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Comment by masswerk | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

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

> 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.)

;-)

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

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