How they shot Vitaphone movies

[robcat2075]

Many Warner Brother cartoons had the label "Vitaphone" for trademark reasons but Warner's original Vitaphone was a one-shot, direct-to-disk sound process and once the sound was on disk it couldn't edited. This worked adequately for capturing a staged vaudeville act or a band performance but very limiting for movies that were used to cutting scenes only a few minutes long or less.

This NY Times article is the first explanation I've seen of how they managed to incorporate seemingly separate synch-sound scenes in one reel/one disk. It's almost like how live television would be done, 20 years later.