
Why does the restoration of 'The Third Man' look weird? - anigbrowl
http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/1184420/why-does-the-restoration-of-the-third-man-look-weird#
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mapt
"Why does my favorite old movie look like shit? I want 1100 words by Thursday"

"Because they're compressing it too much. There are parameters in all
compression formats where you can make the files bigger or smaller, and
they're making the movie too small, so a videophile will notice differences.
Resolution is the largest of these parameters, and it corresponds to actual
hardware, but it's not the only one. They're cheating you out of accurate
movement in order to make their data processing easier."

"I do not understand the words that are coming out of your mouth because I
have an art degree. 1100 words. Emotive language. Thursday."

\-----

You have a problem with a transfer? Reduce the amount of compression to _well_
beyond the level your focus group can detect, and increase the resolution.
Don't talk about “the random scatter of photosensitive molecules in the
emulsion creates an overall softness and shimmer,” because data is data, and
sufficient amounts of data can represent that scatter just fine.

From MPEG-2 to H.265, video format advances have reduced data needs to maybe
20% of what they used to be, while from 480p to 8K, resolution improvements
have increased data needs by a factor of 108x. Businesses have failed to cope
honestly: They're selling the higher resolution but compressing more heavily
so it looks just like it used to look, or giving only token data allowances so
1080p is given 50% more data than 480p rather than the 575% it needs in order
that a 480p inset in that larger picture has the identical performance as the
lower resolution stream would.

And that is why Youtube looks like shit, and that is why film transfers are
still not performing at the level we want.

~~~
madaxe_again
It's not entirely about compression - some "remasters" have been de-noised
(i.e. no more grain - which in my opinion (and it is opinion) loses some of
the atmosphere of a film (hell, if grain is unimportant, why do so many games
have shaders which add it?)), some are run through a sharpen filter to deal
with out of focus scenes and to "improve" the image quality, and so-forth - so
it's not so much about compression as it is about other subjective
"improvements" made to the transfer.

An example of something which has been done wonderfully, again in my opinion,
is last year's restoration of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari".

Interestingly, they re-added the original tints to the remaster, as what's not
commonly known is that many "black and white" films were projected through a
coloured glass slide, in order to either give the entire scene a hue, or even
to make the ground red/brown and the sky blue.

~~~
mapt
"Interestingly, they re-added the original tints to the remaster, as what's
not commonly known is that many "black and white" films were projected through
a coloured glass slide, in order to either give the entire scene a hue, or
even to make the ground red/brown and the sky blue."

I'd always wondered where Top Gear gained its impressive cinematic style -
they must have happened upon a treasure trove of those two-color filters, and
asked what it would feel like applied digitally to every other scene with the
saturation pumped up.

~~~
mcguire
And then they went crazy with it, to the point where you were watching a
purported car review that successfully concealed the color of the vehicle by
the application of art. It became distracting.

But not as distracting as Top Gear's urge to rotate the camera to emphasize
the slope when a car is going up or down hill. Or HGTV's urge to run segments
containing fireplaces in reverse.

------
jahnu
If you are ever in Vienna I highly recommend taking the underground Third Man
sewer-tour and then afterwards go see the film at the Burg Kino which screens
it daily.

[https://www.drittemanntour.at/en/index.html](https://www.drittemanntour.at/en/index.html)

[http://www.burgkino.at/film_detail.phtml?fil_id=4&per=now](http://www.burgkino.at/film_detail.phtml?fil_id=4&per=now)

~~~
msamwald
As a Viennese who took that tour together with some international guests, I
highly recommend _not_ doing it, because you're not allowed to see very much.
I found it quite disappointing.

~~~
jahnu
You recommend doing nothing over doing something quite interesting?

I've done it three times with people visiting me. Not everyone wants to spend
half a day underground.

------
andybak
The point about grain resonated (heh) with the article from last week about
Stochastic Resonance ( [https://medium.com/the-craftsman/the-curious-
phenomenon-of-s...](https://medium.com/the-craftsman/the-curious-phenomenon-
of-stochastic-resonance-b263449486eb) )

Anyone who retouches photos knows that a touch of grain can hide a multitude
of sins. I used to keep a high-res scan of film grain around for just this
purpose.

This isn't a problem with technology - it's a problem with taste. The people
overseeing the digital transfer either don't share the taste of the author,
myself and many others, or arguably, simply lack taste.

~~~
IshKebab
I'm pretty sure that article is wrong, according to the article Stochastic
Resonance is about amplifying _non-linear_ signals by adding noise. The added
noise amplifies the signal (i.e. it the result is _more_ than the sum of the
weak signal and the added noise).

What he has done is simple dithering
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither)).

> Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise used to randomize
> quantization error, preventing large-scale patterns such as color banding in
> images.

Dithering works on standard linear processes (like adding noise to images).

------
ak39
Here's the thing, motion smoothing fakery is for sports. 24 fps is what we
have mentally trained ourselves for our movie-going experience. Change that
and even the casual viewer who has no idea what motion interpolation is will
feel "something just doesn't feel right".

------
acqq
In my opinion, there are three major problems: overzealous sharpening,
different light ratios and the frame rate dependent flickering.

I consider first two absolutely unacceptable and I've seen enough
"restorations" for which I wondered if anybody actually looked at the results
or just passed the thing through the machines. But I prefer the stable picture
even when the result appears less "magical."

~~~
jacobolus
The worst of it is that the sharpening algorithms used are total garbage.
You’d think with the the money being thrown at this stuff, they could hire a
couple of image processing experts to advise them.

------
to3m
Given the subject matter, the aspect ratio of the shot at the top is
surprisingly inauthentic!

YouTube trailer - which gives away a couple of good scenes - viewable at
1080p:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QWLAndD1E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QWLAndD1E)
(I actually think it looks quite good! - though maybe it won't work on a
cinema screen)

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ablation
Is it just me, or is there an enforced newsletter sign-up modal when you land
on that page?

~~~
k-mcgrady
There was a black 'x' in the top right of the pop over for me. Are you using a
script blocker or something that's preventing the button from loading?

~~~
liotier
Oh, thanks - that is why I didn't see the 'x'. Well, I just deleted the modal
dialog from the DOM... No I'll have to add "mc_embed_signup" div to my adblock
blacklist.

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wodenokoto
2k cinema is the same as a dad? That's bullshit. I watched Sukiyaki Western
Django at a film festival and there had been a cock-up with the movie, so it
was still in a different country when it was supposed to show. They ended up
using a dvd as a source for the projection in the cinema.

It was god damn awful.

~~~
ghostDancer
I think he means that 2k cinema is the same as dvd in a tv/computer screen not
in a movie theater screen

~~~
ars
And he's still wrong even if he meant that.

A DVD is approx 0.7K - maybe a bluray could be considered 2K, but not a DVD.

~~~
bitJericho
It's because of the size and distance comparisons, its not about the
resolution. His point is that a 2k cinema movie is like watching a DVD vs say
a bluray or an 8k cinema movie.

~~~
njloof
That, unfortunately, is what's horrible about the article -- the author never
makes clear whether this is an objective or subjective comparison. Is the
image too poor, or too "good"?

------
marincounty
Does anyone know who did the restoration work on The Boy in the Plastic
Bubble? (The made for TV version, with Travolta, and Mr. Brady--197?)

I just saw a restored copy on one of the cable channels, and even though it
was not a full screen copy; it was watchable.

I liked the original movie. It was shot of video tape, and was made for T.V.
movie. I don't even think they bothered to copyright it? The original
copy(master) degraded over time, and for years I thought it was lost.

I'm can't find any info on the Internet on who did the work? It's not a
theater quality restoration, but I'm suprised anyone could restore that old,
degraded video.

~~~
sp332
In America, and every other signatory to the Berne Convention, creators
automatically own the copyright on whatever they create. They would have to
explicitly waive all of their rights before it would be un-copyrighted.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention#Content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention#Content)

------
charlesism
"Skin tones look polished and movement is stabilized, giving the image a
sharpness that was not originally there."

That actually sounds wonderful to me! The Third Man is probably my favorite
film. I always noticed the jitter during the opening credits (zither strings
twitching around the frame) and I'm pretty sure Carol Reed would have
preferred it to be steady there. I certainly will. I can't wait to see this.
As for film historians, hopefully the digitized source will be available
somewhere, so they can have the scratches and jitter, if they want them.

------
scott_s
For anyone with an interest in the rise of digital over film in the movies,
watch "Side by Side"
([http://sidebysidethemovie.com/](http://sidebysidethemovie.com/)). It's on
Netflix streaming. It's an excellent documentary that interviews many
different directors (some who prefer digital, some who prefer film), explains
the technology behind both, gives a history of the rise of digital and in
general just gives you a greater appreciation for movies.

And it just might make you respect Keanu Reeves.

------
davidgerard
Can anyone else see how to dismiss the lightbox?

(How do we get Google to penalise lightboxes?)

~~~
deckiedan
right click, "Inspect Element". Add an extra CSS rule to the element{}, of
display:none. This works on almost all sites with popup overlay crap.

There's probably a plugin which lets you do this with a single toolbar
button...

~~~
davidgerard
For sites that do this, the appropriate single keypress is Ctrl-W.

~~~
pkroll
Some sites appear to block Ctrl-W these days. Those sites get the full AdBlock
"Go Away" treatment.

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shiggerino
If they're worried about people throwing the word "film" around too
flippantly, they probably shouldn't do the same with "celluloid". Acetate,
please.

