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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

#161

Post by samtheDamned »

alexfoo wrote: post #136
mapontosevenths wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years back I had the sudden realization that I'd upgraded all my video equipment to HD and then 4k, but hadn't really done anything with my audio. So I went out and got nice equipment (Nice DAC, Headphones, Speakers, Etc). One of the first things I learned once I could hear music properly was that I had favorite "versions" of different albums. They truly are NOT created equally, but it's not something you can r…

> Once you can you really start to appreciate the work that folks like your friend do. That can be a real double edged sword. When you realise how good things can be it means many of the everyday/average things can become intolerable. I'm happy that I've got slightly dodgy eyesight in that I don't really care whether something is in HD or 4K (I can still tell if my wife has selected the SD version of a TV channel, an…

> The biggest test is that I can also drink most supermarket instant coffee without complaint.

I was the same way for years and appreciated it but unfortunately I did start to treat myself more and it's hard to go back, but my financial situation is also much better. I think it's valuable to stick with the lowest sufferable quality of something until you have the ability to meaningfully upgrade or improve upon it.

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

#162

Post by philistine »

thesuitonym wrote: post #92
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…

What happened to the early Pixar movies isn't at all the same, though. They weren't remastered, they were just transferred to a media that they were not originally mastered for.

I think you're ill-informed. The Pixar movies were re-rendered completely. They did not take a 35mm negative, or an old file, to transfer it. Pixar has the ability to load the Toy Story project files, and use the current version of RenderMan to make a new final version. It's completely unique among the industry.

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

#163

Post by cormorant »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #73
alexpotato wrote: post #14

A side story on the techniques for restoration: I'm guessing about 10-15 years ago I was watching a documentary on the re-release of Ken Burns Civil War. They were highlighting the digital tools they were using to restore and enhance the original film capture for new streaming services etc. They showed one of the restorers using a fascinating tool where one window was a video feed of the original film's "first pass"…

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.

Here's that short documentary if you're interested: https://archive.org/details/restoring-the-civil-war

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

#164

Post by [deleted] »

aomix wrote: post #74
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.

I never watched the widescreen version of The Wire they put out years ago but now I'm curious again. That show was a bone deep 4:3 product and the show plays with it constantly. Here is an interesting breakdown that made me really appreciate how clever they got while trying to be pretty subdued with the cinematography on The Wire https://vimeo.com/39768998

[deleted]

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

#165

Post by timonofathens »

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.

[dead]

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

#167

Post by sandspar »

fusslo wrote: post #72

personally, I started re-watching Mad Men JUST because of these errors! I love audio commentary, behind the scenes, and other looks behind the veil. I would love the ability to see more of unedited, 'raw', or 'mistakes' in older tv shows. Hell, I would even pay for it. Whats really interesting to me is that no one 'decided' what's worthy of inclusion like they do with behind the scenes stuff

You might want to look into workprints! They're versions of movies that are shown to test audiences, executives, or internal screeners. They're often pre-sound mixing, pre-editing, pre-VFX. So you get stuff like clip art explosions where later VFX will go, or bare production dialogue where you can hear the room echo and crew footsteps. They're super neat!

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

#168

Post by parkersweb »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #52
parkersweb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Through work I once got into conversation with the guy who did the re-mastering into 96kHz of the ABBA back catalogue. Up until that point CD re-releases of their material was apparently all converted from the cassette masters where they'd massively exaggerated the HF to compensate for the fact that cassette had a notoriously terrible HF response...

A few years back I had the sudden realization that I'd upgraded all my video equipment to HD and then 4k, but hadn't really done anything with my audio. So I went out and got nice equipment (Nice DAC, Headphones, Speakers, Etc). One of the first things I learned once I could hear music properly was that I had favorite "versions" of different albums. They truly are NOT created equally, but it's not something you can r…

I also spent quite a bit of time with some quite well known mastering engineers in a former career - many of them talked about the pressure to produce "loud" masters for CD, but how they were given much more creative freedom for vinyl releases.

Hearing the two masters side by side on some incredible speakers really gave me an appreciation for how different 'versions' of an album can transform the experience of the music.

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

#169

Post by djmips »

philistine wrote: post #162
thesuitonym wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to the early Pixar movies isn't at all the same, though. They weren't remastered, they were just transferred to a media that they were not originally mastered for.

I think you're ill-informed. The Pixar movies were re-rendered completely. They did not take a 35mm negative, or an old file, to transfer it. Pixar has the ability to load the Toy Story project files, and use the current version of RenderMan to make a new final version. It's completely unique among the industry.

But IIRC there was some color grading gaffe because the original colors were precompensated for film ( they originally filmed the renders ) - but this lead to oversaturation and color changes in the digital renders. So in some way they did meet a similar fate.

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

#170

Post by tonymet »

barbazoo wrote: post #158
tonymet wrote: post #119

Seems to have been a deliberate incident, just look at all of the free PR on social media from this “accident” . Has HBOMax ever been on Hackernews except for bad naming ? Their app isn’t otherwise noteworthy

Not working for me. This makes me think they're lazy and greedy, doesn't make me want to go and consume their slop.

i have to admit it worked for me. I recently rewatched madmen, but replayed the HBO distribution to see the 4k improvements. it's much more vibrant
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