Great colorized film about London's buses and taxis in 1924 [A.I. enhanced & new method colorized]
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- Опубликовано: 20 мар 2023
- This very interesting footage about old London has been colorized using a new method. Later in this film we go deeper in to this. In this film we in particular see what transport in London was like a century ago in 1924. Already many buses and taxis roamed the streets starting by showing a very busy Fleet Street with St.Pauls cathedral in the background, and where many newspapers reside.
The first buses appeared on London's streets just after 1900. Until 1933, when the "London Transport" company was formed, the number of public transport companies were skattered all over London. Many were privately owned. From 1908 onwards some consolidation started.
Many markets occupied London's streets like shown in this film on Tower Bridge Road.
A Galeries LaFayette store at Regents Street can been seen. This store came over from Paris France in 1905. It was closed in 1972 and since then it is occupied by the well known Hamleys toy store.
Another great shot shows The Strand looking towards St Mary le Strand church, followed by many more buses at St. George's hospital
The penultimate scene shows many buses on their way to and from Knightsbridge. This part-1 of our short London films about old London in 1924 ends at Broadway in the city of Westminster.
For those who prefer B&W footage the same A.I. enhanced film is subsequently shown again without added colour.
Normally restoring and colorizing historic footage takes me about 1 hour per minute of film. This new method takes about 10 times longer but is certainly worth it. It is based on manually colorizing reference frames for each scene.
The manual colorization itself often takes over an hour per reference frame.
The A.I. keeps track of the colors of all objects, but degrades over time such that new colorized reference frames are needed. The degradation depends on the complexity of the scene and how fast a scene changes.
The film ends with a side-by-side comparison of the original footage next to our colorized result.
Let us know what you think about this colorization method and Thanks for watching!
![Extremely rare, spectacular film about London during WW-II in color [A.I. enhanced & colorized]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QLbPYQcUcgM/mqdefault.jpg)
For more information about how and when the "London Transport" company was formed visit: www.ltmuseum.co.uk/
When in London, a visit to the London Transport museum near Covent Garden is highly recommended.
*Please note* that comments that complain about what London has become because of migration, diversity, multi-culturalism, racial issues etc. will now simply all be *removed* , so don't bother to make them. This video is about London in 1924 and not about a century later. Too many of my videos about old London have been utterly spoiled by such debates that do not belong here. Please understand!
By all means make most-welcome, interesting comments from a historic perspective such that this RUclips channel remains interesting, educational and a pleasure to watch.
There is a museum at Acton Depot with all manor of underground trains from the past etc , but with dedicated opening times,
@@Berry-fr5wj Thank you very much.
Yeah - I moderate my comments for the same reason!
The color adds more detail.
The new colorization is unbelievably good and improves the detail dramatically!! Great job!!
Stunning! Many thanks
Amazing, thank you! 👍💕
Love watching these old clips, refuse on the streets back then too.
One of the biggest lessons I have learned from Rick's videos is without question the more things change the more they stay the same. Though automobiles look older and fashion is out of date, daily life & actions are the same as today. I really love watching these old videos, too, especially of the bigger cities like London so that we see the differences & the many similarities.
Wonderful!
I think the color looks so much more realistic. Thank you for spending your precious time making this enhanced video. I can’t wait to see more. Would you consider re-doing some of your gorgeous films of the Netherlands? One of my favorites is circa 1924 at seaside vacation beach and the community is celebrating some vintage play. I know you’ll know which one I’m referring to.
Thank you for your great work!
Thank you 👍
Great video rick, amazing footage, amazing work to colour it, love it ❤👍
The most interesting part for me was catching a glimpse of my old office in Fleet Street. It was owned then as now by the same newspaper and publishing company.
Thanks. Care to tell us which building (time stamp) and which newspaper?
@@Rick88888888 hi Rick, having viewed the film closely again and tried to match the view, with the scene today, I realise that the building at 19 seconds on the right above the horse’s ears is not my former office. The view is now much changed obviously. My office was the London office of the Scottish newspaper company DC Thomson & Co. It’s now the only newspaper company still with a presence in Fleet Street, at 185 Fleet Street. They published many titles including the Dundee Courier, The Sunday Post and The Press & Journal. They’re best known for their children’s magazines: The Beano, The Dandy, Topper, The Beezer, Judy, Bunty etc. Another point of interest is that in the courtyard behind DC Thomson’s office is where the fictional Sweeny Todd’s barber shop was supposed to be.
I really appreciate your work colouring these films, it makes them so much more realistic and relatable. Thank you so much
I was suddenly hit with a sense of melancholia for a world I never knew and which even my parents did not know.
Me too, its a strange feeling.
Magical is this all a dream. I absolutely love it. Excellent footage. Great Job Sir. Thank you for entertaining me/us.
I too felt that, but because my mom was born in London in 1924, and my grandparents may have been walking along in the crowd.
Yet I marveled at what great world city London was and still is in many respects.
England ruled the world once upon a time.
Great work Rick, we thanks for doing this for us and the future.
We must never forget our past.
I like the new colorization method...the results are far superior...good work, keep up the good work. Thanks again.
Yes, excellent
Dziekuję.
Pozdrawiam z Polski.
The Lost World 😥
The colorisation is marvellous
I love these! Thank you for all your hard work!! The colorization really brings it to life!! Many, many thank yous!!
Fantastic ! As if you had videoed in HD with a modern day camera , thanks for all the hard work you put into these restorations its much appreciated,
Stewart
My pleasure!
Just look at the buildings. The people dressed so proper and with importance of appearance. What a time. Love it.
That was absolutely amazing. I've never seen the reds of the London buses look so red. I think the previous colourisation methods seemed to struggle with vivid reds. Sorry to hear it takes 10x as long though.
Dag Rick, het verbluffende resultaat is absoluut je grote moeite waard hoor, eea 'leeft' zoveel meer; bedankt hoor... 👍
For many years Londons Buses had wooden flooring. The passengers Ridding the Buses put a lot of wear on the floors and they would have to drive them into the garage to replace them. They had wooden floors for many many years past the filming of this video.
When I went to school on a London Routemaster bus back in the 1980s, the floor was wooden strips.
Fantastic job Rick. So important to see things from that time in colour--despite the appeal of B&W. Thank you
Glad you enjoyed it
Although as you pointed out it's a very time consuming way of achieving colour , the end results certainly make it worthwhile .
Thank you for all your time and effort involved in making this truly memorable .
Thank you! Cheers!
Love the colourization process. Interesting series of shots, my maternal grandmother worked for the London General Omnibus Company in the 1920s and my father, who was born in the East End would have been 4. The LGOC was the principal bus company in London then and the one with the red ones. It was this colour that got passed on for urban busses ("country" ones were green) when the LGOC became part of the LPTB (London Transport) when it was formed in 1933.
Thank you for this interesting information. Buses in the country side remained green for decades. Some probably still are. As regards the red buses, these early models had a cream colour around the windows. I wonder why they ditched that once the Rootmaster was introduced.
Yes I'd forgotten about the cream lines, when I was growing up in London in the 1950s the trolleybusses and I believe the trams also had them. The Routemaster bus was originally introduced as a trolleybus replacement (they disappeared in 1959 around where I was living) and, if my memory serves me right the early ones also had some cream on them but, why it disappeared I have no idea! As for the the green "country" bus, it went at the time of privatisation under Madame Thatcher never to be seen again.
Outstanding work, thanks for this.
When you think how quick a year a year goes, a hundred years doesn't seem that long for things to have changed so much. So wonderful to see these snippet of life at that time.
Wonderful.. thank you for all your hours of hard work, so we may enjoy these amazing scenes!
He's a good lad , that Rick
excellent.
These colorised and stabilised images are great. It's also nice to be able to compare the originals
love it, also your narration. Really well done.
Thank you kindly!
There is a new film in the making about the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940. I have extensively used the new colorizer for that: it has been very exhausting! To be released end of this week, just before Dutch liberation day on 5th of May.
Love what you do. It brings everything to life. The small things you don't see in black and white stand out when you bring it to colour. Keep up your amazing hard work 🙂
Wow, Rick! Usually, these 100+-year-old films are shaky & run at faster speeds, so when you show the original footage is that completely original or did you have to do some enhancements to stabilize the speed?
Absolutely beautiful. 10x as long! Wow, your work & dedication never ceases to amaze me.
On MM, I am in the early development stages of the project now & though I can not say "who" at this time, if all works out, I will have a very, very big name in Hollywood that will partner with me on this project to bring the best attention to it. I will keep you posted and let you know as soon as I can further details. So sorry it took so long!
Thanks for keeping me posted. Yes, the speed has been reduced to around 70% (and a special "optical filter" was applied to smooth the motion).
@@Rick88888888 Ah, yes, I wondered as I have never seen older footage as stable as shown in your video. You are such a master, Rick!
I am really, really excited about the MM project & if it works out even 50% of what I foresee then the attention the project will receive will be far greater & will expand the possibility of other opportunities. I can't wait to be able to share the info with you and will do so as soon as I am able, but for now, please know it is proceeding along and will be a fantastic opportunity for you & perhaps open doors to other opportunities for you, too. Thank you again for your patience & understanding.
As a side note: when my dad had Covid so terribly 2 years ago my mom never contracted it, but she just got out of the hospital last night with it & my dad also has it for a second time, but not as bad. I am drinking Airborne & orange juice daily to protect myself & so far I don't have any symptoms. Two years ago, the Airborne & orange juice mix protected me from pneumonia & I only had the basic symptoms, whereas my dad nearly died.
Oh dear, Covid again for your Dad. Both my with and I had it last September too (Omicron variant), just over a year since our first (and only) inocculations. We both had fever for nearly 2 days but then it subsided. It felt like a nasty flue but was quite bearable. It didn't feel life threatening. Here in the Netherlands the govrnment has suspended all measures and closed all testing facilities.
@@Rick88888888 Yes, the USA has suspended all measures with the exception of doctor's offices & other places that elect to require masks. My dad has had 4 vaccine shots, but my mom has lupus and I think the medication she takes (I can't remember the name of it) is what they prescribed to our President & other leaders as it was first reported to be effective against the virus. I think this is what prevented her from getting it 2 years ago, but it's so strange that she has it so bad now & of course, they did not want her to get any vaccinations so unfortunately she has not had any shots, so hopefully, it does not evolve into pneumonia. Poor thing had back surgery last year and 5 lumbar discs were replaced, then in Nov she started having bad nerve pain in her leg down to her foot. She finally went to the ER & her surgeon's physician's assistant was working and told her she had a disc in the sacrum region close to her tailbone that was resting on a nerve, but when she went to see the surgeon he told her he removed all of her discs and if she didn't want pain pills or shots there was nothing he could do though we could clearly see the disc issue on the MRI image. We were livid. I found a new highly respected surgeon and she was scheduled to have that surgery today, but it has now been canceled until she is well enough. Had that first surgeon not been so awful she could have had the surgery & recovered by the time she got Covid. Doctors are always a gamble & you always have to research your health care & find the right doctor who will respect your health & not put their ego first.
I am glad you & your wife have made it through the winter without getting sick again & hopefully you will continue the year maintaining good health.
A job well done mate, thanks for all your efforts in entertaining us 👍👍👍👍
Good use of technology can be magic!
Beautiful 👏
I'm no video expert by any means but I actually understood your explanation of setting the reference frame for color and it's eventual wander. The result is so much more stable. I had to go back a few videos so I could compare crowd shots and the new method seems to track the overall scene better as well as individuals within those scenes (the lady in the long red jacket and others). The sky looked really good but you have had some good results with that already. It may be a more intensive process for you but in my opinion it is well worth it. Definetly looking forward to your next full video with this.
Thank you for your feedback
A great colorisation, thank you. I really enjoy these time travels!
Many thanks!
Een hele verbetering zoals de film nu is ingekleurd, een prachtig resultaat.
The effort is wroth it! Thank you. The green trees and tones of the buildings make it so much more enjoyable.
Glad you enjoyed it
Your the man!
Your work is amazing 👏 🙌 🙌 👏
Great stuff! These colourised films are wonderful
Glad you like them!
Машина часу😩Ілюзія присутності. Дивно.
Ми гуляли між людей яких давно вже нема.
What a great video. The colour is magnificent it seems to make it look more modern than it is. Great stuff defo need more videos like this.
It’s good to see a colourised version as it brings you closer to that period in time. 👍
Awesome 🎉
As a Londoner, who used to work on the buses in that city, I felt the enchantment of nostalgia, in viewing your digital artistry.😊
Looks fantastic Rick, the colour really adds a new dimension to these films. The temporal incoherence (which looks like it has been improving) gives these films an interesting quality for me, like recalling a memory... all the key details are there but the minor incidental details are in a state of flux... "was that man wearing a hat? was the truck dark blue or dark green? Was the woman walking her bike or pushing a pram?" etc. ...have you experimented with removing heavily degraded frames and trying to interpolate them with AI? I am guessing the frame rate is probably too low though.
Yes a special (frame interpolation) filter was used to make the motion far more smooth. The speed has been reduced to around 70%. The result would be even better if I generated more hand colored reference frames (but I have only two hands and there are only 24 hours in a day...)
@@Rick88888888 On re-watching there aren't nearly as many examples in this clip as I first thought, but maybe around the 4:05-4:09 mark, there is some some artifacting on the background building, in the unrestored footage there are some washed-out areas for the corresponding frames... I was wondering if AI is now at a point where it would produce a better output if you had removed those degraded frames from the input...? If fewer, cleaner, frames could produce a more stable final result? It might be less appealing from a philosophical standpoint as the result would be biased further towards AI imagination and away from preservation of historic film.
Really lovely colorization. Hopefully it will be used from now on as it truly enhances the video viewing. Thank you!
Glad you like it! I wish I could use it for all my videos, but sadly that is a bridge too far. For example, my 1 hour video about London during WWII would take me between 500 and 1000 hours... For short videos (less than about 3 minutes) it is doable, but only if the topic is really worth while.
Judging by a lot of the comments your skills appear to be in great demand! Many thanks for your efforts, especially on the Fleet Street clip.
I used to work in one of the buildings but I hasten to add it was not when the film was shot!
Wonderful film, very opening shot is in FleetStreet just outside of where my great grandfather had his business in 1887….thank you again.
Huge difference.
I'll take the Whisky and Schweppes please.😉
Excellent , Excellent, Excellent job. I hope you live a very long productive life, so we can enjoy the fruit of your wonderful work. Thank you.
So nice of you
Absolutely marvellous 20 years before I was born. What a lovely place. London was then.
Not anymore sadly.
Fantastic!....Thanks so much 😃
Glad you liked it!
@@Rick88888888 I loved it and did not realise how long it took you to do this...Really appreciated ❤
Heel mooi gedaan. Bedankt!
So much has changed about London since then one thing that hasn't changed however is its red double decker buses
SIMPLY A FANTASTIC JOB!!!
Great views of London nearly a century ago and enhanced with your excellent colourisation
Exxellent work.
Thank you so much 😀
Bedankt voor deze, ben altijd weer verrast!
Not only colourized but contrast also improved.
Sorry no, it's the same B&W enhancement method that I always use. The bright colors simply make everything look brighter.
Great job! I really like what you are doing.
Thank you! Cheers!
wonderful work, great archival importance..
Indrukwekkend, dank! Eindelijk echt felle kleuren! Ben benieuwd naar je volgende projecten!
Amazing new process. Hope you can eventually update some of your previous videos using this method. The quality and sharpness is astounding, and the side by side video shows that. Fantastic !
Het is altijd een plezier om te zien waar je weer mee komt. Er is nog zoveel meer mogelijk in de toekomst, er zal een tijd komen dat het echt goed zal gaan automatisch.
I think its a brilliant post !
Now that you've kindly explained what makes the new technique superior, but more time-consuming, I find myself trying to see at what point the assigned colours degrade and are then refreshed. You've done it seamlessly. One can study this over and over.
I especially appreciate the side-by-side comparison panels. Interesting how the subtlest hint of colour lets us see the dome of St. Paul's, better than in the original where it is almost invisible in the urban haze of a busy, crowded city. Thank you so much. I'm glad to have subscribed.
Welcome! You can see the red colour of the bus degrade at 00:41 when it drives off into the distance. This could have been avoided by making an extra reference frame with a renewed red bus.
@@Rick88888888 so that what that is then. I see that alot on colorized videos when the subject moves off the screen and it quickly shows the original black and white for a brief moment
Okay tell the truth, you traveled back in time with an old camera and a modern HD one and filmed this. At least one thing hasn't changed since then and I think I'll have one now whisky and Schweppes.
Show of images!
It's amazing Rick
This is a very good result.. As I understand it you take a frame every few seconds and and effectively tell the AI that the buses are red and things like that. Does it manage to learn that buses are red or do you have tell it each time a bus appears?
Also, can you use good colour photos of surviving buildings and extract the RGB or whatever it uses from those photos over to the restored video?
Sadly this A.I. does not remember the colours of objects. The manually colorized reference frames need to be constantly refresh its memory. All the A.I. does is track the objects, but if their angle, shape or distance changes it gradually loses track. Color photo's can be used as a reference, but they really must depict the same scene from the same angle, otherwise the results are far poorer.
Looks good to me. Thanks for your all of your videos, I watch them all.
Glad you like them! With nearly 300 videos you can do quite some binge-watching on my channel!
colour great
Lovely film, just one point, the clip at 1.19 is not in Central London, the trams are using trolley poles on overhead wire, most of the trams in the London County Council area used the 3rd rail conduit system where the electric current was picked up from a slot in the road between the running tracks, all the track in Central London was conduit type with no overhead wires. I don't know the location of this clip, the trams look like they are on route 28 which ran from Victoria in Central London to the Harrow Road via Wandsworth, Putney, Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush. If Broadway is correct the location could be Hammersmith Broadway where the trams were powered by overhead wire.
Yes. Looks like Hammersmith Broadway.
i seen a mitchell and kenyon video that was about about an hour long or so with various trivia and background about each clip. I didnt realize that was you narrating it. Great video and you have a great way of narrating . love it
Thanks. Which M&K video do you mean?
@@Rick88888888 The Mitchell & Kenyon film company was a pioneer of early commercial motion pictures based in Blackburn in Lancashire, England, at the start of the 20th century. They were originally best known for minor contributions to early fictional narrative film and Boer War dramatisation films, but the discovery in 1994 of a hoard of film negatives led to restoration of the Mitchell & Kenyon Collection, the largest surviving collection of early non-fiction actuality films in the world. This collection provides a fresh view of Edwardian era Britain and is an important resource for historians.
Looks incredible, om je vingers bij af te likken, Rickster!!!
so very good thank you
Thank you too!
Thank you very much!
Love it, Rick!!
Beautyful
Great film again Rick. Alot of work goes into this technology bringing us such nostalgia. Like the way you show the original b and w film against the AI version. Brilliant. Doubt whether you have any more WW1 footage left
Thanks. There is a lot more WW-I footage but most of it is in very poor quality, not worth restoring (or simply not possible).
Great job!
Hi. Somehow the black/white film looks too new and shiny. Mind you it’s wonderful seeing these historical images.
Very good Rick
Very interesting. The colourising stuff sounds rather fascinating. What software do you use? Have you ever made a video showing your technique?
Don't worry - I found it!! You don't need to answer my question. :)
I don't reveal all the secrets of my trade, ha ha. Anyhow, this very nerdy software is not a consumer product.
What's the app name to make this job?
Thanks, it's amazing. I have seen a few videos and man I love them
Thanks! It is not one app but the result of half a dozen software processes and years of experience.
Looks fantastic. But then to be sure, I suppose we'd need to compare your new colourisation method to your earlier colourisation method.
Please do! You will notice quite a difference
It does look very good indeed.
I love it
太美麗了！那時的亞洲還沒有車子，英國倫敦是這麼的先進
Спасибо. Рик!! Цвет вносит краски жизни, и подтверждает вечность - бытия. В историческом смысле, - это было буквально вчера, - "в обед"..!!.🔥🔥🔥👍
You dhould give a detailed explanataion video of this process!..
Watch the welcome video on my channel.
The gentleman looking back at the camera at 0.24 min, it would be funny if he kept on walking while looking back and triped into those two ladies standing by the tree...lol...that would have been a huge embarrassment for him and be interesting how other people would react...
At 1.03 min, i can see a two tone red colour on the bus, how do tell if thats the original colour?.
So AI didn't help choosing the colors? You basically specified the colors you wanted?
I pre-colorized the video with my regular colorizer and then changed and enhanced the colors manually. Thjis way it is slightly less work than starting colorizing from scratch.
it would be cool if you could colourise clips of the last emperor of china.
A lot of work thanks, but the roads and buildings are too brown in a lot of sections
I see what you mean.
The days when london was full of londoners not foreigner's.