When Movies Look Wrong: A Look At DVD Masters, Blu-Ray, and Film Restoration (Video Essay)
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- Опубліковано 28 тра 2024
- Note: Kindly asking folks with corrections to consult the pinned comment before leaving them. Theres a very good chance it was already mentioned there, but I appreciate you wanting to point something out there. Also, be sure to watch the video in 4K for the clearest view of what I'm talking about since UA-cam shredded the video quality.
Movies. What are they? Moving images. Oh, okay. Yeah, that was fast. Well, why don't they look right when you watch them at home! There's a million reasons (it helps to turn the TV on first, Aunt Edie), but two of the main reasons is because they've been recolored and degrained. Why? Well, stick around and let's explore the subject together, shall we?
Credits for research/the media used in the video appears at the end.
Please do not request copies of film scans from me. I'm not gonna commit a piracy for you, sorry.
Chapters:
00:00 - Opening
00:44 - Intro/The Problem
06:45 - How Did We Get Here?
10:10 - Discoloration/Regrading
17:48 - Film Grain… or the lackthereof
27:32 - Are These Releases Really That Bad Though? (uh yeah, but also maybe no?)
34:26 - How I Learned To Shut Up And Just Watch The Movie (bro)
#filmrestoration #homemedia #bluray
Socials:
Twitter: / niche_caesar
Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/nichecaesar
Media Obscura (Podcast): pod.link/themediaobscura
Guppy Falls (eBook): a.co/d/isBwHfu - Фільми й анімація
Edits for corrections: as a few of you pointed out in the comments, here are a few things I got wrong. They’re minor things that don’t really affect the video imo, but it’s worth being thorough (especially since UA-cam doesn’t allow video updating like Vimeo does):
- Multiple people have called this out so I felt the need to clarify, as it was a bit obtuse of me. When I say that “every movie ever made is available on the internet,” I was (at least I thought obviously) speaking generally/in hyperbole. A lot of films are obviously lost media or haven’t been preserved online. But for the average person? Effectively every movie they would ever want to see is available on the internet (either legally or otherwise). Didn’t feel the need to explain that in video, as it’s kind of a given that some lost Lon Chaney Jr film isn’t going to just wind up on the internet Archive.
- HD CRTs are *not* 1080p, they’re 1080i. That’s on me 🤷♀️ you’d think a guy who works in video production would get that right but I didn’t lol. Thanks for the correction, @robitaillecopeland1996.
- Laserdiscs are an analog format. This one kinda blew my mind and is proof of what you get when you make an assumption haha. You’d think a giant disc would work more like a CD than vinyl but there we are. Thanks for the correction, @AdamFishkin and @borisbecksretro.
- The old True Lies Blu Ray was sourced from a DVHS master, which is itself was likely based on the DVD or Laserdisc one. It technically isn’t the DVD master, but is the same master used for previous streaming releases. However, since DVHS was a niche (at best) media format, most consumers never had access to it/were aware of its existence.
- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly master I labeled as the 2014 was actually the 2009 release. Good eye @kevinstriker. It was inevitable I mixed masters up on something eventually, given the amount of media I had to source for this.
- Got a few notes that people cannot see the difference in compression due to me punching in/out of the video. Like I added in the note, the difference is the most pronounced on the background. If you look at the bookshelf on the left side of the screen, you should be able to note some additional blockiness there (especially if you're playing the video in 4K due to how much additional compression UA-cam adds to everything). You should also be able to notice some banding on my hand.
- Been getting a few comments that seem to misinterpret what I’m saying about video games so I thought I’d clarify that one too: I didn’t say video games never get changed. I said that changes to media happen, then cited video games as an example. I then said that changes to video games usually don’t radically change the experience (though there are many, many examples where this does happen of course) but rather fix some bug in the game through a patch. I should have added that some rereleases so tweak some art or offer quality of life stuff though 🤷♀️ I didn’t feel like it was worth pulling away from the main topic of discussion at the time since it was already getting tangential but uh, yeah, probably should’ve either done that or cut the line entirely.
Original Comment:
Hey y'all, I hope you enjoyed this (not so) little video essay! What are your thoughts on the matter? Lmk in the comments or whatever. Like I said in the video, this was honestly a very surface level look at the subject, so I'm sure there are a lot of things to discuss in the comments. For example, I didn't even get into how some films *intentionally* have a magenta tone to them in the first place (such as many films shot in technicolor, where the method used to generate color inherently exaggerates skin tones -- heck, it's even part of why my camera footage pushes magenta skin tones too since I'm using a technicolor lut!)
Anyway, feel free to subscribe if you wanna watch more of my stuff in the future (such as video essays, film reviews, retrospectives, and podcasts).
VHS was outdated and when DVD came out , had a slight better Quality then VHS) also
by 2006 , due to Blu ray and even to this day a lot of Blu ray films (depending on the transfer ) look amazing , even some look nicer then 4k .
also Blu ray and 4k bluray discs will retain the imagie quality unlike streaming services like Amazon , Netflix , Disney plus and HBO just to name a few. At least with Physical media you don't have to worry about losing the rights to it. Because you own it. That is why Physical media is better then streaming services
Laserdisc is analog video with the capability for digital audio (most early 80's releases just had analog sound). Late in the format's life, there were a few anamorphically enhanced "squeeze" Laserdiscs released for films like The Fugitive, Stargate, Cliffhanger, and Terminator 2.
it's not that baffling that DVDs outsell Blu-Rays as there are WAY more DVD players out in the wild then there are Blu-Rays and there's many movies and TV shows which have never got a BR release(let alone a 4K one)and probably never will.
@@jacksonteller3973 which is sad , good example is Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV show
@@michaelhawkins7389 not sad in that instance as the HD version of Buffy looks absolutely horrendous and DVD is actually the better way to watch it, look at Many A True Nerd's video on that subject for more info. If there was a BR release of that so-called "HD" version I would never buy it.
I'd like to put forth an example. There's a scene in 1990's TMNT movie. Where a foot soldier is following Raphael through the sewers. I distinctly remember not seeing that Foot Soldier in the theatrical release, until he stepped in to the light. Now on the bluray you can see him while he's stiil in the shadow. It even looks like his performance doesn't start until he steps out of the shadow. As if he's expecting not to be seen yet.
The new versions of that movie have SO many problems when it comes to seeing things that were unintended. The edge of the set is visible during the ending half of the movie lol
@@Cyperstudio you also get that with the HD versions of Buffy where you can see crew members and equipment that wasn't meant to be seen.
I haven't seen it myself, but I heard a recent review of the first Ninja Turtles movie where the reviewers complained about how distracting it was how often they could spot bits of actors' faces inside the mouths of the turtle costumes, and now you've made me wonder if it wasn't always that way.
The worst example of this that I can think of is the Blu-ray version of "Star Trek: Nemesis." In the scene where we first meet Shinzon, he's supposed to be shrouded in shadow until the lights suddenly come on and it's revealed that he's a young version of Captain Picard. If you watch the original 2003 DVD version, I think that's pretty close to how I remember seeing it in theaters in 2002. But in the 2009 Blu-ray version, the brightness is turned up so much that you actually get a pretty good view of Shinzon's face even before the big reveal. There's actually a really nice shot from the original that the new version totally ruins. It's when Shinzon tries to touch Troi's hair. We see him in profile and the shadows are so strong and dark that we can't even see the edge of his face because it gets lost in the shadows of the room behind him. It's a well-lit scene that is completely ruined by careless attempts to get more "detail" out of the scene.
@@TBCOGR it's the same with the Friday the 13th movies on the Blu-Ray in scenes where Jason is supposed to be in shadow you can clearly see him in scenes where you're not supposed to due to the brightness.
The irony of me not realising until half way through watching this on my phone that the UA-cam app was set to zoom in to fill screen...
If it makes you feel any better, I rewatched The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly last summer and didn’t realize I had popped the Blu Ray in instead of my UHD until the credits rolled haha. Things happen 🤷♀️
@@NicheCaesar A classic mistake. And further proof to my theory that we've reached a point of diminishing returns when it comes to increasing resolution... I can rarely spot the difference between 1080p and 2160p.
@@philtraufersonoh no don’t get me wrong, the difference is definitely there and apparent, it just doesn’t matter in most cases/for most people. Especially on a disc like that one where the 4K is in SDR.
@@NicheCaesar Yeah, for me it's the HDR that makes a much bigger difference than the resolution - but then my eyesight is not perfect.
It used to bug me so much how different Terminator 2 between the tv version and the dvd version that i bought years later only to realise watching it on a computer monitor it doesn't matter whether it's HD or not
I like the original look.
Original aspect ratio, color pallet, film grain and original VFX.
Movies are a products of it's time and that's art. Keep original, let newer movies look... new
As a 50 year old person I not only respect and appreciate grain, were I to see a version of a pre 1990’s movie without it, it would look distracting weird.
yez, quite 🧐
pre-1990? Film was still used into the 2010s. hell even still to this day for boutique or nice productions
I like the grain on older movies. Adds to the atmosphere. Gives a sense of nostalgia for me.
Me watching the part around 20:25 in 240p on my phone because I have no wifi atm and am trying to save data:
…”huh”
skill issue
As someone who works a lot on film stock I have a few things to say. Great video, always love seeing people dive into the details of filmmaking, and transfers peaked my interest because I basically have to transfer each thing I shoot to digital to edit it cheaply and present it.
I have really mixed feelings about the changes being made just like you do. I work primarily on film specifically because it degrades over time and has a lot more room for physical error, I love using shots with some hair or dust stuck in the film gate, or purposefully getting a piece of exposed film stock decayed and using that stuff, it can add a ton to the viewing experience to see the actual artifacts of time passing still on the film (that little bit of frame wobble, the dust and grain, fingerprints, or other aberrations). For this reason I usually hate seeing films that were butchered by the restoration process and removed things like this that may in fact have been intentional (this usually only happens to things from the 1960s or before, anything where the original director and cinematographer are dead).
But being a super fan of trainspotting, and getting that criterion release, I felt like I was watching the film for the first time. The color grading was so different from any version I had ever seen before, and I’ve watched the film over 40 times. I loved experiencing it as if it was the first time, and it really was the first time I saw the movie as it was made.
So yeah man, you’re totally right, there’s good and bad things about these transfers, and the quality of the transfer totally depends on which film is being transferred, who’s doing the transfer, and who’s making the creative decisions on that transfer. Ultimately I’ll take what I can get.
Again, great video, I really appreciate you talking about this stuff in such detail!
Glad you enjoyed the video and I’m right there with you! I can live with a bad transfer (heck, I resaw Batman Forever last night and was shocked at how soft the 4K transfer was), but Trainspotting’s 4K is a revelation.
Watching the baby scene on film vs on digital
I love how he plays all these classic masterpieces through the video, and every now and then Austin Powers just pops up. 😂
Are you implying that the 1997 masterpiece “Austin Powers” is not, itself, a masterpiece???
(Nah, you’re right. I tried to show a wide variety of movies and also just hit my Plex server to see what I had on hand)
@NicheCaesar The third is my favorite. Not sure if it's a masterpiece, but it's funny as hell. 👌
@@drhall343 third time was the charm for their delivery of the same jokes lol
I didn't notice the changes in your finger-snapping thing at all, changing the zoom on the click completely hid the changes you were trying to draw attention to.
100% lmao. I watched it over and over. Couldn't tell.
I have to say, this resonated with me. I'm looking at a similar problem in the audio realm. The recent release of a series of LPs and SACDs to celebrate Atlantic Records 75th Anniversary made me go back and look at the release history of a particular album (Selling England By The Pound.) I already owned copies of four different releases of that album from different time periods. The new SACD was the fifth copy, and I went out and bought a 1980's vinyl LP copy that makes for a sixth. They ALL sound different, sometimes in minor ways, sometimes major. I wrote a blog and Instagram post about some of the differences I could hear on the equipment I have to play them.
Adam Savage in his Tested UA-cam series fairly recently did a video about how measurement is an illusion. There is no absolute measurement. It's all relative to something else, and everything changes somewhat as physical conditions change.
The analogue here is that creation is compromise. The best 1973 vinyl pressing of Dark Side Of The Moon was made from 2nd generation master studio tapes because Dolby Noise Reduction was released while the album was in production, and the band and Alan Parsons decided to convert to that part way through the recording process. Or Star Wars has the look it has because the film stock available to Hollywood in 1977 was largely crap (at least based on what I've heard in interviews with Scorsese and Lucas), and George Lucas had to adjust his creation to what color palate might survive well over time as the film negatives degraded. Or that screening a piece of film through a projector is a destructive process itself, and the version of the film I saw in the theater had a certain color and grain in the 1970s because it already had gone through a projector dozens or hundreds of times. There is no "there", there. To some degree, it's all what each of us remembers, compared to what the media of reproduction will support, compared to what costs the market will bear to transfer a work between reproduction media, compared to how authors of a work might feel about it based on compromises that were made at the time it was created, compared to what we might hope we will experience if a 'better' version is released.
We can only hope that the marketplace will eventually produce a version that balances those elements in ways that we like. So, the Atlantic 75 SACD of Selling England By The Pound will sound very good to people who want it to sound like a better version of the original vinyl. Bernie Grundman did a great remaster from the original analog master tapes. But is that definitive? I don't know.
Creation is compromise - love that. Right on the money
1970s Genesis.....the US releases were universally awful prior to 1976 because they used nth generation tapes. Some European editions are good. But the best always seem to be the original UK Charisma releases. I only have two copies of Selling England (both UK first pressings) but I have three of Nursery Cryme. The first I got was in 1990 when I bought a vinyl copy after hearing the CD. Both come from a 1984 remaster which has the aural equivalent of looking through a scene through a film of mud. I bought the 2007 remaster on vinyl which brings out a lot more detail in the high end and tightens the bass but which reduces the dynamic range a LOT. Then I was lucky enough to snag a copy of the original 1971 "pink scroll" pressing on vinyl and it is an absolute revelation. The best of both worlds....the clarity and tight bass of the 07 remaster, and the dynamic range (or indeed better) of the 84 remaster. Why they cannot reproduce that today is baffling. Perhaps because tastes are for more compressed music. The sad fact is that for over 20 years, people thought Nursery Cryme sounded muddy and wooly. With films, they shoddy mastering done for VHS where often nobody cared lead people to think films looked a certain way. I never did understand pan and scan 4:3, but a lot of people didn't like letterboxing. Could they not see that the cinema screen was a different shape to their television? Added to that, in NTSC territories the colour looked utterly shite anyway pretty much whatever you did. But with digital formats, the ability finally came to release something that at least approximated the cinema experience. I can understand a little judicial use of DNR to help the compression codec, especially on DVD. I have an early DVD release of Tim Burton's Batman where they've not done any DNR and the scan of the film must have had a lot of grain....and the compression codec just can't cope. It's a mess. Even with todays 4K discs, some attention is needed to ensure the digital stream files play back as intended. But that shouldn't mean "no grain" in an attempt to make a 90s or earlier film look more up to date. That's why I like Criterion Collection, they seem to attempt (within reason) to make their releases look like the original cinema film. Short of owning 35mm projectors and film prints, that's about as good as it gets. Having said that, I do own some super 8 film prints of films (It's A Wonderful Life, the Ealing comedies, two episodes of Star Trek TOS, even the pod race from Phantom Menace) and there is simply no better way to experience these. There's a magic in projecting film.
Theyre still producing SACDs? I thought that was a dead format.
@tedhaining2244 The 'better' version of any film was already released. It is called the original theatrical presentation with the proper grain, colors and seeing the real 24fps and photochemical presentation. Just because there were slight variations with each film print and with each film projector doesnt mean that there was no definitive color palette and overall presentation of a film. Most of the damage of a film print comes from the excessive use, not solely because it went through a projector, unless it's not up to the standard that it should. Film stock in the 70s wasn't bad quality, it was just the aesthetics that the director and the cinematographer gave in order for them to have a cinematic look.
Dark Side of the Moon wasn't great because of Dolby Noise Reduction, anytime that is switched on the sound quality automatically declines due to the alteration of reducing hiss, it was because it had great sound engineers like Alan Parsons and it was recorded on high quality 8 track tape.
@@absinthedude If you're applying DNR, you're losing detail of the film!! If VHS can handle grain, so can DVD. The only reason certain DVDS looked awful had nothing to do with grain, it had to do with bad compression which is not the same thing. Grain IS the image of the film. How do you explain T2 where everybody looks like a wax museum?
In regards to NTSC, PAL wasn't really that much better anyways. And DVD did suffer from those same problems. Another problem with Digital even if it is done well in terms of preserving the original film, the way Digital handles and speculates picture and audio is more far away from the original technology than what VHS is. Yes, VHS was a significantly flawed format due to suiting TVS of the time and not being the best quality, but at least it is a tape just like how film is a tape.
A decent tape that hasn't been abused with a decent old school TV is actually not all that bad. In fact despite the loss of image with most films due to the aspect ratio, it sometimes has more character and charm than even modern physical media does. And that's likely because the technology while different is still closer to that of film, flaws and all.
In regards to Criterion, what do you mean 'within reason'? If you're not making the film look and sound like the original release the most it can on a digital format, then it shouldn't be released, simple. And some of Criterion's releases can be flawed, especially when they remove way too much hiss for classic movies.
7:55 I like how you included a clip of AVGN, as James Rolfe is a big cinephile and a lot of this information of video formats I learned from him.
Multiple versions seems to be the way to go. With film grain, sans film grain, up scaled, non upscaled, etc.
Great video.
The 1976 schlock horror creature-feature Grizzly got exactly that treatment on blu-ray--de-grained and grained versions of the film on the same disc.
James Cameron is infamous for making changes to his films. It's clear that he's decided he hates the look of film, and has decided he wants his films to look more like HD video. There is NO technical justification for this today. Today's formats and displays are able to closely achieve the look of film.
The thing I really hate is when they change the sound mix of movies. The original Terminator film is a good example. When it was remastered in 2001 or so, it got a new stereo mix by Skywalker Sound that replaced almost all of the sound effects. Even worse, this is the only version of the movie they release anymore.
I can live with new mixes in most cases, but it’s a shame when they don’t give us the originals too. I don’t hate the new Terminator mixes, but I also haven’t heard the originals enough for them to imprint on me (that said, they absolutely should be available. It’s nuts that someone would have to grab a VHS copy or the 35mm scans for both movies to hear them as they once sounded).
Ironically, I cut a recorded section I did on a similar issue for Dragon Ball. If you buy the series, the best quality you get for the Japanese dub is (if I’m not mistaken) a low quality mono track. This happened because Toei animation doesn’t have the audio masters to the show anymore, but they didn’t even need them to do better. Fans have compiled the original audio in stereo for them and offered to give it to them. They just don’t want to use it, outside of a French blu ray release of the original show, I guess?
@@NicheCaesar I've heard some Gundam productions from the early 1990s had all their vocal performances redone for rereleases. Not as like a separate Dragon Ball Kai version kind of thing, but as in that's the only audio they can present anymore!
Some new mixes are fantastic though. Atmos/DTSX is a game changer
When you began talking about grain, the first thing that crossed my mind was The Beatles' "Get Back" documentary. I'm hopeful that Peter Jackson will release a less denoised version of it someday.
Yeah, Get Back was a mess. Love the actual material covered in it (Let It Be may not be my favorite Beatles album, but it’s up there), but absolutely hated how smoothed over everything looked
Peter Jackson is very much against film grain unfortunately. Which is his good right of course but if he'd also release grain versions of his movies nobody would complain.
Similar to the star wars situation, they can change anything they want but the original version should also be available.
Unfortunately, Jackson is very literally invested in that denoising as it was a new AI-fueled process his own company developed, it's both his personal preference and in his own financial interest that *more* films get degrained in the way Get Back was. Get Back and They Shall Not Grow Old were basically big tech demos for a brand-new AI denoising and upscaling process Park Road Post utilizes and offers. His company actually used the same process on the new James Cameron 4k releases like True Lies, so he's in fact doing the opposite of releasing a less denoised Get Back - he's pushing for the process to be used on other films, and making the process available to be more widely-used. It's a bit worrying, to be honest.
for me the first thing that crossed my mind were those infamously bad DBZ Orange Brick DVD sets.
@@NicheCaesarthey actually just announced a Jackson restoration of the original Let It Be film today and the original director mentioned there would be less of a digital look to it. so here's hoping!
yeah but if they don't release an official de-specialized Star Wars trilogy in my lifetime god has truly abandoned us...
Valid. Fingers crossed for the fiftieth anniversary in a few years
Disagree a love the version of starwars on blu ray currently with last printing
The current despecialized movies look good to me
Han shot first
MacClunky!
Regarding restorations and botched versions, outside of movies you do occasionally see this with TV shows that get the upgrade as well. When they brought the show Buffy The Vampire Slayer to HD, they did a really poor job of it. The whole show got regraded from the camera negatives, which did improve the fidelity a lot, but some scenes set at night but filmed during the day weren't properly regraded back to a night time tone in the new post-production, so you get these really akward 'night' scenes that just feel off. They also reframed the show to 16:9 screen ratio without appropriately making sure that the edges of sets weren't visible, or characters waiting just off to the side of the 4:3 picture frame for their cue to walk on aren't just there in shot before they were meant to be seen. The instances of this happening are rare enough that it isn't too bad as a whole, but it does mean the versions we now have aren't really the show as it should have been.
One thing that bugged me about HD Buffy was the whole look of the shot changing whenever they do a digital FX shot, I can't quite place it but it looks like the digital shots stayed at 480p?
@@BrainyBoy1200 they probably only had the fx shots on the video version and since they where not interested in redoing the fx they had to scan those scenes from the video master while the non fx scenes are scanned from the 16mm film.
@@BrainyBoy1200Some shots in early seasons were redone but they gave up partway theough season 2. Look up the videos "What's wrong with Buffy's HD" (which covers the first 3 seasons) and "The Great Tragedy of the Buffy HD remaster" (which covers the rest of the series and is the one that goes rhe most in depth on the upscaled vfx and dnr issues)
The problem with "there are fan fixes" is that those cost a ridiculous amount of money that you can't legally recoup, aren't working with original negatives, and could be easily culled for copyright reasons.
I think the point of showing those, wasn't to promote those fan fixes per se, but to prove it could have have been done better or more accurate than what studios and directors are doing with their restorations.
@@frommatorav1yeah this 👆 also to illustrate what a little love and time can do for a less than perfect source
Great work and great editing ! Thank you 🙏
The main reason movies had to be regraded had to do with Colour gamuts & contrast. Older Tv's (and low end modern ones) displayed in what's called SDR.
What that means is two things.
1-Limited Contrast, you can't get brighter than 100nits without losing shades, projectors get to ~ 200nits.
2- Limited Colour, Digital Films are graded within the DCi P3 colour gamut & physical film strips where about the same, Blu-Ray meanwhile is REC 709 which is has ~ 20% less colours, DVD even less and Laserdisc/VHS far less.
Therefore movies were always going to look different even on a perfectly calibrated set and had to be regraded within these limits.
Now the situation has completely reversed, modern TV's use HDR which far outclass film in every aspect. A high end display can show every shade of gray from up to 1000-5000 nits depending on the set and perfect black levels on OLED, impossible with projectors. And the Colour Space is even wider using the BT.2020 gamut which contains 75% of colours visible to the human eye compared to P3's 50%. a lot of modern films are now being toned down for the theater release.
Your also seeing more and more old films having their original colour grading restored. The Matrix is a great example and hilariously people complained about the colours thinking the puke greens of the DVD version were how it was supposed to be, proving you just can't win.
HDR really is a revelation, it's like the jump from SD-HD but for contrast & colour and is the number one reason to get into 4k Blu-ray.
Some of those old Technicolour movies like the 10 commandments look unbelievable, like I'm really watching it in VistaVision.
I've actually stopped going to my local Cinema as my QD-OLED at home outclasses it in every aspect (they have a more expensive Atmos setup than me but play it far too quietly smh).
For films I really must see right away I catch the train to London to see the only 70mm Imax in my country, anything else just feels pointless now.
So yeah not great for the Theater industry but fantastic for home theater fans.
Directors and cinematographers change how they want things to look ALL THE TIME. A perfect example of this is John Carpenter and Dean Cundey who have "approved" like four different versions of the Halloween films. Go with the one that you think looks good regardless of what is "approved."
You aren’t wrong, but I thought it was at least kinda clear that I was using the term ‘director approved’ synonymously with something that resembles the theatrical cut as opposed to a recovered version made by John Doe at his 9-5 job.
Also this sounds good on paper, and you aren’t wrong, but it overlooks the historical preservation side of the issue. Some of these films won awards in part for the way they looked, and that should be preserved as well as possible (within reasonable parameters)
Also, Dean Cundey approved the Scream Factory 2K restoration of The Thing from the interpositive, but then, turned around and approved a 4K restoration from the original negative for Arrow Video alongside approval from John Carpenter. The two don't look the same at all, and were done within a year of each other.
@@ravensfilm Arrow is definitely the definitive version for me. In addition to colors being different, the Scream Factory Blu has motion smearing on some frames from the digital sharpen filter that was applied.
"good enough" has always been what the majority of people hare happy with. I realised that I was an outlier way back in the late 80s when I insisted on letterboxed laserdisc movies (or even 8mm film prints) rather than 4:3 VHS. Also a lot of the first wave of video releases weren't at all careful about scanning or colour grading....if any changes were made it was to make older material look more "up to date"....something else I could never understand. I'd prefer as close to the original cinema experience as possible. And today, with high capacity discs, large screens and 5.1 surround available that ought to be the goal. But as you point out, most people never adjust their TVs from the factory default....which is designed to attract attention in a shop and not to actually be watched. Again, I'm an outlier having had Dolby surround at home for over 30 years and often tweaking the picture settings on whatever TV I happen to own at the time. I don't think I've used internal TV speakers since around 1987 either.
DNR is nearly *ALWAYS* used to some extent even when film grain is still plainly visible. What a lot of people don't understand is that, depending on the source, modern film scanners can sometimes over-accentuate film grain to be more visible than it was when projected theatrically. And in some cases, it introduces an artifact called chroma noise which causes the grain to take on a reddish hue that was not present when the film was originally projected. This happened with the 4K83 restoration of ROTJ. The original scan is absolutely rife with chroma noise. There is a version available that's had DNR applied that preserves the film grain but removes the reddish hue of the chroma error.
That's the best overview of handling grain for DVD, Blu-ray and 4k I've seen. Very good coverage with examples of changing the color scheme for various films.
A significant factor that can't be overcome is the big screen theater experience. Many movies, especially older epic movies, used the big screen as a presentation element and were photographed with intent to be experienced on a very larger screen, significantly larger than even the largest flat screen TVs or home projectors. People just don't have 48ft x 20ft screens (at the smallest) to watch movies. Sometimes a classic movie that was raved about when first released can seem boring or too slow when watched at home because the big screen impact has, for the most the part, been removed much like removing color from a movie that is amazing to watch for its color cinemaphotography, but is underwhelming if watched in B&W, or even a B&W movie that has been colorized.
The whole point of restoring films to 4K or 8K (if we ever get there) is to enhance what was there in the first place or to experience what was there theatrically for the first time again. Varying grain levels, more color pop with the original grade. And also to enhance the original audio too with options of the original audio as needed for purists. I’m against the idea of adding new SFX in place to where the original SFX was. Also against scrubbing grain. Doing that’s like taking a popular painting from a museum and replacing it with a replica version of a specific painting. Unacceptable.
Really great vid - watched the whole thing and learned a ton of perspective. Very well done.
Extremely well made video. I hope this blows up
High quality content! I applaud your research and edit-intensive production!
Honestly the worry a lot of cinephiles have these days is that 4K blu ray feels like the "ultimate" format, with it being unlikely there's ever a successor in the physical space to UHD and streaming services having no real incentive to offer better. With these awful AI algorithms popping up now, it feels like the releases we've been getting may be the last chance to get a good version of these movies for posterity before it all becomes automated slop.
10:26 Fun fact! Top Gun was filmed in Open Matte, so the full screen versions of it are actually expanded on the top and bottom.
Oh that’s really cool. Love when that extra screen space is used to prevent bad cropping on early home releases.
@@NicheCaesar I remember watching it and thinking there was too much being shown on the top and bottom, like some shots were awkwardly cropped at someone's chest, or the ceiling looked too high, etc. seems like a common problem with open matte films, besides showing boom mics or whatever
@@joethemanager1 Yeah, a lot of that stuff is never considered worthy of framing for. I think that didn't really change till Cameron started shooting Super 35 and using the extra space a little more deliberately for his home releases
Thanks for all your attributions. Some channel gems you introduced me to.
My favorite being the "Terminator 2" VHS promo. I don't know what's funnier; how uncomfortable Robert Patrick looks filming this or the studio's insistance on bribing video stores to also carry "Drop Dead Fred."
Another compromise when restoring/upscaling footage is time. I’ve created some custom ESRGAN models for upscaling the Super Mario Bros Super Show. I’ve made models at three different “sizes” because although the biggest one tends to create the best results, it’s so slow (multiple seconds per frame) that it’s impractical for anything other than stills or intros/outros. Also, this is all for personal viewing, so I can only afford to spend so much time on it.
There are so many explanations for this. The original negative is either damaged or lost. Movies filmed in low quality negatives cannot be rescanned for 4K (CGI scenes for Jurassic Park because back then rendering CG in 1080 was impossible). Older cameras used different lenses and computers had lower color limitations (256 colors) and also they didn't hire the same people that did the post-production for the original releases. Studios go bankrupt and gets bought out by another company so they put a new intro logo on their home releases (Toy story DVD has the original Disney Pixar logo intro as oppose to Blu-ray). Early DVD's up to 2000's were mostly laserdisc scans which explains the bad compression and the early stages of edge enhancement and grain removal were used. Sometimes they add modern sounds because they were originally mono audio. (Jaws VHS had original sound). Movies from 2003 began transitioning to digital cameras in 2K format and unfortunately all those up to 2014 when they start upgrading to 4K cameras cannot be rescanned to 4K.
If you are one of those purists that prefer original format, my answer is there is no real true version out there. We may never be able to view it in original format ever. The original home releases are close but it's not always perfect. It's too subjective. So my advice is go to reddit, dvdbeaver and capsholic websites to determine which version to choose.
Fantastic video! Thanks for providing nuance for what goes into a Film Restoration. I feel I have a much greater appreciation for movies that remove grain or change colors now that I understand the technical details we don't hear about.
Not sure if anyone else in the comments brought it up, and I'm sorry to nitpick (since you did say at the outset that you weren't able to cover ALL the ground), but I believe there are nuances to the specific formats you can use as a future reference to strengthen one or more of your arguments:
-- The first major format for home consumption (apart from 8mm or 16mm film prints) was Betamax tapes. They were developed by Sony and dominated the first several years of home video, but lost the market to VHS tapes in the early 80s because VHS was cheaper on the manufacturing end.
-- Laserdisc was actually an analog disc format, not digital. They were developed by Philips (a Dutch company) and MCA (which owned Universal) and would alternate between a few encoding systems based on the disc's rotating speed. Therefore, the runtime of the material being shown would often impact the video and audio quality. It got better as time passed, but not quick enough to measure up when DVD arrived.
-- Lynch's approach to home video is more unique than people realize. For example, he made sure that Paramount's DVD releases of "The Elephant Man" don't have chapter selection: you have to watch the entire film from start to finish, no skipping to different scenes.
-- Aside from Criterion releases or a special project by a filmmaker with clout (i.e. Lynch), the presentation of ANY film is at the mercy of the studios that own them. "Terminator 2" has slipped through multiple copyright cracks since Carolco went bankrupt in 1995. I looked up who bought the Carolco library ... turns out it was a French company called Canal, which doesn't distribute any media in North America but instead leases it back catalog to other studios. So you're getting transfers at the hands of people who have minimal investment in the presentation's outcome beyond it just existing.
No by all means, go off king! These are some great points!
Plus VHS could record for much longer then Beta(the latter could only record for one hour while VHS could record for as long as six hours depending on the format used).
I remember how much you could pack onto a bootleg VHS. For example the entirety of "The Ten Commandments", plus all the commercial breaks, was never a problem. Part of it was that the tape was truly physical and all it did was record the footage onto the tape. DVD struggled a bit when producers tried to pack too many features onto a single disc (I heard a lot of complaints way back when about the three versions of "Beauty and the Beast" on the Platinum release, though exact details escape me ... banding issues on the edges??)
Dated a girl who grew up in a strict household, not allowed to watch movies her entire life, and when she did watch them, it was only recent films and at home. I took her to see the Phantom Thread, which of course as PT Anderson movie, was shot on film. It took the entire first act for us to figure out why she thought it was blurry and I didn't. She'd never seen film grain on the big screen before.
One of the best pieces of advice I'd heard: "Listen to the music, not the master." Like you, I always want the medium to be presented as it was originally, but it got to the point I cared more about the 'quality' of the master than the actual product. All it did was made me enjoy things less. I still catch myself, but have mostly learned to let go and just enjoy what's playing.
Very well said. Reminds me of a line I gave a character in a book I wrote last year. Went something like “Listen to what I’m saying and not necessarily the way I’m saying it.”
I think the point I tried to make here is that I love watching stuff in as good of and as accurate to its original quality as I can. It is, at least in my opinion, a way of paying respect to the creator. But that doesn’t have to discount watching an inferior release of it or anything along those lines. The film is still good; it’s just different.
A lot of people who purists about the visual presentation of a film are only ever attached to the version and format they saw first - concluding that said version is how the film SHOULD look and never considering that format they first saw it in may not have been "accurate" from the start.
For me, as long as a film retains the same general tone and aesthetic, I'm fine with remasters tweaking the look.
I don't fully subscribe to the "how it originally looks is objectively better" mentality. The recent 4K remaster of THE RAID comes to mind. Pretty much everyone universally agrees the film looks leagues better in the new remaster than the original version - which had bluish-purple, softer, more digital look.
Thank you for doing this. This topic has been super important to for many many years now. It is not discussed enough. It drives me nuts, actually.
Great video! Really love hearing such a well thought-out and passionate analysis of our current state of film restoration and presentation, good and bad.
Wow the work you put into this one video is outstanding. Congrats on assembling such a thorough and entertaining video. And “surface level look”? Don’t sell yourself short my friend. This is very knowledgeable and comprehensive. Just sub’d. Looking forward to checking out other videos.
I can't believe you got through this whole thing without mentioning the awful deep blue filter added to some of the blu-ray releases of the Lord Of The Rings movies, while it was not added to some others.
I’m not much of a LotR guy, so I wasn’t aware of it 🤷♀️
Even the newest remastered and 4K extended edition were basically re-corrected using the same scan from the deep blue filter version. It was not a new scan. They basically took the blue filter movie and added bit of red and green filter with some de-saturation touch up to counter it.
I did hear that Minority Report was made super blue for the DVDs!
I dislike the new lotr releases. Things like removing the orange hue from Rivendel strip them of their magical, ethereal and eternal sunset quality. It's like Jackson forgot movies are art and realism is only one form.
I'm glad ypu mentioned The Matrix here. I never saw it at the cinema but watched the DVD I had of it religiously, and in the DVD the scenes set in the Matrix were barely green at all, they had a more brown tint to them than anything. For _years_ I assumed that must've been how it really was, and that any changes to that were made retroactively... but it turns out the green had been colour corrected out of it all along and I only found that out like 20 years later...
Film is beautiful, give me all the film grain. My thing is, there's nothing wrong with alterations, but make sure that it's clear that it's an alteration AND include the original version. Don't let original versions go lost.
Great video! Makes me want to do a similar deep dive into games. Textures and assets aside, it's flabbergasting how many games change their color palettes for remasters, and I have started becoming very averse to it. At best, the original vibe is preserved. At worst, formerly dark creepy areas are rendered bright as day and everything is oversaturated.
It’s an interesting subject for sure (could t help but notice Sonic the hedgeboy in your pfp and think about how Sonic Adventure is a great example of changes to lighting and character models.
Interesting video! thank you for your work on it
I was not expecting a cameo appearance by Rich Evans on the big screen. 🤩
This was a fantastic video. Thank you so much.
Man, I had so many thoughts going into this video, but you were so comprehensive that I don't even know what I could meaningfully add to the discussion. I agree with just about every point you brought up. I am relatively new to collecting and choose to buy all my films on 4K Bluray due to higher bitrate and color space, with the sole exception of T2. Speaking of which, I'd love to know how you found the 35mm scan (asking for a friend).
17:34 _"By shifting the look of a movie with little regard for the context behind it, you're basically communicating to me that you look at a film as being less a piece of work with a thesis and deliberate choices put into it and more as content."_
Précisement! Don't expect us to treat you seriously if you can't treat yourself seriously.
I add grain to my films - I don't think films look filmic without it. I will never understand this new-school obsession with over-sharpened, high-framerate nonsense. It looks "fake" - I really like old school film- the grain, the imperfections, the way film handles light and shadow, and the specific film framerate! It DOES matter.
I tend to add grain to personal projects too, so I see where you’re coming from. Digital can look really, really good in a lot of cases but there’s something special to how celluloid looks.
Thanks a lot man, this was packed full of information I had always made assumptions about but honestly didn't know enough about the formats and processes to truly grasp. I really appreciate the time and effort you put into the research for this.
How on earth did they miss the car hardtop in American Graffiti? That thing makes a sore thumb look positively stealthy.
The analogy to record fuzz is a good one and I understand it. But . . . most music was recorded on magnetic tape and mixed/mastered before being put on vinyl. I guess it gets back to the "death of the artist" vs their "original intent." Who decides, the fans individually or collectively, the artist/artists, the owners? If you wanted to see it like it was in the theater and weren't able to go see it in the theater and can't afford the film, projector, and theater, maybe it's always going to be analogous to listening to a recording from someone's mobile phone of a concert you didn't attend.
Or maybe the remastering is the fuzz?
I pretty much never assume that the tape hiss or vinyl fuzz was intentional, unless it is there on only a small part. No artist seems to ever rerelease the digital version with that stuff.
But film grain does sometimes seem to be intentional and intentionally used.
First of all great video and it is a genuine pleasure to listen to someone who so obviously loves film. I hope your channel grows and grows and grows.
What I really love about cinema is that it's a CONVERSATION. It's the art that exists as a connection between the creator and the consumer. A lot of directors and producers will insist that they are the ultimate arbiter of what a film is or isn't. They can, of course, tell you what they intended. But, once that film is released into the world, it only has life because of the way it affects people. I really appreciate you being part of that conversation.
For my part, I tend to be a little more DNR-friendly because sometimes the choice of film stock or lighting conditions was dictated by budgets. It's not always true that the final result is an expression of intentionality. Sometimes it's just an expression of what could be done. Many years ago, someone who actually knew Chaplin told me something. Chaplin, apparently, would have preferred to present his films in 24fps full color with sound. It just wasn't possible. So for a film like The Godfather, yeah color timing and grain are important. But on the other hand I suspect Amy Heckerling would have used wide-gamut digital to make Fast Times at Ridgemont High if she could have. It would have been truer to the way the time and place actually looked.
Point is, it's a pleasure to talk film even through a medium like UA-cam comments, especially when we can disagree. Well done.
Thanks for the comment. I really appreciated it.
I think you raise some good points that, sometimes, the film stocks used come down to budget (such as with Smith’s Clerks.) and I do also agree with your point about death of an artist and how, at a certain point it’s not up to the creators how a work is looked at anymore. There’s a fascinating push and pull that can’t be broken down into a simple black/white “editing a completed work is always okay or not okay” line of thinking for sure.
One thing I’m curious about though is your Chaplin comment. I’ve always been under the impression that he held off on sound for a decade because he thought the Tramp’s appeal played better in silence! Then again, maybe both your and my statements are correct, just for different periods of his life haha
On the other hand, here in the UK, BBC2 and channel 4, gave us amazing access to the world's films on mere cathode ray TV sets all for the price of a liscence fee
Hi, very interesting video, I love the movie restoration, and how different they look.
Also, where did you find the Terminator 2 35MM scan clip please?
I’d be VERY careful accusing CRTs of being unable to represent colors well. TV screens underwent a regression when moving to flat panels - guess what people cared about most - and from about 2005 to 2015 a lot of images were duller, with washed out colors on LCDs, and high black levels in plasma and LCD.
The era 2005-2015 is important because it’s impacting us now, as we’re just noticing the new content being made in better equipment. The HDR age is now the first time in the last 20 years we’ve been able to show strong colors - and this applied to computer screens too: Graphics went through a period after 2005 where they went bolder and more saturated, in an attempt to counteract the new displays. None of this was very conscious: Designers just noticed how dull their 1990s designs looked on the modern monitors. Finally we’re coming out the other side now.
And just a warning: Comparing screenshots of different releases using a JPEG montage (hosted on a Twitter post) is totally unfair. You can’t make a screenshot and assume that the image is “right”, even more so with the person receiving the image. It’s a shame every time someone posts these (without a color board) and presumes they’re indicative of whatever problem they’re describing.
So when it comes to “viewing movies on iPhones”, ironically, their screens are BETTER for one purpose: Every iPhone from the 12 onwards is a good reference point for color, including HDR color.
Hey thanks for commenting. I could be wrong here, so by all means correct me if I am, but I don’t think I was wrong to say that CRTs couldn’t represent colors accurate to film. As I showed in the video, they were unable to create as many colors as many film stocks could. So it’s safe to assume they probably simplified things and showed more vibrant shades of less colors on screen, isn’t it?
As for graphics going bolder and more saturated, I don’t know if I agree with you there. Bleach bypass cinematography and the move to digital color grading had a pretty fundamental effect on how movies looked back then, sure, but I don’t know if we can say that’s reasonable causality. It could just be a look that happened to grow popular in tandem with the movie to plasma/LCDs.
As for your comment about JPEGs: yeah, you aren’t wrong to call it unfair in theory but I’m pretty sure I actually showed footage of the two pieces of media I was referring two when I showed those images (Trainspotting and Sailor Moon). Not to mention, I went out of my way to compare shots between old and new releases of those things (or manually color correct the footage myself in the case of Sailor Moon). Color boards would have been a nice touch there though, I suppose. But I also think the way I handled it was fine for the intent of the video-a surface level look at something I found interesting.
Your iPhone comment makes sense. I don’t really disagree with you there.
@@NicheCaesar plus sixth-generation video games actually look better on CRTs then they do on HDTVs due to the higher refresh rate and there's basically no input lag, you occasionally run into issues playing older games on HDTVs(like the one mission in GTA San Andreas where you have to do a rhythm mini-game but the input lag makes it very hard to do on an HDTV).
@@NicheCaesar Yes, you are correct about CRTs not being able to accurately represent the original 35mm colors. That's the whole reason they regraded them. Same reason DVDs got degrained, DNR'd to hell, edge enhanced, since many consumer TVs couldn't output high resolutions. I actually have a professional video monitor that goes up to 1080i and it looks stunning, especially for video games. But most people did not have those so the home video products were curated for the majority of consumers.
Having black bars on a screen is better than forcing one aspect ratio to be another one. And it goes both ways. I would rather have black bars on my screen during a movie than be missing a huge chunk of the frame.
Technology not only helps film but also hurts it.
Truth is that even when presented in theaters at the time they weren’t EXACTLY seen how the director envisioned.
Lens issues, build variation, projection screen age all manipulated the look, and that’s completely ignoring sound.
Today we have 75” televisions on our walls and you can go to websites to get EXTREMELY specific settings to give you the “best image possible’.
If you are an Apple fan, the shows and movies they make for Apple TV are created in such a way that if you use your phones camera it can make adjustments to give you more accurately what was intended by the creator.
The thing is that there are people who think the best way to listen to music is via album/record which is objectionally wrong, but it MIGHT be the way THEY like it most.
For all we know Sydney Pollack might have HATED grain but his only experience in filmmaking is that you always have it. They are mutually exclusive.
The key to film is if YOU enjoy it. Yes, to preserve these movies for eternity as they were would be the goal, but what it all comes down to is if it still stirs the soul of the viewer. Inspire a tear, cause you to drift to anger, or leap to forgiveness. They made these stories to make you feel something and that will always be the most important aspect of film.
Honestly appreciate the video. It's a subject that deserves more attention!
It's a common myth that Terminator 2 was degrained only because of the 3D, but it's actually just that James Cameron *really* doesn't like grain and wanted it to be smoothed out even in 2D. Titanic's original 3D master actually had grain (though the most recent re-release was changed to be degrained and AI upscaled.) There's an infamous story of him working on an Aliens laserdisc and botching the transfer with heavy degraining, in addition to colour/contrast issues that resulted from him insisting they use his own poorly-calibrated personal home TV to grade the film, so he's been at this since even the 90s. The declarations that it was a mistake or just something for a 3D version were, sadly, just cope as people wanted to believe that James Cameron was too smart to want his film degrained like that - sadly his skill as a director doesn't translate to genius in mastering or remastering a film for video.
Weirder still, True Lies had an existing 4k master made for streaming that was already DNR'd enough on its own, the AI upscaling was just added on top of that at Cameron's insistence to try and artificially add more detail and zap out yet even more grain from an already-tampered master. It's worth noting also that all the Cameron 4k remasters since Avatar 1 in 2023 were done by the same folks behind the Beatles Get Back restoration, Peter Jackson's Park Road Post, using the same AI processes. Worryingly, it seems that what started as just isolated to PJ's own projects is being shopped out for use on other films, and could become more prevalent over time in film restoration - though I really hope it doesn't.
Do you have a source on that True Lies comment? My understanding is that the existing master for True Lies was the D-VHS master, which is an offshoot of the DVD one. It’s even been said that the new True Lies’ 4K is actually that same 2K scan just upscaled to 4K (and with new color timing)
As someone who finds themself obsessed with alternate versions of th ings like games and anime, I found this really interesting and I appreciated the optimistic angle at the end
I'm a huge nerd when it comes to quality and fidelity (professional photographer here) and what I find fascinating about this whole subject is how we keep getting different "takes" on movies every 5-10 years as digital technology keeps evolving. Some takes turn out to be more valid than others, but ultimately an original 35mm film negative that's processed, pass after pass, and transferred onto a print that may or may not get stored properly makes the entire operation something of a moving target right from the get go. So these digital "takes" IMO end up being useful as something to consider and debate in the hopes that we get an even better take the next time around. It's frustrating to know I'm watching a picture that has way more peachy-pink-magenta to it than originally intended (hellooooo Home Alone) and yet it's also kinda exciting to see a picture I know well given a different mix.
Also, I'm a musician who's done a fair deal of production and mixing, and the same exact thing goes on in the world of audio with remaster after remaster. There's one random 1985 dance-pop song I love that I've found about 12 original '85 mixes of (album, 7" single, FM radio, video, extended, club, dance, dub, no vocals, etc etc) AND THEN you get into the remasters that were done to it over the decades (hellooooo loudness wars).... it ends up giving me one piece of songwriting that I've heard 15+ different "takes" on, and that's not including any remixes, official or otherwise.
Long story short (congrats to you if you're still reading this overlong self-important BS) I've gotten conditioned to the idea that so much media will get reimaginings as digital tech keeps improving, and there's a little validity to almost every version.
Yeah, and I think I said as much in the video itself. It's a moving target and you're never going to please anybody like you said, which is why I think the answer lies in just giving people the option (to use music like you mentioned, similar to how people can choose between a radio edit, a 12", or even between the original mix/a new one in the case of stuff like The Beatles library on streaming).
There's validity to every version, but there's a tendency towards revising works and allowing the revision to supercede the original
Just wanna say as a professional colorist- so glad people care about this and are having these conversations. It is all indeed very subjective and down to a case by case basis.
Im also curious about whats been done in some of these cases but at the minimum a dedicated and caring colorist or restoration expert should be in the room supervising the entire remaster of any of these. The news about some studios just blindly using AI sharpening and upscaling is gross. There are many tools in the toolbox but they should be used with care and intent.
That’s really all I’m saying too, and it’s a relief to hear a working colorist agreeing with me after a few weeks of getting the odd dragging comment down here lol. It’s not a black and white thing at all and it’s very case by case. Grain removal, recoloring, etc are all tools that should absolutely get used (and one can make a case for AI upscaling too, perhaps as a way to punch 2K effects shots up).
I still can't figure out what you mean by American Graffiti and a power window. What am I supposed to be looking for in that scene?
Nothing Beats Original 35mm Film Look in case of most movies.
I just found your channel and your content is interesting. I noticed a gap of a few years in your output and hope that the recent content means everything is okay. I like film grain. I saw a movie in 4k at a friend's house on a huge tv and the image bugged me since, to me, it looked like I was watching the action happen right in front of me in real time. I realized I like that 'one level removed' look of movies I might see today in the theater.
Hey, thanks for the comment. Yes, I took a break for several years due to health stuff (and technically didn’t even take a long break due to shifting to covering retro video games for three years), but I’m back and I’m gushing about movies again lol.
That’s a very interesting comment you left there. I can see how some might find larger screens too immersive
Excellent video, thanks!
The open source AV1 codec that streaming services are transitioning to supports grain synthesis. The encoder analyzes the grain, removes it from the picture (for compression purposes), and adds a description of the grain into the file for the playback device to add back in later. I'm not sure if companies are going to use this or not, but the tech already exists. I've messed around with it and while it's not perfect, I certainly prefer it to just total grain removal, where everything looks like a watercolor painting.
I was also under the impression that film grain was removed primarily because it doesn't work properly on lower resolutions. It's not perceivably grain but just blotches. And that, with 4k Blu-ray, we're finally at the point where it can be preserved.
Though I wouldn't assume every director wants that film grain, and wouldn't have preferred less or even none.
In a world where the whole process can never touch film, you don't always see film grain added. Sometimes they leave it out.
We can't always assume the film grain is intentional.
While you aren’t wrong to say not every filmmaker may have wanted grain there, we also gotta factor in death of the artist to some degree and also the fact that, had they wanted zero grain, they could’ve used a stock that would’ve been less prevalent or lit the scene slightly differently. There’s a push and pull to it, ya know?
Plus it comes down to understanding the science. Movies used to be shot on film and grain is part of the process that allows film to get captured. Scraping it off, even if they didn’t want it there in the first place, is counterproductive because it’s a part of the image itself. It’d be a bit like removing pixels from a digital image - yeah, you can do it (and I do it all the time for hot/red pixels), but you can easily lose something important in the process
Really great thoughts in the video, I too lean more towards trying to get it as close to the original presentation as possible, and thankfully there are a few boutique labels that feel the same way that we do in restoration. It is a shame that so many popular money makers have this issue of revisionism by studios (and even the directors themselves), but your video gives a lot to think about with the pros and cons. It is like you said, a great movie just needs to be set in front of people and be seen.
Ironically, the less mainstream movies sometimes have an advantage. The B & C-list titles that get released by Warner Archive often end up with better presentations than the A-list titles released by Warner Home Video.
What camera do you use? Your shot is pretty fucking good, ive been thinking about it all through the video. It looks almost analog
Nikon Z6 with a 28mm F2 (I think) lens. Shot flat and then punched up in post with a three-strip technicolor LUT I’ve used for years and some dirty 35mm grain at 50% opacity.
Another example of color changes and quality loss is Super Sentai (the Japanese source footage for Power Rangers). Home video releases of the late 90s-early 2000s Sentai shows had their colors washed out due to the fact that Toei used old analog tape masters on the DVDs instead of the original 16mm film masters.
congrats on the a) algorithm game, this got video got delivered straight to the first row of my recommended : D b) catchy title, c) great video! I know nothing about movies haha, but listening to this not only did massively educate me on the film technicalia, but also left me with a thought that different restorations could also be akin to different interpretations of a work? Fascinating implications. Thanks for the video!
That’s a very good point; it is definitely a thing where the film can be reinterpreted by the new grades/look. But I’m also left wondering whether those new interpretations are done as an actual attempt to create new meaning, or if they’re just a random occurrence caused by the process itself.
Pretty fascinating stuff to think about!
Imagine watching a movie and being like "This grain is slightly off"
It’s a good thing nobody does actually does that. It’s not unreasonable to want to watch a movie in good quality/a way that actually lets the movie resemble the way it was shot/intended to look.
Particularly because of the colour re-gradings, I have never felt less excited by classic movie re-releases than with this current UHD era.
I'm so tired of seeing this greenish blue added to every movie to make them look like modern films.
Terminator 2 remaster made for the 3D re-release was the one that made me realise that. Granted the blu-ray already was a bit too blue, still, it was not a betrayal to the original look. The film always felt cold and metallic, which was perfect for its own subject on both narrative and aesthetic levels. Infusing warmer greenish blue and blacks and contrasted red in this film was a complete nonsense…
And now, I'm on the hunt for the best releases from the past. I understand the basics of the remastering process and know that colour will never be the same twice for each new transfer and release. But colours and contrasts changing a bit are one thing. Removing the natural colours and giving a movie a look that it could not even have at the time it was made is just wrong.
Great video. I collect physical media and always want to get the best quality of a film possible, whilst also staying true to the original. A lot of boutique labels often get director or cinematographer approved scans/grades which can still have issues with DNR, but are still the best way to watch those films currently.
Fantastic video! As someone who for a while knew a lot about this stuff im so happy you brought up sailor moon and dbz!
Sailor moons tinted colors particularly sits with casual fans and new one i think in particular because of those 90s anime aesthetic accounts that already botch the colors and add fake subtitles so it’s gotten to the point where that idea has gotten to be part of sailor moon identity, at least in the US.
Dbz is a whole other bag of worms that like you said totally not marks video goes over wonderfully. My main gripe is funi/crunchyroll had a amazing remaster with the dragon boxes which got sourced from toei themselves. The only issues on that release is the color which is because its the raw colors from the film, if I remember correctly toei didn’t color correct it. Which i dont mind its a 291 episode show thats a big undertaking for how faded the colors have become. But not only did it have good visuals it also had the jp credits in the op/ed, the next episode previews, and the jp title cards. The only thing the dragon boxes lack is the original dub music, which even if i dont like it, it should be on there. So for fans of the dub score there is genuinely no good official release of the whole show for them with good video quality. They have the single dvds with 4eps each that didnt fully come out, they have the level sets which didnt fully come out, and they have the orange brick season sets, bluray season sets, and the 30th anniversary/steelbook sets. Which as you and mark pointed out for those last 3 are godawful releases.
If you took the time to read all of that I genuinely thank you, its not often many bring up dbz and sailor moon’s home releases outside of our own community so thank you for spotlighting them along with all these other movies!
Love the enthusiasm here and happy you appreciated the section! I almost cut them because they aren’t movies, but I felt like they were such clear examples of grain removal/color shifting in media that I simply had to include them (it also helps that Toriyama passed right as I was writing this and that spurred me to rewatch some of the original via the AB Group Blu Ray)
Back in the late 90s when DVDs started to replace VHS prerecorded movies, the source masters for making the DVD was often the same master used for VHS tapes, thus there was very little improvement in quality of the movie on DVD. If there was a Laserdisc version, the laserdisc master was used. I have older DVDs that I can see the exact same imperfections as the copies of the movies I bought on VHS or laserdisc. And, the disc compression could be extremely bad with DVDs that tried to pack too many episodes of a TV series onto a disc. A good example is the original DVD release of Sex and the City, extremely bad even at the time.
Can those little boxes access "Stranger Than Fiction" from year 2000 or "You're Dead..." from the year before?
This really makes me grateful that I got to see Eyes Wide Shut for the first time on 35mm.
That was a fantastic video, thank you for your hard work. You've just reminded me of the Predator which I think must have been the most DNR'd film ever! 😆
I have just enough colorblindness to not always see the tints you're talking about, but I have to say, Sailor Moon never struck me as a show that was trying to look "pink" most of the time, especially compared to something like Steven Universe whose color palette is deliberately full of pinks and purples and pushing every other color well into that direction.
I could see an argument that grain removal is in fact "restoring" a movie to the way it looked IN REAL LIFE, on the studio set and all, but maybe we're just settling for the look of TV tape cameras.
It's always great to encounter new insightful creators like you that talk about these niche-esque topics. I'm very happy to have found your channel.
Another example is the 1992 blu ray releases of hard boiled. The dragon dynasty release of the movie removed the grain and made the colour seem too dark. But when cn entertainment released the movie in 2019 they restored the grain and colour from early releases. Unfortunately the rights and reels for the movie are floating in rights hell but that last release may be accurate to how it originally looked. Also bonus: john woo's bullet in the heads taiwanese cut had some extra footage that wasn't shown in the theatricle cut. But due to how badly preserved that taiwanese reel looked the film reel had a blue tint. So a specific dvd copy just repackaged the theatricle cut while adding in the scenes from the reel. So it will jump between regular cut and the blue exposed tint of the taiwanese reel.
Personally, home video releases should strive to stay as closely to the cinematic versions as possible, not only in terms of aesthetic, but also adding/removing scenes or SFX. Looking at you George Lucas! Seamless branching allows movie companies to add in or remove stuff, while preserving the original cinematic cut. And if the changes are so big that it doesn't resemble the original cut anymore, they should add this version on a second disc and call it the directors cut, or whatever. And with director's cut, I also mean visual changes, such as color timing, grain removal, etc.
Great video! But I didnt notice a change with the film grain snap change example? Ive tweaked my tv to give the most accurate color tones and i turn off smoothing n crap like that.I do notice grain in movies that have it. No that it bothers me at all
Unfortunately UA-cam’s automatic compression is so egregious that it really masked the difference. It’s still visible if you watch this in 4K on a decent sized screen (monitor or tv), but nowhere near as clear as if you watch the raw export.
That said, I saw my hands showing some signs of it from my phone just now.
The color grading on "Terminator 2" is definitely revisionist but I don't mind it because it still fits with the overall color palette of the film. It looks cooler than before but it was always a very cool film and the warm scenes are still warm. If anything, the cool & warm color tones are even more extreme, which is different but is also definitely a deliberate choice which reinforces the visual themes of the film.
If you want to see a truly terrible teal push on a movie, it's unforgivable what Warner Bros. did to the 4K of "Batman (1989)." The color white just doesn't exist in that movie any more. And while it's always been a very dark, cool movie, Tim Burton also seemed very deliberate in his choice of where to add warmth to the image. The 4K version just adds a filter to the whole thing and never tweaks it. What's worse, attempts to "modernize" the film's look completely fly in the face of the film's deliberate 1930s retro aesthetic.
It’s funny you mention Batman 89 because I actually rewatched it last week and thought it looked different from how I remembered my old DVD looking
@@NicheCaesar My moonization does a nice video comparing the 4K with the 2013 Blu-ray release (which looks fairly similar to how I remember my old 2005 DVD release). He does a lot of these comparison videos and often I can't tell much of a difference, particularly when watching them on my phone. But it's immediately clear what they did to "Batman." ua-cam.com/video/DRgNb6P0bIk/v-deo.html
As long as they don't mess with the 3 Shells scene in Dredd.
Laser discs are actually analog, surprisingly
Scrubbing grain away from film is the equivalent of raising the volume of music until it peaks - it may appear "better" but you're ruining the details and the source if that makes sense. The trick is to do it JUST enough to maintain the details and original Integrity of the source (because yes, raw film scans CAN be EXTREMELY grainy), and if fans still hate every tiny speck of grain, it's not that hard to digitize a film (or find a digital version) and run it through whatever software you personally prefer. You can also crank the shit out of your songs in Audacity and export them if you like the way that sounds.
I really liked that loudness war comparison. Good stuff (and yes, you’re absolutely right. Fan scans of poorly preserved prints can be very grainy and inaccurate to how a film might have actually looked back in the day. It’s a complicated issue haha)
I think the thing about noise reduction is it's necessity changes depending on the format and the industry can be slow to adapt.
On DVD it makes perfect sense, most the grain is lost at such a low res anyway. Only keeping some of it clumped together in big blobs looks worse than just wiping it entirely & the low res hides the drawbacks.
Blu-ray you had to be more careful, but both approaches could still work. The res was high enough to keep the grain whilst looking clean, but the res was low enough that you could reduce it without too much visible smoothing,
UHD Blu-Ray however does not mix with noise reduction. We're at a high enough res to preserve the original grain pattern perfectly (atleast to the naked eye), and any meaningful reduction leads to horrendous smoothing. I think back to LOTR: The Two Towers where so much detail was rubbed away it looked DVD quality at points.
The problem was when UHD was new companies used the same methods as with Blu-Ray which is why many of the worst offenders came relatively early in the formats life.
However you also have to consider the most popular format in the modern day, streaming.
We see massive differences in Bitrate from service to service and even title to title, Bitrates below 8mbs are not uncommon even at 4k and even the best are a third of UHD Blu-Ray. The lower the Bitrate the harder it is to cope with a noisy image, which is why newer digital titles look substantially better than older film ones even at a fraction of the Bitrate. Noise Reduction therefore acts as a trick to save on Bandwidth, and if you know the streamers are going to compress the hell out of your film anyway it could be the correct choice.
Funny that you mention Criterion Collection (which I love) when even they have had their controversies over the past few years (the Wong Kar-Wai restorations and the pink sky in Tarkovsky's Mirror). Controversial restoration choices are inescapable lol.
Great editing work on this bro 👍🏻
I'd like to offer a counterpoint, that sometimes *some* amount of grain removal is absolutely necessary. Warner Bros. released several (otherwise very nice) Blu-Rays of Looney Tunes. This is 50-100 year old film. A little over *90 year old* film stock at the oldest end...and a lot of it was poorly preserved. They applied no grain reduction whatsoever, and slapped it all onto Blu-Ray at ~15 Mbps. The end result is a mess where the extremely high level of grain actually gives way to macroblocking and color smearing. A light amount of DNR would've done miles for those discs. It's a bit of a moot point since they completely stopped the physical releases when they realized they could lock the continued releases of those older shorts behind MAX and Boomerang...
And I say this as someone who hates the Madame Tussauds look of the newer T2 master, owns both "Level" Blu-Ray discs of Dragon Ball Z (and "obtained" the streaming versions of the two unreleased Level discs), and has also gone as far as hunting down 35mm film scans of movies.
Very well said (but worth mentioning that I actually say something along those lines at some point - DNR is a tool that is absolutely worth using. It just gets abused a lot.)
@@NicheCaesar the example you showed of grain + extra compression + UA-cam compression immediately reminded me of those Blu-Rays :)
it's sad, because if the hypothetical adventurous or technically savvy viewer wants to do something once "too much grain compressed way too much" has happened, you have to resort to nearly the same level of destructive filtering as the bad examples you showed
On the film grain subject. The AV1 codec has an interesting solution to both remove for compression and also preserve it. Basically theres a part of the encoder that can sample the grain profile and create an algorithm to recreate the grain during decode and display. This seems to be more than what some releases have done with hrain removal and then artificial slapped on, it's a more natural implementation in my experience.
I played around with the SVT AV1 encoder quite a bit for a 2010 era anime, especially with the grain removal and sampling. It's certainly not exactly the same, it's not going to keep randomness and be more of the same across the whole frame. But for the anime I used, i actually was able to get it to look 95% the same with nearly the same grain and still slightly cleaned up, was able to go from 4.8gb to 700mb.
You can adjust the intensity of the synthetic grain as well, past a point you can see the repetitive pattern, but generally you can get a decent look before that happens.
DVDs outselling Blurays: Cheaper players, (often) cheaper releases, virtually no DRM shenanigans (The DRM on DVDs has been broken for decades). And many people plain don't care about picture quality.
Really interesting video! Really enjoyed hearing the thoughts of someone who thinks very differently about film quality to me
Glad you enjoyed the vid! I’ll be the first to admit how petty some of my thoughts on this stuff sounded when I wrote it but I thought it was worth talking through all of it for a video, especially because it helped me learn to get over it and just remember to appreciate the movies themselves.
Great video on an interesting topic!
I was a little surprised you didnt delve into the recent Inland Empire 4K restoration, which has some very striking changes visually, perhaps even using AI to upscale it.
Also, you touch upon this a little but its also important to recognise that different releases can be based off of different prints. In the UK we had a restoration of Tarkovsky's Stalker put out by Curzon. It used an old dirty print that added to the grime and dank feel of The Zone, and is the way I watched it for the first time. I fell in love with how it felt. Alternatively, the later released Criterion edition is more accurate to Tarkobsky's vision, and has a different tone and feel to it. - The same film with 2 different releases on two different prints, giving the film a wholely different feel.
I didn’t feel the need to since another UA-camr has done a great video on it. It would’ve been a good one to though in hindsight; while I can live with a lot of the examples I showed here just fine, Inland’s 4K doesn’t sit well with me at all (to the point where I stopped watching it and bought the old DVD release the last time I watched it)
You seem like a nice guy, I enjoy listening to people who enjoy what they are talking about
Brother, you don’t know the half of it
The Criterion Trainspotting makes Scotland look more like Scotland- chillier!