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

paweladamczuk•13 minutes ago

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.

tomalbrc•11 minutes ago

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

USeyller•about 1 hour ago

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

mocheeze•about 1 hour ago

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.

Animats•about 1 hour ago

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

bryanrasmussen•30 minutes ago

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.

mocheeze•41 minutes ago

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

pmdulaney•2 days ago

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

jolmg•about 1 hour ago

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

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