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AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them

nytimes.com

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Re: AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them

#141

Post by bmacho »

procflora wrote: post #15

Wow, that tweet they link to with a super punched in shot looks really really bad! Hard to believe Cameron thought this looked better than just a normal 4k transfer, yikes. Was really looking forward to a UHD release of The Abyss but now I'm not so sure... https://twitter.com/RazorwireRyan/status/1735753526167347232

> Hard to believe Cameron thought this looked better than just a normal 4k transfer, yikes.

Torrent people do this too, and movies is not their dayjob, but their hobby. I guess some people prefer the machine denoised look.

Re: AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them

#142

Post by ozymandias1337 »

ornel wrote: post #92
pimlottc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Direct image link: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GBaikRhX0AEcjuy?format=jpg

The "enhanced" image looks a lot like those retouched Russian photos from the Stalinist era

Exactly. It looks airbrushed as hell.

Re: AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them

#143

Post by bmacho »

efilife wrote: post #117
cchance wrote: post #115

Feel like the AI Upscaling was either done shitty or the screenshots they used are really bad examples, no reason AI upscaling should make all the images darker for some reason lol

The AI source was HDR and the author of this article had no idea you can't just take a HDR screenshot and display it on non-hdr displays

You absolutely can.

Re: AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them

#144

Post by samsk »

Maybe I'm old, but do we really watch the movies because they are sharper, have vivid colors, etc or because of the story ?

On the other hand, I would probably pay for an AI that will 'undark' that new super artistic movies, because some of them, have worse lighting than the Blair With Project...

Re: AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them

#145

Post by grujicd »

zo1 wrote: post #129
moomin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad you pointed that out, because literally all the “after” images look dreadful. But then im also of the opinion that most HDR content is too damn dark anyway.

That is a matter of opinion, and in all the comparison images, I think the AI upscaled one always looks better.

Static images don't tell the whole story. If motion blur is reduced by AI that could make final video worse since motion blur helps us perceive 24fps movement smoother than it is.

Re: AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them

#146

Post by lupusreal »

Solvency wrote: post #59
Rinzler89 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hard to believe Cameron thought this looked better I doubt he even looked, he's too busy with his blue monkeys these days. Most likely someone duped him on taking on the AI upscaling and he signed off on it without looking and the movie studio just shipped the output without QA to save time and money, because they're going to streaming not in cinemas.

[flagged]

Sick Boy's philosophy of life applies here.

Re: AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them

#147

Post by Negitivefrags »

crazygringo wrote: post #73
moomin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad you pointed that out, because literally all the “after” images look dreadful. But then im also of the opinion that most HDR content is too damn dark anyway.

> most HDR content is too damn dark anyway. It's not, though -- it's entirely the problem with players. Not just software players but also TV's. There are lots of TV shows now that are available in 1080p SDR and in 4K HDR. When you play them both on any player or TV, they should have the same brightness in "regular" scenes like two people talking in a room. They're meant to. HDR is only meant to make a handful of ele…

I'm not really convinced by this argument.

Isn't the actual issue that SDR content tends to be mapped so that 0 is the darkest colour the TV can display and 1.0 is the brightest colour the TV can display?

When an HDR signal comes along, then of course the brightest element it can display isn't any brighter than 1.0 was in the SDR image. This has the effect of the scene being overall darker in order to give more headroom for brighter elements to be brighter.

But what is the other option? Have SDR content be dimmer than what the HDR monitor would otherwise be capable of displaying? I doubt you will get as many sales as your competition with that approach because the TV that renders SDR as bright as it can will always look better.

(I do understand that there are some caveats relating to the fact that max brightness is different depending on the amount of the screen covered in brightness, but I don't think it's actually relevant to this argument overall)

Re: AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them

#148

Post by grujicd »

samsk wrote: post #144

Maybe I'm old, but do we really watch the movies because they are sharper, have vivid colors, etc or because of the story ? On the other hand, I would probably pay for an AI that will 'undark' that new super artistic movies, because some of them, have worse lighting than the Blair With Project...

Super dark scenes might work on OLED screen, but every projector I saw including those in theatres can't display real black and darkest shades are always a problem. It's not a problem if you have bright parts in the same scene since eye will adapt. But everything is dark it won't look good in cinema. That affected how movies were shot, lighted, which kind of scenes were filmed at all. I wonder if some of those newer movies are intended to look better on modern TVs than in movie theather?

Re: AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them

#149

Post by spacecadet »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #110
spacecadet wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, on a 28" flat crt sony trinitron from 1995

I inherited a 34” flat Sony Trinitron from a roommate moving out. He inherited it from the guy who sold him his house. It was the two inches shy of the largest CRT Sony made, and it was a damn 200 lbs (91 kg) white elephant. I eventually foisted it off on some deliverymen for free. They didn’t believe me when I told them the weight. When they finally lifted it, it was gratifying to hear one grunt, “Damn. I guess it r…

I had a 36" at one point, yeah took 2 of us to move it.

Re: AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them

#150

Post by spacecadet »

tedunangst wrote: post #121
spacecadet wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly to you. Again, to you. Since the film does not run in theaters indefinitely and at the time VHS was a common format, among others. Given film reciprocity and resolution related to period produced film stock and processing techniques, VHS and other reduced resolution formats from the same period, look better, to me! than rescans(4k, which super35 barely supports) and up-resing. Again IMHO because I guess people…

So I guess you just never watch movies from before 1980 or so?

I own equipment capable of view films and plates from any period of film production. I have processed and looked at found "film" from before 1900. I use quotes because it wasnt the same as today and many varieties of techniques existed to capture images or make moving images.
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