A later Vitaphone film, this Warner Brothers short apparently was one created using a very complicated system through which an accompanying record was synchronized with a movie camera. There were several serious setbacks for such a system (such as if a film skipped--it became out of sync for the rest of the film plus the records quickly wore out--and 20 showings was the normal life-span of the records) and even though it produced excellent sound, it was eventually replaced. The last of the Vitaphone films were made in 1930, then the studio switched to the standard sound-on-film system.
When this short began, I noticed that the print was a bit fuzzy and grainy and it seemed to almost flicker--getting fuzzier and less fuzzy. The quality at the beginning was particularly poor.
The biggest problem with watching this film today is that styles have changed. While Victor Herbert's "Sweet Mystery" was a very popular song in the 1920s, today it just sounds god-awful because the singing is so incredibly high-pitched and ear-piercing. It's the sort of thing that Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy later sang to the adoration of millions but which be used today to force members of Al Qaeda to spill their guts--and would result in Amnesty International protesting such a horrible abuse of human rights!! The following numbers are better...but not much. This is because they are very dated, the sound is inexplicably poor (with the singing being overwhelmed by the music) and because the group sounded so much better when they played their instruments--the singing was just unpleasant. This shows that while the Vitaphone system was generally quite good, it also had its shortcomings. All in all not the most enjoyable old film and one best left for film historians.