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IMG_0001

posted November 21, 2024 #

The IMG_0001 project is brilliantly simply - crawl YouTube for videos that use the default filename from the era of iPhones (2009 - 2012) that would send videos over to YouTube with a single button. In short, it's a massive repository of random videos from the nascent era of mobile video. Author Riley Walz says it much better than myself:
Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in "Send to YouTube" button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives.
The project was inspired by a similar Ben Wallace project but Walz repository contains 5 million videos. Take it for a spin.

Random aside: this all reminds me of one of my favorite (now vanquished) sites on the web - foundphotos.net. Rest In Peace random photo archive.