VikingCoder 8 hours ago
I have an absolutely bizarre desire to download all of these, and then rip them apart, scene by scene, and then estimate pose, facial pose, gender, etc. Do facial recognition, so I know where the same actor is in all of the scenes...

And then to take a movie like The Matrix, or Star Wars, and then recreate it, shot for shot, as closely as I can, using clips from Public Domain movies.

Especially if I can pick, like, "this actor in this public domain movie, or movies, would be a good Neo, or Luke." And it turns out that he's in enough shots, and poses, that I'm able to remake all of that character's scenes, from Public Domain footage of this other actor.

addled 8 hours ago
I feel like you should check out https://youtu.be/5GFW-eEWXlc?si=w3KTUkIprSeBYH3f

Enjoy.

VikingCoder 8 hours ago
toomuchtodo 6 hours ago
Is this helpful?

Qwen3-VL can scan two-hour videos and pinpoint nearly every detail - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46094606 - December 2025

Wowfunhappy 3 hours ago
This would be cool, but if you think that you're somehow getting around copyright law, I'm pretty sure the result would still be a derivative work of the film you're recreating.
VikingCoder 2 hours ago
Right, but what if I just shared a script?

You start with a digital copy of the movie I'm starting from...

I extract the audio...

And then my script downloads the Public Domain movies...

...and I've got a hard-coded list of cuts to take from each of the Public Domain movies...

...and combine it with the movie audio?

My script is just a few hundred KB.

As long as the movie you start from is pretty well in audio synch with the version I start from...

Heck, I could probably even compensate for that, too... A little bit of analysis to listen for the first words spoken...

jazzyjackson 35 minutes ago
Just insist it's a parody
razkarcy 8 hours ago
This feels just a few steps removed from bringing the technology from the 1990 film "Total Recall" to life. Clients are able to purchase completely custom memories, choosing the exact characters that will appear in their "vacations", their ages, and appearances.
VikingCoder 8 hours ago
I'm also kind of reminded of A Scanner Darkly. That would be another interesting movie to reconstruct this way.

I'm also reminded of those posters in the mall, where from a distance, it's an actor's face. But when you walk up close, it's actually made of hundreds of stills from their films.

LelouBil 8 hours ago
That would be really interesting if you have enough ML knowledge to do it !
VikingCoder 8 hours ago
Well, with things like this, I feel like someone could get interesting results pretty quickly:

https://lintangwisesa.github.io/MediaPipe-in-JavaScript/inde...

https://github.com/cosyneco/MediaPipe.NET

https://ai.google.dev/edge/mediapipe/solutions/guide

I'd think you'd start with a tool to automatically cut video into scenes, and kind of go from there...

kwanbix 8 hours ago
Please do, and let us know when it is finished so that we can all watch it.
starkparker 10 hours ago
The project is neat, but HN might be more interested in the experimental front end for it at https://wikiflix.toolforge.org/#/, which is buried somewhat as a link on the page.
wk_end 10 hours ago
That frontend seems to have things that aren't hosted on Wikimedia Commons, whereas I think OP's link is Wikimedia-exclusive and more reliable.

For example, Network (1976) - one of my favourite films - isn't listed on the Wikimedia page, but it's listed on the WikiFlix frontend. I was a little surprised to see that, since AFAIK it's still under copyright. Clicking through, it's trying to embed a copy from the Internet Archive, from which it was taken down because, yes, it's still under copyright.

starkparker 8 hours ago
> The WikiFlix tool is hosted on Toolforge in the US. Toolforge is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. All WikiFlix content is generated from Wikidata and maintained by that community.

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:WikiFlix

Network's WikiData entry is https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q572165, which includes the Archive link and lacks a copyright status. This is also linked to from the barcode icon at the top of the movie's WikiFlix page: https://wikiflix.toolforge.org/#/entry/572165

Took about 2 minutes with no prior experience to remove the dead IA link and add the copyright status attribute to the WikiData item.

observationist 9 hours ago
It's no longer accessible. It might be a regional thing, if you can still see it?
Dwedit 8 hours ago
It's missing Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
glitchc 8 hours ago
chagaif 9 hours ago
Why not use peertube software?