‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes • Hacker News Board

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#31

Post by mkr-hn » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

willcipriano wrote: post #28

krispyfi wrote: post #20

It's times like this that I think that piracy is the only way to preserve pop culture.

I maintain a cultural archive of about 60 terabytes for this purpose. I have both the original and upscaled Simpsons and Seinfeld, but I mostly focus on stuff that people never think about (ever hear of Jon Benjamin Has a Van, that sort of thing). As storage mediums and formats change I carry it forward, last year I started adding YouTube creators. Eventually I'll hand that task off to my daughter if she also sees th…

You can always ship it to the Internet Archive if she doesn't and you can't find a way to maintain an independent copy. Maybe by then you can set up some kind of organization like IA for the replication value.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#32

Post by f0e4c2f7 » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

foob wrote: post #13

There's a great blog post by David Simon on the conversion of The Wire from 4:3 to 16:9 [1]. It goes into a lot of depth about some of the trade-offs and considerations as well as the lack of communication from HBO. Unfortunately, the video examples don't seem to work anymore. I can't help but wonder if HBO sent YouTube a DMCA takedown for David Simon's clips from the post (or they got taken down automatically). It's…

I remember reading that blog post at the time and being flabbergasted.

If I remember the details correctly HBO wanted to do a cut similar to the Netflix one and Simon (and maybe others?) Went back through the entire series and meticulously edited the shots to still have the same meaning / context.

The result by the way is incredible. The Wire is one of my favorite shows of all time anyway, but the fact that you can watch it today in such high quality is a real delight.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#33

Post by Bud » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #27

NelsonMinar wrote: post #16

Cropping is never the right choice for media presentation. Ever.

I think that it's much better for marketing it to a newer generation. I suspect that for somebody in their early 20s starting to watch Seinfield these days a 4:3 ratio would immediately make the show look dated. I mean surely they ran the numbers and figured out it was worth it? Otherwise it wouldn't be so common with so many TV shows. When I was a kid in the 90's I remember that it was not uncommon to have black-and…

"Make it look dated" is just not a good argument.

There is no good argument. Cropping out huge amounts of the actual material is not justifiable. End of story.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#34

Post by kristofferR » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

foob wrote: post #13

There's a great blog post by David Simon on the conversion of The Wire from 4:3 to 16:9 [1]. It goes into a lot of depth about some of the trade-offs and considerations as well as the lack of communication from HBO. Unfortunately, the video examples don't seem to work anymore. I can't help but wonder if HBO sent YouTube a DMCA takedown for David Simon's clips from the post (or they got taken down automatically). It's…

It's not really the same issue though, with The Wire they had access to original master footage that had a wider view, so the 16:9 versions didn't crop into the 4:3 footage, it just added footage on the sides of the image.

https://i.imgur.com/SK1sPD9.jpg

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#35

Post by goldenkey » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

lrem wrote: post #19

vadfa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The series was filmed in... film. There is no need for upscaling. They digitalised it from the film and it looks as if it was recorded yesterday.

Scanning with a better scanner can be confused with "digital remastering".

Spot on. The film can also be cleaned, restabilized, and restored using certain chemical agents but it's a risky procedure so most of the remastering is done post-process digitally after importing it using better scanners like you mentioned.

Film grains will always set a limit for how much resolution we extract from old film but it's really high. Current methods yield 4K to 8K from 35mm film but odds are with better interpolation technology that understands the interaction of light with the random spacing of the film grains, we could probably get something on the verge of 16K. No one has 16K TVs though, so it's a rather pointless exercise right now.

Still makes me curious, how much information is actually lost versus just computationally/physically obscured..

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#36

Post by fortran77 » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

iso1210 wrote: post #3

This was the case with Simpsons when it came onto Disney Plus - they took the 4:3 and didn't just blow it to 14:9, but 16:9 -- throwing away a quarter of the original image. There's now an option to show the original aspect ratio, I didn't discover it for a long time though. Amazon prime on my phone blows up 16:9 material too, chopping off the top and bottom to fit the wider aspect ratio, unless you're careful to 'zo…

The "Simpsons" on FXX is unwatchable. It's cropped/blown up to 16:9 and it looks like they took a scan meant for HD resolution and blew that up, so everything looks jaggy and blurry.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#37

Post by Bud » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

vadfa wrote: post #10

I-M-S wrote: post #7

I was under the impression the series will be digitally remastered and resolution upscaled, which doesn't seem to be the case?

The series was filmed in... film. There is no need for upscaling. They digitalised it from the film and it looks as if it was recorded yesterday.

For another striking example of this, see the original Star Trek series. It now looks 10x better than it ever did when originally shown on TV.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#38

Post by mkr-hn » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #18

tofukid wrote: post #12

Almost all TVs have an option to zoom to fit 4:3, so there’s no need to stream a cropped version. At least they should provide an option to view the original.

Done well, aspect ratio conversion involves editorial decisions: what part of the frame is most important to preserve? This isn't something TVs can automate. (Not advocating for cropping, though)

I imagine the situation will improve in the future with TVs that have one or two on-board cores for handling trained models (like Apple's newer chips) that can run models trained on editorial pan-and-scans and try to apply it as an alternative to scaling.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#39

Post by willcipriano » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #31

willcipriano wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I maintain a cultural archive of about 60 terabytes for this purpose. I have both the original and upscaled Simpsons and Seinfeld, but I mostly focus on stuff that people never think about (ever hear of Jon Benjamin Has a Van, that sort of thing). As storage mediums and formats change I carry it forward, last year I started adding YouTube creators. Eventually I'll hand that task off to my daughter if she also sees th…

You can always ship it to the Internet Archive if she doesn't and you can't find a way to maintain an independent copy. Maybe by then you can set up some kind of organization like IA for the replication value.

That's a fair point, the idea is also to preserve the media that we as a family consume. Growing up my dad would take me to the video store and find old classics from his childhood, the archive contains many of those as well as all of the stuff important to me. I hope that she will add her own media and then pass it to her children (should she choose to have them that is). What we choose to read, listen to and watch tells us so much about who we are as a culture and as a people.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#40

Post by dudul » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

krispyfi wrote: post #20

It's times like this that I think that piracy is the only way to preserve pop culture.

That and/or owning DVDs/BRs.

Most of my friends laugh at me for still buying physical media, but the reality is I don't trust streaming services, or IP owners in general really. There is no way my kids are growing up thinking that Han didn't shot first.