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Comment by peteforde | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a film expert, but I like to think I have taste? And yet, somehow the recent Beatles projects reduced me to tears on several occasions. Am I secretly a chud in denial, or are my tastes just offensive?

Look, everyone has the right to be an elitist on their own film blog. The author didn't ask us to read what he said. However, his entire thesis is dramatically undermined by the simple fact that he didn't attempt to grab even a single comparison frame from the original releases so that a reader can A/B them and make up their minds for themselves.

As to his distaste for those upscaled and colorized vintage shorts, I'm happy to go on record and say that I love them. In fact, watching these clips is the closest thing my family has to a Christmas tradition at this point. My personal favorite is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQs5VxNPhzk and frankly, I don't have the time of day for anyone who is upset that I think it's wonderful.

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Scrolling the top of the article looking at movies I’ve never seen, I didn’t think anything of it.

It wasn’t until I saw a movie screenshot I was familiar with (“Titanic”). At that point I had to agree with the headline: I immediately said “yeah, she does look like a Pixar character” as the revelation came that I had mostly forgotten what a film looks like. I don’t think this perspective is too alarmist.

Detailed and specific, yes but someone’s got to do it.

My reaction was exactly the same as yours. Blogs like these usually have an assumed audience, I think, which is probably why there aren't any A/B picture comparisons. On a related note, I recently watched Dances with Wolves and was amazed at how authentic it felt despite not being in 4k and all the modern jazz.

The real and dramatic issue with True Lies is that the original high-resolution negative is available and that there's also a recent 4K-scan.

In other words, why should I run your comment through GTP to summarize it and then expand it to its original length again, when I can read it verbatim, just as it is? What is gained? What may be missed? Why should I quote you using the GTP-transfer version and not in your own words? Should every comment on HN be replaced by its respective GTP-transfer version?

You can't "just" scan the original negative or use the "4K-scan" (which will be of the negative I think, as any "print" done they could have scanned will have only been 2K) that easily though for films that have digital VFX / bluescreen/greenscreen or heavy grading being done on them: the "negative" is almost certainly only going to consist of raw film plate footage, without any of the post production work: you'd then have to either re-create all that work at 4K (original VFX was done at 2K by Digital Domain, as would be initial grading DI onto 2K print), or just keep the original work in those areas at 2K (and you'd still have to grade the new 4K plate-only footage to blend in and match the original grade).

This is not true at all. There are different types of negatives. You seem to be thinking of the camera original negative. There are other types of negatives. Interpositives and other versions are made to ultimately create the final negative of the completed film. This is then used to create the prints made to deliver to the theaters. There can even be an archival negative created, and depending on the level of effort, they can do color separation archive so you have 3 black-and-white negatives of the RGB that would all need to be scanned separately and then recombined to bring back the color version (which is fun as each negative can shrink/warp distinctly).

Essentially, it reads like you feel the only film version of a feature is the color print.

True Lies is a 1994 release. On what assumptions do you base the idea that the theatrical release cut has been already lost and that there is only "raw film plate footage, without any of the post production work"? True Lies was printed in 70mm and was especially known for its image quality, compare the quote below. (Where do you get the 2K from?) Also, 70mm film should have more information than 4K digital video.

> Both Cameron and Carpenter maintain that those prints — struck in both 35mm and 70mm — are among the finest they have ever produced (release prints were handled by Deluxe, while CFI provided interpositives and dailies). The filmmakers reserved special praise for the quality of the 70mm prints, which were blown up from the 35mm negative. Cameron reports that his past attempts to strike 70mm prints from 35mm negative have been satisfactory but hardly spectacular. "The 70mm prints of this film are shockingly great in terms of image quality," he states. "This is the fourth time I've printed in 70, and it's the first time that the 70 prints have looked substantially better than the 35s. The 35mm prints of True Lies are very good, but the 70s look like IMAX by comparison. We ran tests side by side, and it was no contest."

https://theasc.com/articles/true-lies-tests-cinemas-limits

Have any Hollywood level movies done this? I know they did it with ST:TNG.

uhm... we have neural style transfer these days.

you can grab the postproduction color grading and even VFX from the low-res one, and apply them to the high-res one. Without messing around with other aspects.

> what is gained?

Removing film grain makes compression far more efficient. This reduces costs of streaming.

I find it hilarious that HBO's classic "snow" static dissolve is literally the worst clip for digital compression.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P_Oh7HizY5I

Which I guess is why Max has a boring gradient.

I could be worse if it had chroma information.

It barely makes a difference in reality. I've done final online conform tests for major distributors and the differences in savings vs perceptual cost (if delivering to a targeted bitrate) are negligible. It's also entirely moot for blu-ray delivery.

So, here ist your comment with the grain removed (quote -> GTP summary -> GTP re-expanded to original length):

> Removing film grain significantly improves compression efficiency, resulting in reduced streaming costs.

Why didn't you word it like this in the first place? (Mind the compression efficiency: 18 bytes improvement over the original, 109 bytes versus 117 bytes gzipped.)

;-)

I like to waste other people’s time, 5 seconds at a time. :)

Do you mabye mean "GPT"?

Yes.

Anyway, what is more important to preserve: artistic choices made according to the medium (which importantly includes the kind of film stock for any movie) or bandwidth?

And, if it's all about bandwidth, why do a high definition version, in the first place, and not stick to the low-bandwidth, but high fidelity 2K transfer?

I'm not even a huge film nerd and the strangeness of the screenshots was evident - though there's no harm in a side by side, I can understand why they didn't include it.

I am a big film nerd and the strangeness was not evident at all, not even with zoom and spending time (I am very perceptive and attentive) trying to figure out what the complain actually is (oh, too much face detail? Smh...)

I think it's worse after while watching the movie itself. The smoothness makes everything look waxy.

I don't doubt that the difference is there. I also don't doubt that I would be able to see a significant difference.

My point is merely that it's impossible to see while displayed on their own, without the comparison. It was not provided and that's a pity.

I think others are just saying it's possible even without the side by side, but no harm in including it for those who can't see it.

The best way I can describe it is someone took an animated movie and applied AI guesses to make it look real. Which is sort of the opposite of what actually happens, but that's what the outcome looks like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

Must be different kinds of film nerds.

It's not as bad as that Predator Hunter Edition, but it looks too waxy, too "clean" and modern. https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-doxBelQegm0/W79ooJddeSI/AAAAAAAAP...

I actually laughed out loud at the Pixar Rose one hehe

The 1902 original of the linked film was "actually shot on Biograph’s proprietary 68mm stock" i.e. could be considered very high resolution in any historical timeframe, even today ("The IMAX of the 1890s")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ud1aZFE0fU

The Beatles project was a pretty good transfer, I'd say. It's the needless use of the same tech to create these horrific transfers of Cameron's work that are creating controversy.

The Matrix was also destroyed in its 4k transfer by ridiculously bad color correction.

That “ridiculously bad color correction” is actually… the original theatrical film!

I’m not kidding. To quote AVForum:

Now The Matrix has been an odd fish in terms of releases on home formats, with a reasonably natural tone to its original almost flagship DVD release back in 1999 (it was one of the first titles that many DVD adopters bought), but - years later - a very different look to its 2004 re-release on DVD. Everything in 'The Matrix' suddenly became really green. This green-tinged 'style' carried on to its Blu-ray release in 2008, where things were dialled back a little, but some sequences were still almost monochromatic in their green bent.

It's a stylised look which, for many, doesn't really capture the original vision of The Matrix that was in theatres back in 1999, so it's a massive relief that this new native 4K remaster - culled from the Super 35 negatives with 2K VFX shots and supervised by the original director of photography - has been completely regraded to give an all-new look which suits not only the modern sensibilities of HDR10 and Dolby Vision, but also the original theatrical vision of the piece.

https://www.avforums.com/reviews/the-matrix-4k-blu-ray-revie...

That’s interesting.

I only watched the first Matrix on DVD I was too young for theatrical. It was an amazing experience to watch it projected in our living room.

I can’t say anything about what the theatrical Matrix looked like since I didn’t watch it, but the Color’s are so garish and over the top on the 4k, I really struggle to believe that was 100% the original look.

35mm film just doesn’t look like that in my experience.

Ah so you’re wrong. I watched the first release of the Matriz, which was correct.

It was the second release which was green. This was after the sequels.

So it depends which release you watched.

So since I watched the first DVD release I’m assuming that was close to the theatrical. And it Didn’t look at all like the 4k “remaster”.

The Matrix new transfer made me really sad. It is one of my favorite movies of all time, and this new version had the colors done all wrong and in some scenes, I had the impression that the framerate was wrong, especially the bullet time and other action scenes, like they don't match the rest of the movie.

Curiously, if you look into it, it was the original home release that had the colors done all wrong. The original theatrical release was, according to observers, hardly green.

The 4K version, ironically, is more correct to the original theatrical film.

The original dvd release was fine. It was every release after the second movie that “fixed” the first by making its color grading as smash-you-in-the-face green as the sequels (except the newest 4k I’m aware of, which put it back to something resembling the original color grading)

Ah that makes sense.

I had the original release and watched it first in DVD - it was the first DVD I ever watched, and it blew me away.

I struggle to believe that the 4K restoration matches the theatrical, but I never saw it. But the Colors in it are so digital and garish, I don’t see how that would been how the 35mm film stock would have looked. Now I’m interested in finding out.

In my opinion, the original was cartoonishly green. Theatergoers also commented the home release was way more apparently green than the original theatrical version - mainly due to the limitations of home media. Now with 4K, we’re finally closer to the original intent.

The question is should we be going for "original intent" or "original effect"? Regardless of the filmmakers' intention, the "cartoonishly green" original theatrical version is what became a smash hit. Once the public has seen it, and embraced it, shouldn't that be considered the canonical version? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, after all. To tinker with it afterwards risks ruining the effect, regardless of the intention.

No, you’re missing my point.

The theatrical film had very little green tint compared to the home releases. The home releases are “cartoonishly green” when the theatrical version was not.

The 4K simply goes back to what it was originally. It is, quite literally, undoing the tampering that’s been happening since the first (edit: second, 2004 release) DVD.

Ah, when you said “the original” I assumed that was referring to the theatrical release.

He’s kind of wrong tho.

The cartoonishly green version of it is the second DVD release which tried to match the sequels.

The theatrical release and the first DVD were not cartoonishly green.

So the 4k release is attempting to fix an issue introduced later on anyway. The theatrical release does not match the current 4k “revision”

>The Matrix was also destroyed in its 4k transfer by ridiculously bad color correction.

Which of the color corrections destroyed it? The one where they made everything green? Or the one where they made the colors 'normal'?

Probably both.

Seems like the first release of the Matrix on DVD had it right. I watched that one and fell in love with the movie.

After the sequels it appears they “greened up” the DVD.

Now on 4k they’ve done an abysmal and horrific job. Apparently Bill Pope was involved but I never know anymore.

4k formats are ridiculous anyway. At an average healthy distance from a TV that’s not giant you should be barely able to tell the difference between 4k and a great high bit rate 1080p/2k.

Probably what "reduced you to tears" was not the Beatles itself but the personal experiences that you had with this music. It is an emotional anchor that companies are eager to exploit.

For me it is a way of extracting more money out of nostalgia from subpar works. I personally believe The Beatles disappeared when Brian Epstein died and the group(as bigger than the sum of its parts) could not remain united.

I see that all the time with people with things like their first motorbikes in exhibitions. For me, they are noisy outdated machines. For them it was freedom, it was how they impressed their first girlfriend or their first travel with friends and all the experiences that came from it.

Their first cars, pinball machines or more recently a commodore or a sega genesis, NES, play Station... as people that are getting older and making money can remember younger times.

It's so cool that you could explain all of this stuff to me.

I don’t see the need for A/B here. The frames posted demonstrate clearly the issues the author has without need for a reference. At least for me they look hideous :)

Historically, arguments that are literally "there's no need for opposing views because I am right" don't age well.

> And yet, somehow the recent Beatles projects reduced me to tears on several occasions.

In a good way or a bad way?

> As to his distaste for those upscaled and colorized vintage shorts, I'm happy to go on record and say that I love them

Then your sense of taste may be worth questioning

I can understand why people like them, they are interesting and give you a new way to look at old footage, even if they are also garish and fake looking.

They're not "fake looking", they are fake. There is no color information in the original film in much of those situations. The algorithm being used is basically inventing the chroma channel out of thin air, based on a guess.

Now what would be cool (and may already exist, given the extremely intelligent people who work on image processing) would be a setup where you could take a high-resolution scan of some black-and-white or some badly faded film, along with a lower-resolution copy of a version with more proper color, and "transfer" the color grading to "restore" color to the higher-resolution version. This would still require guessing, but much less so, as you're using an "authoritative" version as a control to direct the algorithm. I'd be fine with that as long as it was done with care and went through a vetting process.

Fake things can definitely look fake, I think, or am I missing the distinction you are drawing here? I don't understand what you are correcting me on, but I'm curious. I'm aware there's no color in the black and white original.

Honestly, I think that a lot of people on HN are just difficult. I don't know whether it's learned or biological, but there's clearly a driving urge for some of these folks to just argue the most pedantic nonsense until the oxygen is all gone.

I find it hilarious that someone would be deeply offended by AI colorization of scenes from 100+ years ago, which are impossible to recreate and many showing glimpses into the past which would otherwise be mostly forgotten. The reason that they get millions of views is because it gives modern people the opportunity to make the shocking realization that times change, but these people are not so different from us.

One has to wonder if someone angry about the introduction of artificial color is also angry to realize that actors are playing characters and comedians are not just making up funny jokes while you watch.

When you picture yourself, are you possibly a huge golden statue on a mountain?

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