you get bright green.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
34. Re:Incredible by the_other_chewey · 2012-09-15 05:02 · Score: 1
  
  They're using the right colors, just slightly naming them wrong. magenta is a purplish red, cyan is a greenish blue. (I learned this stuff in an undergrad physics class, one of the most interesting classes I took. The part with lasers and holograms was especially cool.)
  I learned about this in primary school art class, and you still have it backwards.
  Hold a magnifying glass to some white area on your display, and you will
  see very nice red, green, and blue subpixels. Ok, this might be trickier with
  high-density displays nowadays. Use a good magnifying glass...
  
  You'll see nothing purplish about the red or greenish about the blue. There's a perfectly
  fine green subpixel right next to it anyway, so making blue greenish would also be
  stupidly reducing the display's gamut.
  
  It's print that is CMY(K).
  
  Have a look at how additive and subtractive colouring work.
  
  In none of them are the primary colours "red, yellow, and blue" by the way.
Why are you surprised? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2012-09-13 01:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

They have digitized it for the computer. They might have also fixed the transition and jerkiness. They should digitize the old black and white footage and apply the same techniques to see if the (relative) smoothness is a side effect of the digitization or not.

--
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
1. Re:Why are you surprised? by ArsenneLupin · 2012-09-13 01:32 · Score: 0
  
  They have digitized it for the computer. They might have also fixed the transition and jerkiness
  All they published is a still image. Easy to remove the jerkiness in that case...
2. Re:Why are you surprised? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 01:38 · Score: 0
  
  Uh, no, the link in the summary is a video.
3. Re:Why are you surprised? by wonkey_monkey · 2012-09-13 01:41 · Score: 1
  
  They might have also fixed the transition and jerkiness.
  They haven't. It's possibly slightly (though barely noticeably) smoother than the sort of pictures we're used to from that era, but I don't think it was worth commenting on if that happens to be the case.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
4. Re:Why are you surprised? by DarwinSurvivor · 2012-09-13 01:52 · Score: 2
  
  Allow "bbci.co.uk" and "bbcimg.co.uk" in no-script.
5. Re:Why are you surprised? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2012-09-13 02:32 · Score: 1
  
  And if that works, can they use the developed technique to fix the waving back and forth from every single release of the 1980 Heavy Metal movie?
  
  --
  (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
6. Re:Why are you surprised? by Animats · 2012-09-13 04:37 · Score: 1
  
  They haven't.
  They're trying to show the film in its original form, not cleaned up as much as possible. The film was taken one frame at a time through a color wheel, but the projector was supposed to show three RGB frames at a time through a color wheel. At each frame advance, three frames are shown, but they were not all taken at the same time. So the R, G, and B frames don't line up if there's any action. That's why the weird color jitter.
  It's possible to do far more cleanup. See "Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs", by Thea von Harbou (of Metropolis fame) which has been restored with funding from the European Union. Frame misalignment, dust and scratches, and frame to frame shutter timing variations have all been corrected. (Then they added a sepia tone, for some reason.)
7. Re:Why are you surprised? by mug+funky · 2012-09-13 12:48 · Score: 1
  
  smoothness comes from being pin-registered. and being careful to deal with film shrinkage (while making sure it doesn't catch fire as it was undoubtedly Nitrate base film - which is probably why they copied it to bog standard 35mm first).
8. Re:Why are you surprised? by mug+funky · 2012-09-13 12:50 · Score: 1
  
  linky?
  if it's loud music and video, then it was the vidicon sensor physically shuddering as it resonated with the sound.
Much Better Video Available by eric2hill · 2012-09-13 01:32 · Score: 5, Informative

YouTube has a much better video than the one linked in the article that contains the process they went through and talks about the capture and projection intended by the inventor.

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LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
1. Re:Much Better Video Available by Tapewolf · 2012-09-13 01:53 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  YouTube has a much better video than the one linked in the article that contains the process they went through and talks about the capture and projection intended by the inventor.
  I was going to provide the original link to the National Media Museum (which for the curious is here: http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/PlanAVisit/Exhibitions/LeeAndTurner.aspx ) ...but it's the same video anyway.
  What intrigues me is that they apparently blew it to 35mm first instead of going straight to digital.
2. Re:Much Better Video Available by eric2hill · 2012-09-13 02:31 · Score: 2
  
  I thought the same thing. I would imagine they already had equipment to deal with 35mm film, and it was easier to transfer it to 35mm to feed that equipment rather than retrofitting the equipment to take a larger source.
  I'm surprised they MANUALLY advanced each frame through the little shutter contraption. Don't any of these guys have a bag of Legos they could automate that process with???
  
  --
  LOAD "SIG",8,1
  LOADING...
  READY.
  RUN
3. Re:Much Better Video Available by Tore+S+B · 2012-09-13 02:31 · Score: 2
  
  If they had been able to scan the originals, that might yield a quality improvement - but there are so many things I'd love to try out with the raw materials.
  I would be very interested in seeing what digital image processing might be possible to use - if one could mangle the three temporally separate frames into a luminance signal and a chrominance signal which interpolates using motion-compensation derived from luminance, that might temper the rainbow effect somewhat - and triple the temporal resolution!
  
  --
  toresbe
4. Re:Much Better Video Available by DerekLyons · 2012-09-13 04:45 · Score: 2
  
  What intrigues me is that they apparently blew it to 35mm first instead of going straight to digital.
  They explain that in the video, his film was not 35mm but 35mm equipment is standard and common. Thus it was cheaper and easier to transfer it to 35mm and then perform the restoration/digitization rather than building/adapting equipment and software for a one-off project.
5. Re:Much Better Video Available by Skapare · 2012-09-13 04:48 · Score: 2
  
  I'm still looking for a genuine movie FILE, not some flashy thingy meant to frustrate people from saving it.
  
  --
  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
6. Re:Much Better Video Available by Skapare · 2012-09-13 04:57 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe, maybe not. If they were thinking inside the box and shooting frame by frame, then sure, they would benefit from doing a 35mm conversion, first. But, it might have been easier to just rig up a LINE SCANNER and pull the film across that scanner slowly. Then software can convert the line scan into frames and figure out the color sync. In later talkies, the software could also convert the optical audio side tracks, too. Full line scan would include everything out to the sprocket holes which would be an aid to the software to get everything lined up. All you need is a line scanner big enough for the film in question, or a lens to re-project as needed. These things would be the best way to scan even all modern film into digital, too. Some of them have as much as 32K pixels per line. For B&W color rotated film like the subject of this article, no color filters are needed in the scanning as the software will figure that out. For modern color films, the light source can be RGB sequencing of an LED light source, and again no color filters.
  
  --
  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
7. Re:Much Better Video Available by Skapare · 2012-09-13 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, and the color film can also be the original color negative. Just get an extra LED at the color masking wavelength(s) and you'd have more accurate conversion of color to positive than even the original film printing process. Most motion picture films were shot on negative film with a process similar to photo films of the day.
  
  --
  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
8. Re:Much Better Video Available by mug+funky · 2012-09-13 13:08 · Score: 1
  
  modern print stock is about as good as it gets. even better if they can find black and white print stock.
  but yeah, they could have done the scan with a fancy lightbox (integration sphere), that gate contraption and a really good digital camera and got more precision than the 10-bit you get from a film scanner (at most 16-bit linear with dual-flash scanning on a 12-bit sensor). they could even adapt the film scanner lenses to fit a DSLR...
  but archivists make film based copies as a matter of procedure i think. it's certainly safer for an operator to deal with new stock than old stock. fire and accidental destruction are things lowly operators don't want to take the rap for.
copyright? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 01:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

Wait its only been 113 years? Can I view that content without worrying about being sued by MPAA?
1. Re:copyright? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 02:20 · Score: 1
  
  Disney's team of lawyers says no...
2. Re:copyright? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 02:34 · Score: 0
  
  Disney better -be careful how far back they go - Hans christian Anderson might get cross!
3. Re:copyright? by Skapare · 2012-09-13 05:06 · Score: 1
  
  Worry more about the bots doing automated take downs now days.
  
  --
  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
4. Re:copyright? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 11:07 · Score: 0
  
  Anything before the Mouse (1928) is in the public domain. Purely coincidental, I'm sure.
The process was patented... by lurvdrum · 2012-09-13 01:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

if this had been in 2012, he wouldn't have patented a film process but instead followed Apple (and others) by patenting "The idea of colour moving pictures displayed to an audience" and his descendents would now be suing Hollywood for 15 gazillion dollars.
1. Re:The process was patented... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 02:13 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  You know the reason Hollywood is in Hollywood? The film industry went as far away from Edison as they could in order to violate his motion picture patents.
2. Re:The process was patented... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 02:56 · Score: 0
  
  I believe that all of the Edison patents were on physical devices, projectors and film processes. The parent poster was making (as far as I can see) a perfectly valid point about the degeneration of patents into flimsy "ideas" these days. Why on earth that got originally modded "flamebait" I have no idea. I guess Slashdot is prone to the fanboi effect too.
3. Re:The process was patented... by SolitaryMan · 2012-09-13 04:49 · Score: 2
  
  Because the story has absolutely nothing to do with Apple or patents, and yet, GGP managed to find a way to bash Apple here. It's getting old.
  
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4. Re:The process was patented... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 05:05 · Score: 0
  
  Flaming tech companies on tangentially-related stuff is a perfectly valid Slashdot practice. Only fanboys object.
5. Re:The process was patented... by hondo77 · 2012-09-13 06:26 · Score: 1
  
  He would have except Edison probably beat him to it.
  
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6. Re:The process was patented... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 07:12 · Score: 0
  
  This isn't about Apple per se - this is about the assertion by (parts of) the industry that the patent system fuels innovation. Apple just happens to be one of the major examples of why it doesn't any more, but a different name could have been used and would have resulted in similar comments. Or long-winded circumlocution which would have made the post tedious.
7. Re:The process was patented... by Zordak · 2012-09-13 15:43 · Score: 1
  
  Except patents only last 20 years. So no, they wouldn't.
  
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The guy's name was Turner? The movie's in color? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 02:05 · Score: 0

Is it really a shot-in-color movie or is it colorized?
Not the first by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 02:44 · Score: 0

At least 10 years earlier, color movies were created with a three-camera approach: one with a red filter, one with a blue filter, one with a green filter. (The same technique was also used with photographs.) There were some artifacts around the edges where the images didn't line up correctly but it was a color movie. I know because it was a relative of mine. And yes, he apparently did make a pr0n reel with it.
1. Re:Not the first by Skapare · 2012-09-13 05:03 · Score: 1
  
  We can do this today with a synchronized bank of LEDs that flash in color rotation with the camera frames (black and white film or monochrome sensor).
  
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  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Re:The guy's name was Turner? The movie's in color by omnichad · 2012-09-13 02:44 · Score: 1

Glad to know I'm not the only one who noticed his last name, but the temporal color strobing would be tough to emulate if hand-coloring.
"jerky" as a projection artifact by Crispy+Critters · 2012-09-13 03:29 · Score: 1

Often silent movies look "jerky" because of how they are shown ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_film#Projection_speed ). In particular, video for TV has a fixed frame rate, and transferring the movies to a different frame rate while maintaining smooth action is not trivial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine).
It wasn't just "investigated".... by Ellis+D.+Tripp · 2012-09-13 03:30 · Score: 5, Informative

It was actually ADOPTED as the official US color broadcast standard by the FCC from 1950-1953.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-sequential_color_system
The main limitations of the CBS field-sequential system were the requirement for a rotating color filter wheel more than 2X the diameter of the picture tube. TV sets larger than 10" screen size or so became absolutely HUGE. The system was also incompatible with existing monochrome sets, which already had a substantial installed base by then.
Once RCA developed the all electronic system that eventually became "NTSC", the field sequential systems were relegated to niche applications such as the color cameras that flew to the moon on the Apollo landings. And yes, a similar system forms the heart of modern color DLP projectors.

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1. Re:It wasn't just "investigated".... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 04:02 · Score: 0
  
  It didn't "become" NTSC. NTSC pre-existed color. It was adapted to color by basically stealing bandwidth, reducing resolution.
2. Re:It wasn't just "investigated".... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 09:14 · Score: 0
  
  Close, but NTSC doesn't have resolution, just lines and fields. The number of lines was not reduced. However, the field rate was reduced slightly from 60 to 60,000/1001, although this was not done to squeeze in colour information. A colour subcarrier (QAM) is present which requires a higher quality transmission, and therefore could reduce the signal to noise ratio (but that would not reduce the number of lines, but the quality of the information each line contains).
  The difference is important as information is technically lost by NTSC -> digital transfers since digital requires not just lines, but columns as well.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC#Color_encoding
3. Re:It wasn't just "investigated".... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 12:21 · Score: 0
  
  Vertical lines of resolution were sacrificed, first for the color subcarrier, then later for things like closed captioning and stereo sound. Broadcast frequency allocations gave NTSC a fixed 6MHz to play with and additional features grafted onto the original standard necessarily reduced the picture resolution.
4. Re:It wasn't just "investigated".... by mug+funky · 2012-09-13 12:30 · Score: 1
  
  information is only lost in the sense that information is lost when going from microcassette to 48khz audio. you're not losing anything that was meant to be there, or was even recorded.
  you barely got 300 lines (columns in today's speak) in a composite NTSC signal. compare that to the 702 active (and 720 total) specified by D1 and all after. that's plenty of room.
5. Re:It wasn't just "investigated".... by jackbird · 2012-09-13 14:50 · Score: 1
  
  I believe field-sequential wheels continue to work with the proper kind of tube-driven black-and-white TV and an analog color NTSC signal.
6. Re:It wasn't just "investigated".... by mcgrew · 2012-09-14 01:35 · Score: 1
  
  I didn't know that, thank you for the education!
  
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7. Re:It wasn't just "investigated".... by mcgrew · 2012-09-14 03:18 · Score: 1
  
  You are corrrect, except the 300 lines. That's VCR resolution. NTSC is 540 lines. My ten year old 42 inch flatscreen CRT can do 720p, bty placing the scan lines closer together, leaving a black band at the top and bottom; smaller screen with better resolution. Unfortunetaly for me, it won't work with broadcast TV, only a DVD.
  
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Plot Fail by Tablizer · 2012-09-13 03:43 · Score: 1

"Hey, I got an idea: let's film some sugar-induced brats destroying table decorations!"
"Brilliant!"

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1. Re:Plot Fail by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 04:02 · Score: 0
  
  Don't talk about Great-Grandma that way!
2. Re:Plot Fail by SolitaryMan · 2012-09-13 04:51 · Score: 1
  
  I'm really surprised it is not porn.
  
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3. Re:Plot Fail by Skapare · 2012-09-13 05:04 · Score: 1
  
  The porn ones were stolen. This is what was left behind.
  
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  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
4. Re:Plot Fail by Tablizer · 2012-09-13 06:27 · Score: 1
  
  It is to Catholic priests (*ducks head*)
  
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  Table-ized A.I.
Does this make anyone angry? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 05:15 · Score: 0

1. 'discover' worlds oldest colo(u)r moving film in the warehouse
angry reason: they obviously don't have a cataloging system, and um.. that's their job
2. transfer it to 35 " film first before digitizing it.
angry reason: interneg loses detail. still if you job relies on 'film', might as well keep it safe, as youre one step away from being replaced by a shell script.
i'm actually too angry to continue listing reasons
1. Re:Does this make anyone angry? by wonkey_monkey · 2012-09-13 07:05 · Score: 1
  
  2. transfer it to 35 " film first before digitizing it.
  angry reason: interneg loses detail.
  Maybe, just maybe, these people know a little more about film restoration than you do.
  More importantly though, where did you get this information from? It's not in the linked article, and it's not mentioned in the video. They only say they did it "digitally."
  Know what makes me angry? People who don't capitalise the first word of a sentence, and fail to use apostrophes in words like "you're."
  
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Second, actually by ThatsNotPudding · 2012-09-13 05:22 · Score: 3, Funny

He made one even earlier of a mouse piloting a steamboat, but that one was lost in a mysterious fire...
Misleading headline by Subm · 2012-09-13 20:04 · Score: 1

"World's First Color Moving Pictures Discovered"
"...who patented his colour process on 22 March 1899..."
Moving pictures predated film by decades or millenia. The zoetrope was invented in 1833 according to Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope -- which also mentions a similar device in China in 180 AD.
1. Re:Misleading headline by bckspc · 2012-09-13 22:45 · Score: 1
  
  You're off by 30,000 years:
  http://news.discovery.com/history/prehistoric-movies-120608.html
It's a recurring phenomenon by MrKaos · 2012-09-13 22:13 · Score: 1

Modern films seem to have a lot of jerks in them too.

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