St. Thomas’ Innovation and Technology Services added several vintage sports clips to the library’s digital archives this spring, allowing current Tommies to take a step into the past and watch former athletes compete.
The department transferred several archived files of audio and sports footage from the 1940s-1990s onto the library’s website, giving St. Thomas fans much more ease of access to the content.
“We take an NX camera to capture the film,” said Dan Lamatsch, director of media production infrastructure at ITS. “We use (a) film projector to project the 16 or 8 mm film onto a foam core white card. Then, we use our digital camera to capture that to create the final clip.”
However, the original film runs at 24 frames per second but modern videos run at 30 frames per second. This six-frame loss presented an interesting challenge to ITS.
“We use Premiere to interpolate those extra six frames that are lost between the 24 and 30 frames, then that becomes the video transfer of the film,” Lamatsch said.
These videos are then exported into an MP4 file and are given to the St. Thomas Special Collections Department, providing historical moments for students to view now or years later.
“In 20 years there will be people that leave this institution doing some really interesting things out in the real world,” Lamatsch said.“They’re going to come back here for something and for our archive group to be able to provide captured moments, that’s really cool to have that available.”
Students can view these clips at https://elevator.stthomas.edu/athletics//.
Ben Hogan can be reached at hoga1306@stthomas.edu.
The 1981 Women’s Track Coach Jumping Joe Sweeney looks the same as the 2022 Coach Joe Sweeney. I should take up running.