At one time there were several Youtube channels that found, cleaned-up, and uploaded public domain training films and other documentary-style educational videos for a grateful audience. wdtvlive42 and Historia-Bel99TV were summarily deleted a couple of years ago. This week the hammer fell on Jeff Quitney who had presented over five thousand films that he had spruced up. Youtube does not seem to have an appeals process. They first demonetized him based on (most likely spurious) copyright claims against music that was part of a few of the soundtracks. Now, his channel has just disappeared. Fortunately he has at least partial backups at Bit.Tube and Vimeo. His goal is to ultimately have everything restored but that will take considerable time. I’ve linked to him many times and have found at least temporary replacements from the Internet Archive as well as from other Youtubers. Still, it is a shame what happened to him.
Periscope Film of Los Angeles still exists, providing watermarked films from their commercial library. Let’s hope they remain and grow.
Addendum 7 April 2019: Looks like he’s making Vimeo his go-to site for old and new videos. Click the image to go to his Vimeo page.
Click the image to go to Jeff Quitney’s Vimeo Channel
Addendum 10 June 2023: Jeff’s Vimeo site is down, as well.
Just found out today visiting his YouTube channel. Thank you for the insight.
You’re quite welcome. Hope his subscribers find and visit his Vimeo page.
Periscopefilm is the one making these (illegal) strikes. They are the reason that Jeff and others are being taken down.
I am sorry to hear that. Copyrighting public domain films and then slapping their timer on them is nasty business.
Looks like Periscope has filed claim’s against Jeff on Vimeo too. Most of his content has been removed there. Sad loss of a resource. Jeff’s work is of a much higher quality than the imposters
Do you have any idea on what grounds? Those are 99.9% public domain videos from Prelinger and other archives. Periscope just tacking on their asinine timer is no grounds for copyright.
Never was much of a fan of Quitney, because all he did was take videos from other sites, blow them up and erase all ownership marks, and then re-post them as “restored”. All of his “restorations” were b.s. There was not one “restored” film that he posted that actually represented a restoration. They were all damaged in one way or another — blown up, reframed, and altered. All trace of whoever put them up originally (Prelinger Archive, Hagley Museum, PeriscopeFilm, etc.) was deleted as part of the process. Whereas people like Prelinger and Hagley scan films and then post them, all Quitney did was take, blow up, and repost. Not much admirable about that.
It’s been years since I saw a Quitney and a Periscope side-by-side but I do remember it happening. I was not looking “forensically” at that time although I didn’t see anything obvious like enlarging and reposting since that would remove content. Deleting the Periscope timer seems like a tough proposition involving slicing, dicing, and splicing again without leaving any obvious artifacts.
I thought he acknowledged public domain archives including Prelinger by name but it has been a while.
Always willing to consider new information, though. It seems like you may have some insights into the situation. Thanks for the referral to Hagley. I had not heard of them before. Now bookmarked.
Yes well let me clue you in because I think you never really analyzed what was going on. You are to be forgiven as I think almost no one did?! Reality is, Quitney never put up any content that was unique or that he discovered or scanned, or paid for, all he did was take content other entities and people had preserved and posted. Then he stated that it was all “restored” in the description. Oh those descriptions!! What I especially despised about Quitney descriptions is how they always said “de-noised” and “restored” and “enhanced” like he was showing the world something mastered by Criterion Collection! That was without a doubt almost always a lie. More like the Wizard of Oz behind the big console — there was no magician operating that machine, just a pretender who wanted people to believe in him. Time after time the “restored” historic films were blown up, so their original aspect ratio (as well as valuable bottom and side content) was lost. It was appalling to be honest and it always amazed me that few seemed to comment about it.
I analyzed what I could at the time but could not find who was issuing the takedowns against Quitney and the other channels listed in the post. Also at that time, I thought Prelinger films were issued under a permissive CC license permitting modifications and reposting. Today, the situation isn’t as clear. Some films are and others have been remanded to Getty for paid licensing.
I’ve taken the strikethrough out of the paragraph on Periscope films assuming that they have some title to what they’re posting and reselling. Of course, I have no way to verify that. They don’t state the provenance of their materials, either.
Not to beat a dead horse but after some searching I found a couple of old Vimeo descriptions that still exist on Jeff’s Patreon page. Note that he indicates “cropped to remove uneven edges” instead of saying he cropped the edges to remove burn-ins and lies about “aspect ratio corrected” when what he did was butcher the original, blow it up (so as to destroy any authenticity) and then denoise it. Mel Brooks once said to Kubrick, “You can’t polish a turd”. Kubrick thought about it and said,”You can, you just have to freeze it first.” Jeff was definitely polishing the turd by freezing it.
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Originally a public domain film from NASA, cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and detail enhancement & video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
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“Originally a public domain film from the US Air Force, cropped to remove uneven edges, with detail enhancement & video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).”
It is difficult to argue what appears to be insider information into what actually went down. I see orgs asserting copyright over NASA and USAF films which, as far as I know, are paid for and belong to the public. Monetizing that, whatever the “value add,” honks me off. I’ll defer to your connoisseurship on the quality of Quitney’s work or lack thereof. They looked fine to my old eyes.