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The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle

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Re: The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle

#121

Post by philjohn »

rob74 wrote: post #31

Stories like this regularly make the rounds when movies or shows that the original creators put a lot of love and thought into are "remastered" on the cheap. The last one I saw was the story about the garish colors in digital versions of old Pixar movies - amongst others, they intentionally exaggerated green hues in the digital original to compensate for the transfer process to analog film stock which was less sensit…

See also the "remaster" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer not having proper colour grading done https://horrorbuzz.com/buffy-hd-issues-original-teams-reacti...

Re: The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle

#122

Post by [deleted] »

hovering_nox wrote: post #96
liampulles wrote: post #29

Fun fact: The X-Files production team foresaw the coming of 16:9 home entertainment, so they made some effort (increasing with later seasons) to try and "protect" a 16:9 frame, which allowed for an unusually good 16:9 Blu-ray restoration. [ https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/7499/look-inside-the-files... ] I learned this from the older X-files DVDs, which have some unusually good special features.

Although Stargate SG-1 (1997) was filmed in 16:9 from the outset, earlier seasons were broadcast in 4:3.

[deleted]

Re: The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle

#123

Post by op00to »

dbg31415 wrote: post #111

I don't get why they bother changing the aspect ratio in the first place. What audience is saying, "I want a weird one-off version of the show in HD, please"? Most of these shows were shot for 4:3. Directors framed for 4:3, lit for 4:3, blocked scenes for 4:3, and even built their special effects around 4:3. Stretching that work into widescreen feels a bit like deciding to colorize Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, or T…

> Viewers are already used to black bars, and we watch lower-resolution content constantly.

This is actually not as common as you think. It is common for "normies" to see 4:3 and think "This is not HD". People really, really hate black bars.

What's more surprising to me is that content providers don't keep stuff in 4:3 and just shove ads on the side.

Re: The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle

#124

Post by temp0826 »

sgt wrote: post #90
b112 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was recent (last few years) work done to fix all of this. https://www.modeemi.fi/~leopold/Babylon5/DVD/DVDTransfer.htm... I have these versions, and it's world better than everything beforehand. It's also a good opportunity for a re-watch!

A very well written show. It's crazy to think a lot of people don't even get to watch this, because it's so hard to find. I couldn't find it anywhere (except for DVD's) so I had to resort to torrents.

I loved B5's story, but no remaster is going to fix the cheeseball acting of the show. It felt 200 years old even when it was airing. (Sigh, I'm probably still going to rewatch it...)

Re: The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle

#125

Post by layer8 »

anal_reactor wrote: post #81
liampulles wrote: post #29

Fun fact: The X-Files production team foresaw the coming of 16:9 home entertainment, so they made some effort (increasing with later seasons) to try and "protect" a 16:9 frame, which allowed for an unusually good 16:9 Blu-ray restoration. [ https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/7499/look-inside-the-files... ] I learned this from the older X-files DVDs, which have some unusually good special features.

When you have an OLED screen then 4:3 aspect ratio is fine because the black bars aren't backlit, so it's not a problem.

Except when you do it too much, the 4:3 area will remain brighter due to the higher usage.

Re: The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle

#126

Post by forgetfulness »

Retric wrote: post #68
Plankaluel wrote: post #64

I think this is just another case of "over-optimization to make shareholders happy in the end ruins everything". I.e., the normal enshittification problem. Pretty sure all of that does make financial sense: - Being able to write 4k will bring people in to re-watching/watching the show for the first time. - Redoing the CGI, etc., would have cost a lot of money. - Very few people will cancel their subscription or stop…

Only if you’re optimizing for easily measured metrics alone. The value of a companies brand is not just some arbitrary number on a balance sheet it does influence the easily measured metrics like the number of customers you have across multiple segments in a noisy way. Which then influences your profits, which those institutional investors do care about. That said, the general public is more price conscious than most…

Reputation will only become more important as AI generated content permeates society, the name behind what you’ll read, watch or listen will be a bigger factor in whether anyone would commit minutes to hours to consuming what could be slop.

I think this erosion of trust will have far reaching consequences and people will become less open to ideas and experiences front strangers.

Running your brand into the ground in the early days will be costly.

Re: The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle

#127

Post by jjmarr »

gwbas1c wrote: post #82
actionfromafar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying it had anything to do with X-files, but also when you shot something for TV but were not entirely sure if the capture would ever go to the movies, you protected the wide frame. Also, if you shot a movie but wanted it to look good in TV later, you put the most important action somewhere in a 4:3.

Some movies were shot in 4:3 (ish) and cropped in the theater. Titanic is an example. (For the pedantic, yes there is a name for this technique, and yes the ratios aren't exactly 4:3.)

The term is "open matte" and is the ideal way of watching movies on folding phones.

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

Re: The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle

#128

Post by bsenftner »

ryandrake wrote: post #55
embedding-shape wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You would have thought people in the business would know about this. People in the business world seems to only know business, and that's the limit of what they care about. Place these people into the arts, and you quickly see how important it is to have at least a single ounce of care when you work on projects where you want some level of quality. But I think HBO, Netflix and most TV/streaming services are run by…

> People in the business world seems to only know business, and that's the limit of what they care about. You’d think these people would go off and be executives at a ball bearing manufacturing company or something and leave the arts alone, but it never happens that way.

It's all about prestige, which in my opinion is the #1 driver of human motivation.

Re: The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle

#129

Post by ErroneousBosh »

stogot wrote: post #80
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The documentary is no longer available (or, possibly, only available in the US), but the tool you're describing is pretty common in digital video editing. In DaVinci Resolve the dustbuster tool will look a few frames ahead and behind of the one where you want to paint out a mark, and make its best guess based on that. I've used it to paint out tape dropouts on VHS transfers with remarkable success.

Do you do VHS transfers professionally or your own personal VhS? Stacks of VHS sittin in a corner that I need to decide what to do with

I got into it because my parents produced a video about the area I grew up in, back in the late 80s, and I only have VHS copies. The master tape is probably lost but the guy who shot it said there might be a copy made about 20 years ago on DVD that the editor made for archival purposes.

Since then it's turned out that people want their old tapes copied over quite a bit. I don't do it "professionally" simply because I cannot afford to dedicate that sort of time to it, because people actually expect it to be done more quickly than "okay today I have a full day of Teams calls where I don't need to say much so I'll get on with something fun" ;-)

Re: The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle

#130

Post by dghlsakjg »

ryandrake wrote: post #55
embedding-shape wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You would have thought people in the business would know about this. People in the business world seems to only know business, and that's the limit of what they care about. Place these people into the arts, and you quickly see how important it is to have at least a single ounce of care when you work on projects where you want some level of quality. But I think HBO, Netflix and most TV/streaming services are run by…

> People in the business world seems to only know business, and that's the limit of what they care about. You’d think these people would go off and be executives at a ball bearing manufacturing company or something and leave the arts alone, but it never happens that way.

The wheels would fall off of modern society if ball bearings had quality issues like this.

I know that you are joking, but well-made BBs are incredibly important to just about any modern machine that moves, and indirectly, all the non-moving ones too.

Hell, Albert Speer, Nazi in charge of BBs and other manufacturing, said that the US bombing offensive would have had a huge impact on the war if they had just kept at it with bombing the BB factories instead of giving up.

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