Mickey Mouse’s introduction to the world was the 1928 cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Not only was it the first appearance of Mickey with sound, it was also one of the first cartoons to employ synchronized sound. The problem is, the sound is awful. Sure, after nearly a century, what do you expect? But [Oona Räisänen] thought it wasn’t just age, but flutter from the original recording. Could it be made better? What follows that question is a self-described geek’s journey into the depths of recorded sound.
The first step was to find a high quality source. The Internet Archive had a copy that was mostly clean. But it also has a lossless scan of the movie including the original optical soundtrack. A quick script played back the original soundtrack and — you guessed it — the flutter is already there. You can see the original 7-minute short from Disney’s channel, below.
Next, a detailed analysis identified a 15 Hz as the flutter’s period and another custom tool allowed manual identification of the frequency speed for different areas of the film. Drawing on some older software made to correct VHS tapes by employing Lagrange interpolation, it was possible to filter out the 15 Hz component and use it to control the playback speed. There are several clips and you can tell it is quite an improvement in most cases.
Unsurprisingly, there were also bits of artifacts at 24 Hz and 60 Hz, the rate of the film and the power line frequency. Now that the copyright on the film is expired, someone could do a major audio and even video restoration on the film. We’re guessing someone will. Just hope they get the details right.
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