
Bringing 4K and HDR to Anime at Netflix with Sol Levante - joubert
https://netflixtechblog.com/bringing-4k-and-hdr-to-anime-at-netflix-with-sol-levante-fa68105067cd
======
avhon1
Rather uniquely, the project's assets are released "for download and
experimentation" "to help the industry better understand 4K HDR and immersive
audio in anime". Although the article doesn't say, the assets are licensed
under the Creative Commons 4.0 (By-Nc-Nd) [1]. I know of only a few [2] other
[3] media projects that release their source material under such permissive
licenses. Although I am not personally in the market for 4K HDR media, I am
pleased that Netflix seems honestly interested in improving anime's production
tools and workflows, and granted such permissive access to something they paid
a lot of money for, and the artists put a lot of work into.

[1]
[http://download.opencontent.netflix.com.s3.amazonaws.com/Sol...](http://download.opencontent.netflix.com.s3.amazonaws.com/SolLevante/sollevante-
cclicense.txt)

[2] Blender's "Open Movies" [https://cloud.blender.org/open-
projects](https://cloud.blender.org/open-projects)

[3] David Revoy's "Pepper and Carrot" webcomic
[https://www.peppercarrot.com/](https://www.peppercarrot.com/)

~~~
diggan
Wow, seems like Blenders Open Movies push is really affecting the industry to
share more assets. Seems weird of Netflix not to publicize the choice of
license more, they can rightfully brag about being some of the few to
publishes source material like that.

Also found more material under the opencontent domain at Netflix, interesting
stuff:
[http://download.opencontent.netflix.com/](http://download.opencontent.netflix.com/)

~~~
willis936
Why publicize something that threatens your existence?

Kudos to Production IG for doing this, but I don’t think this is indicative of
CC commercial art. It’s just too contradictory in the current world we live
in.

~~~
diggan
I don't think it threatens their existence (but I'm not in that industry, so
hard to speak for them).

But I can imagine that if people get more experience with how the industry
works before they actually join, when they do join, it'll be easier for them
to get started, compared to now where the disconnect between production school
and actual production is very different.

Same reason studios are starting to adopt Blender, it's so much easier to get
experience and knowledge with, because you don't need to go through expensive
curses to learn it.

Of course, curses help speed up the education, but it's not longer a
requirement, just a helping tool.

~~~
willis936
I don't think CC threatens the livelihood of creative industries, but Netflix
isn't in a creative industry. I don't think Netflix, as a publisher, wants to
promote free and open licensing. Their only product is licensed content. I
suppose there could still be a market for a streaming service of free content,
but it isn't as safe as the way things currently work.

~~~
diggan
Maybe the service Netflix is not in the creative industry, but the production
company Netflix is absolutely in the creative industry, they produce their own
original content and shows. Netflix is not only a content provider but
producer as well.

------
dharma1
I've been using an LG OLED TV to grade HDR footage in Resolve (in ACES). They
don't quite hit 1000 nits but not too far off, and the colour accuracy is
excellent.

Will be interesting to see what the new microled displays will be like. With
those in an iPad (hopefully end of the year) you could draw directly on a HDR
display.

As an aside - I wish Procreate on iOS had full on animation capabilities. The
current layer per frame animation is super basic. If it had a proper timeline,
rigging, tweening, maybe even pose/face driven character animation from iOS
camera.. it would be amazing.

Would also be great if iOS supported professional video codecs - I think iPads
could be an all-in-one solution for many animators if the OS and software was
better.

~~~
ericlewis
Afaik the iPad pros from 2018+ are HDR, aren’t they?

~~~
jrockway
I have one and it doesn't seem like it. The iPad's display is actually pretty
bad compared to the iPhone, it just happens to be capable of a higher refresh
rate (but still not in Safari, sadly).

------
DoofusOfDeath
This is a technically interesting topic, but I hope it's not the main thrust
of Netflix's attempts to provide better anime.

I know this is subjective, but my enjoyment level for a given anime is
unrelated to it being in 720p vs. 4k. Death Note would have been just as
amazing in the 1990's, because it's all about the story. One Punch Man is just
as funny at 480p.

The only existing anime I can think of that _might_ benefit is those with
high-end 3D CG battles. For example, if someone did a really decent remake of
Robotech, maybe 4k would add some visual realism to the space fights.

~~~
zepearl
> _The only existing anime I can think of that might benefit is those with
> high-end 3D CG battles._

I agree - for example stuff similar to Evangelion (
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdU8dyjgXU0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdU8dyjgXU0)
).

A lot of good anime are good because they don't put a lot of effort into
cutting-edge graphics but on other elements (characters, story, animation,
etc) => using 4k and/or HDR might just drive up the costs without providing a
real benefit.

~~~
_bxg1
And on top of that, some of the technological "advancements" actually make
things worse. Personally I loathe the trend towards 3D-rendered "anime",
artificially stuttered to make it resemble a hand-drawn animation. The only
time such techniques are appropriate is when showing something mechanized.
Used on regular characters, it looks terrible. Knights of Sidonia was a great
show, but it looked really bad. The visually-best recent animes are ones like
Devilman Crybaby that really embrace the hand-drawn medium and run with it.

------
fxtentacle
This sounds like it could be a great inspiration for AI-based projects.

I understand that for their flagship production, they want people to draw true
4k all digital. But for most projects, I'd wager that a good AI upscaling and
cleanup can take a hand-drawn paper character to a usable 4K plate.

Similarly, I don't think the contractors doing in-between frames need to work
in HDR. It should be good enough to upconvert their images from SDR to HDR
based on the adjacent HDR keyframes.

As for the background images, I myself already felt frustrated a few times
when trying to get my 12MP SDR vacation photos displaying nicely on a 4K HDR
TV, so solving that problem might even have a consumer angle.

~~~
avhon1
There is actually precedent for that. Waifu2x [1] is an image upscaler for
anime-style art based on deep convolutional neural networks. As far as I know,
it's mostly used by people who want to upscale fan art they found on the
internet. It works pretty well, though, and it (or similar) could serve as a
basis for the kind of workflow you're talking about.

[1] [http://waifu2x.udp.jp/](http://waifu2x.udp.jp/)

~~~
willis936
Whenever I see that name, I immediately think “oh the poorly rebranded version
of NNEDI3”.

~~~
catalogia
I'd say it's well branded, for the target demographic of weebs. It's also a
generally memorable name.

~~~
willis936
Weebs are not the only target demographic of scalers, though. They simply
lifted the work of others to associate decent image scaling with anime fandom.
Importantly though, scalers shouldn't need a brand since they are not a
product. They are a tool that can be implemented, and to that end "neural net
edge detection" is much more informative and less likely to turn off an
audience than "waifu2x". waifu2x is a product name. All it tells me is
something about the publisher and their target audience.

~~~
catalogia
> _All it tells me is something about the publisher and their target
> audience._

Yeah, that their demographic is weebs... I'm not sure what your point is, but
mine is that waifu2x is effectively branded, not poorly branded.

~~~
willis936
“Effectively branded” would be branding for the audience that are ripe for
using the tool: almost everyone who watches video and has a high resolution
screen.

~~~
sudosysgen
waifu2x is optimized for anime.

Because of its anime upscaling success, it gained a lot of awareness and is
now used in more non-photorealistic images in general, with a very decent
popularity.

~~~
willis936
It was used that way before it was named waifu2x. It’s just NNEDI3.

------
royjacobs
Off-topic, but now I can't even read corporate blogs because Medium is forcing
me to log in. Sigh.

~~~
girvo
Same! When did they start doing that? Time to add medium to my hosts file...

~~~
thejosh
Yep. It's so very dumb that it now charges you to read content.

It's a great ploy, get authors (who probably don't realise there is now a
content gate) to post on your site, then start to charge visitors.

------
PudgePacket
How many of Netflix users can actually use 4k? I use firefox so I think 720 or
1080 is the max I can get .. nice

~~~
nfellaby
I think you'd be surprised.

From my perspective a large proportion of people in the UK have at least one
4K TV, (unfortunately) most of which are 'smart'. Carrying apps for Netflix,
Prime, BBC etc.

Add to that that the majority of houses contain a current generation games
console. From my perspective 4k in the UK has permeated most age groups and
economic groups.

It is easy enough for most households to obtain speeds that can support 4K in
the UK. The UK (as well as most of Europe I think) don't have data caps, means
there is very little concern about streaming 4K.

I think the BBC did a really good job in the earlier days of 4K in releasing
fantastic sports (Olympics & Football) and nature documentaries with David
Attenborough.

However, I appreciate that this is a small section of the overall Netflix
user-base and based on my somewhat bias viewpoint. I'm sure there are subsets
of the UK that would disagree.

~~~
Hamuko
> _From my perspective a large proportion of people in the UK have at least
> one 4K TV, (unfortunately) most of which are 'smart'. Carrying apps for
> Netflix, Prime, BBC etc._

Having a 4K TV with Netflix won't give you 4K Netflix. You need to actually
pay extra for it, about a third more.

~~~
Gwypaas
It also gives you 4 simultaneous users with the premium plan, which I would
guess most families use simply based on that.

~~~
karatestomp
If they’re sharing logins, maybe. I bet most families that manage to stream
four things at once almost never try to do so on a single service at the same
time. Can’t you still get Disney+ for about the price of upgrading to 4K
Netflix? Or some-ads Hulu.

~~~
Gwypaas
Of course, that's the point of the account to share logins, you still get your
own user with your own lists, recommendations and all that. Though, Spotify
handles it nicer where you can add your own account to the family group plan.

Not often, but often enough to become a nuisance with 2 TVs or so, some
tablet/laptop for school work/gaming/whatever and a mobile device per person.

Yeah, I think that's about right.

------
derefr
> While “3D CG” anime is becoming more popular — shows like Saint Seiya and
> Ultraman that are generated entirely on computers by 3D artists — most anime
> titles are still hand drawn.

Why are these the only two options, anyway?

"2D CG" (i.e. creating libraries of 2D "paper doll" parts for each visible
angle + keyframe, rigging them together using tools like Flash, and getting
automatic tweening out) is apparently a relatively inexpensive process, used
by shoestring-budget-per-title Western media companies like Hasbro Studios.

I think a 2DCG process _may_ have been used a few times as a stylistic choice
by Gainax (or they may have been fudging it using "2D-rotoscoped 3DCG"; not
sure), but it doesn't seem like any studio has looked into it as a budget-
saving technique.

------
longtermd
Please make 4K the standard for all Youtube videos and all streaming! <3 Let's
work on this together of putting quality first!

~~~
LeoTinnitus
I think that's rather ambitious due to the file sizes. Plus most phones barely
due 4k still.

~~~
ehsankia
Monitors too. There's a rise in 2k but still very few 4k monitors out there.
Also even if phone's did 4k, is it really work on a 6" screen?

~~~
zionic
4k monitors have been $350 or less since 2015. I know because I got one then.
There's far more 4k screens than 1440p (wrongly called 2k by some people).

------
Causality1
I've given up on 4K and HDR with Netflix. It's just too much hassle trying to
keep straight which platforms they support which features on in addition to
making device purchasing choices that are least likely to fuck me when someone
decides it doesn't support a fancy-enough DRM scheme or even isn't worth
maintaining support for at all. Buy a streaming box, Netflix drops support.
Buy a smart TV, Netflix drops support. I watch my background noise shows on
Netflix but if there's a viewing experience I actually care about I download
it.

~~~
Mindwipe
Netflix has literally never dropped support of a 4K/HDR set-top box or
television. Ever.

~~~
Causality1
They will soon enough. I was unlucky enough to own both a Roku XD and a Vizio
TV they dropped support for. Why should I have any faith at all they won't
decide to sunset everything on the market today after 8K gets popular?

~~~
Mindwipe
They'll drop devices eventually, but that's likely after a decade.

The manufacturer will drop security support a long, long time before Netflix
will.

~~~
Causality1
They dropped support for Vizio tvs that were only four years old.

------
knolax
Half of Netflix's anime productions have been cell-shaded 3D animation and
frankly they look like crap. Most western cartoons have managed to keep their
2D animation looking like 2D animation so idk if it's a matter of cost or if
the creators actually prefer something that looks like it was animated in
Borderlands.

------
dlbucci
So, I just watched this (and you can too, it's like 3 minutes). My conclusion
is that animation shouldn't happen at this high a resolution.

I mean, I watched on a Pixel 3a, so maybe I didn't get the 4k HDR goodness,
but it just didn't seem to add to the experience. Didn't help that the
animation was tweened art in several places. I mean, it was all this hype for
what seemed to be particle effects.

Really, I think lively animation (like FLCL) or style (Cowboy Bebop or Tatami
Galaxy) makes a show much better to look at and enjoyable to watch.

~~~
diffeomorphism
You watched it at one quarter of the resolution and on a tiny screen and
conclude that "it just didn't seem to add to the experience"? That seems
unconvincing...

There definitely are art styles that look great even at low resolution, e.g.
games in cellshading look like zelda:windwaker aged really well. I am not
really a fan of the art style used in sol levante, but for something like
garden of words or other styles I think 4k HDR might be quite beneficial.

~~~
e12e
Seems a bit odd indeed. Here's some stuff that shows off 4k and hdr - and you
test it on a screen without 4k and proper hdr? Well, no surprise you can't see
any effect from 4k and hdr?

Granted the pixel reportedly has a good amoled screen - but I couldn't find
any information on it handling hdr signals, beyond that it "boosts" the image
(sounds much like the equivalent of audio compression/loudness for visuals).

At any rate, since people have a hard time telling the difference between full
HD and 4k in blind tests, I doubt that this could be anything beyond a subtle
effect anyway?

I have a 4k hdr TV here, so I'll have to try and see.

------
coleifer
I prefer 4:3 grainy shit from the 90s to a slick cg any day.

~~~
devmunchies
Yes I can’t stand the 3D animated anime. In fact I wish it had a different
name altogether. I was super disappointed when I saw the new Altered Carbon
anime was 3D

~~~
fenwick67
It really depends on the quality in my opinion - the bottom line is you can't
replace quality and effort when making animation. 2d or 3d can both be ugly or
beautiful.

For example Aggretsuko is a 2d anime but the animation is so lifeless and
boring (entire scenes are just walk cycles), whereas Beastars is 3d but at the
same time very expressive and much more visually interesting, dynamic and
experimental.

~~~
droopyEyelids
Personally I find bad 3-D more offputting than bad 2D.

Bad 2D fades to the background of my mind's eye, allowing me to focus on the
story or characters, while bad 3D manages to capture and distract my
attention.

------
jniedrauer
Now if they would start simulcasting instead of their "clever" strategy of
waiting until shows finish airing and then releasing them all at once, people
might actually use this service...

~~~
adwi
Netflix has > 167,000,000 subscribers [0]

[0]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/media/netflix-q4...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/media/netflix-q4-2019-earnings-
nflx.html)

~~~
jniedrauer
I think you missed the point. This is specific to anime on netflix. It's
difficult to find metrics on this for obvious reasons, but I'm pretty sure
people still pirate shows that they're paying for on netflix because of the
simulcast problem.

