AI Can Ruin Movies Now, Too - Aliens and True Lies on 4k

[@Nerrel]

The Terminator 4k is unfortunately another AI upscale on par with Aliens and I recommend avoiding it (unless you like that sort of thing). Enjoy Lance's new face: slow.pics/s/qxT2E5qD

[@crowtzilla461]

What's really annoying is that the 4K is the first release since the DVDs where the original sound mix was included. So you get the better SFX but at the cost of visuals. It's infuriating.

[@loboqueso5392]

Another problem with the 4K release is that the film’s mono mix is limited at 12kHz. I have a feeling that people will make excuses like “it’s just an old movie, get used to it” when the SAME MONO SOUNDTRACK IS IN HIGHER QUALITY IN THE IMAGE DVD ALMOST 30 YEARS AGO. It’s funny when a fanmade scan of this movie had better visual and audio quality even with the scratches, hair, and dirt on this print, but yet the recent 4K copy of The Terminator is just as bad as Aliens’ or True Lies’ recent release. These releases deserve the hatred and backlash it gets, and I hope this release gets discontinued so we can have a new, better 4k restoration of The Terminator, straight from the audio and picture negatives instead of upscaling it. James Cameron is better off having his home video privileges ripped away from any future release of his films.

[@ionlywatch]

​@@loboqueso5392 Better 4K restoration? Who's going to pay for the scan or allow the film to be scanned?

[@loboqueso5392]

The studios? Archivists?

[@ionlywatch]

​@@loboqueso5392Well I think you missed one person here. When a studio does a scan/restoration it's not only for home video, and demand for higher-quality alone is not going to motivate the production. Imo it's obvious regarding the recent release of T1: The studios and JC don't find a new scan necessary, even for an important film like this. There is still hope for other labels nonetheless, in 2029 at best.

[@finthechatboisqwq5602]

Plenty of people in the comments saying "the technology will get better!" completely missing the real issue; the studio had the *option* to obtain REAL detail by simply re-scanning the original film rather than asking an AI to hallucinate detail for them. This is a premium format that we are paying a comparatively enormous amount of money for, so forgive us "picky" folk for complaining when the product delivered is not the product as advertised. Nothing an AI generates will ever faithfully capture what was actually shot in front of the lens, and when such material is available, it should be used. The end result with Cameron's discs is an image that's been photo-copied, dunked in vaseline, then "sharpened" back up by what an upscaling model (inherently limited by what details it could see). The technology will improve, yes, but no amount of algorithmic meddling will restore what simply isn't there.

[@cinnamonnoir2487]

The technology is already better, but we're using the wrong technology because it's cheaper and AI is fashionable right now. What a crock.

[@taliker]

Picky folks forget that human hours are expensive and that the studio would never get back their money if they put in the time to do it correctly. C:

[@mangomation3945]

@@cinnamonnoir2487 Yup. Nobody used to call it "AI" but it's already been used to great effect with scratch and dirt removal, though even there it has its limits as you need to manually direct it to remove the damage or else it'll erase tons of false positives like sparks or arrows or water droplets etc. if you let it try and AI-auto-detect the damage to be targeted for removal. Using AI algorithms and shit for degrained upscales like this is ALWAYS going to suck no matter how 'good' the tech is.

[@TheManinBlack9054]

So let me guess this straight, the issue is not with AI, but with producers not using it properly and he blames AI because clicks? What a waste of time.

[@thedapperdolphin1590]

@@TheManinBlack9054No

[@TheBonsaiZone]

I can't wait for the 8K version created from the screwed up 4K version!!!

[@JenyaIsJustChilling]

...so it could have LESS detail and clarity than DVD

[@RESURRECT2]

And watch it on HD Ready 720p TV!

[@singaporeghostclub]

Can't wait for the 16k version!

[@friedrichfreymann6602]

wazzup Nigel

[@TheBonsaiZone]

@@friedrichfreymann6602 Hey!

[@WestPictures]

This is absolutely THE channel for when I'm bored on a Sunday and want to watch a Neil Breen movie review followed by gyro control setup followed by a review of a metroidvania I have never heard of

[@thisisfyne]

I still can't believe they've decompiled the source code for Alien Resurrection to run in 4K on Steam Deck

[@DanielDangerous]

A real grab bag of things people don't care about (except me)

[@vernie_in_hell]

Well said. Truly one of the great grab bag channels.

[@JFTSwiertz]

Every time i watch one nerrel video, i go back and binge at least three.

[@josciety5579]

Don’t forget perfect for finding the single best Majora’s Mask HD texture project out there

[@phototristan]

First we had CGI trying to make scenes look practical, and now we have AI making practical effects look CGI. Ugh.

[@Walamonga1313]

Full circle

[@LPWatterson]

Yeah. We've gone from Alan Grant staring dropjawed at a giant sauropod whose wrinkles looked like they were drawn on the stretching latex of a balloon to closeups of actual human skin rerendered to look even more rubbery.

[@GameBoy-hd2eg]

This channel is the perfect variety of calling people out, suggesting better solutions, and beating dead horses into a paste.

[@ghfudrs93uuu]

and Zelda Majoras Mask

[@GrenadeGoose]

delicious, delicious paste

[@sithlordmikeyp]

@@ghfudrs93uuu The alpha and omega (I hope) of this channel

[@poppers7317]

I like paste.

[@sithlordmikeyp]

@johnwhite5212 i took ivermectin once when i had covid and i didn't even turn into a horse. it actually helped. wtf

[@bioforest6602]

As someone that likes getting blurays, this is the worst scenerio possible. I hate streaming, worse though, bad remasters and this is a nightmare become real to me.

[@jackster10101]

Well, can't we just avoid the shitty Ai one's by just buying the blu rays?

[@johnnyjosefsen7644]

@@jackster10101 But at some point they will also do bad remasters on blu rays. Don´t have to be 4K to be shit. And then they´ll stop selling stuff and we´ll get stuck with terrible remasters on streaming.

[@Scerttle]

@@jackster10101 I thought that's what these were? New blu ray editions? Or maybe I misunderstood.

[@VaiCloud]

@@jackster10101 The problem is that they sometimes use the botched 4k versions of movies for regular blu-rays, completely replacing the older releases on store shelves. Prime example for that is the LotR trilogy.

[@jackster10101]

@@VaiCloud well that's shit

[@Sp0ntanCombust]

That True Lies "remaster" definitely looks like one of those cringey youtube videos of people "enhancing" footage by sharpening it to oblivion and interpolating to 60fps for God knows what reason.

[@0100-d8m]

Turns out AI sharpening filters are still sharpening filters... They probably didn't even use a dedicated film upscaler. (The big benefit of AI filters is that they can be tuned to a specific domain, such as films vs. video games, much more easily than with traditional filters. This can, for instance, prevent the sharpening from going apeshit on the film grain.)

[@MasterChaoko]

It's because ContentID gets less effective the more post-processed the content is. Natural selection at work, except "fitness" in this case means maximum garbage

[@HOTD108_]

Interpolating movies to 60fps, destroying artistic integrity in the process, is an idea only a gamer could have.

[@Miraihi]

Interpolating video to 60 fps is almost always a bad idea. Especially animation. I have no idea how a person can see the results and say "Yeah, that looks great".

[@ruekurei88]

Eh, people's standards are pretty low anyway. I remember people being amazed at that animated video that Corridor Digital did, and that looked far more fucked up per frame than anything present here. If people are okay with that and if most are okay with this, then companies just go with it. It'll be what they can get away with and what people will tolerate, rather than it being a 'great product'. I'm guessing there's a shit ton of remastered stuff in the works for movies and even videogames and music that's in the works now done by AI on the cheap. All that's required is that the audience deems it 'good enough' and buys it.

[@chrissre7935]

The graininess of Alien not only added to the atmosphere it also made sets that were fake look more realistic. It made effects that looked kinda bad by today standards good. Making it 4K with AI just makes them look like made of Plastic.

[@FusionDeveloper]

I agree. What you can't see and can't identify clearly, leaves it up to your imagination to fill in the blanks. I consider the graininess an aesthetic option that I love to re-create with AI. Even some games like Left4Dead had "film grain" as an overlay option.

[@chrissre7935]

@@FusionDeveloper Exactly. Even today's horror games and movies add grain and distort the image, just as you said-it leaves gaps for the imagination to fill. So making it crystal clear isn't the way to go.

[@ThylineTheGay]

@@FusionDeveloper as the saying goes "the limitations of a media will become what it's loved for" --or along those lines

[@crestofhonor2349]

I do not like film grain removal. Film grain in itself is detail. It should stay there whether it’s old cel animation or a live action film

[@user-rm1jp6hf5h]

I'm actually baffled by machine image generation now. More advanced tech to have less detail. Less creative control and insight. Makes sense, right? Like, baffling. I'm speechless.

[@0100-d8m]

​@@user-rm1jp6hf5h The current AI upscaling/sharpening tech is still in its adolescence and has mostly been used to sharpen video games and other CGI. It has a lot of room for improvement. There are also many areas where a master with native 4k HDRisn't available. Using AI upscaling/sharpening on something you have a native quality master for is just stupid. The right approach is to make a bunch of scans at 1k, 2k, and 4k of the original film, release the 4k versions, and then spend 2-3 years on R&D and training to make the AI learn how to upscale film from 1k->2k->4k. Then you can use it on all the films without intact masters, or potentially for 8k or HDR+ or something.

[@user-rm1jp6hf5h]

@@0100-d8m I guess using the prints as a frame of reference for how good the algorithm is and comparing it to that until it can replicate the results consistently is a good idea. It's just I'm not sure that's how these algorithms work: from what I understand, they memorize prompts and have millions of reference images as raw data to train from and then replicate parts of the *images* and aren't able to do specialised processes. I'm not sure these generative algorithms can replicate the process of restoring a film, so you'd possibly have to train or create your own algorithm. I could be way off, but I just see problems arising from it just spitting out what it's already learned when trying to restore a film or image. So definitely needs, like, 5 or 10 more years in the oven as well as way more oversight from actual people who can recognise patterns from birth. Again, I could be misunderstanding this.

[@0100-d8m]

@@user-rm1jp6hf5h Generative chat AI is a very different application than upscaling. Generally the generative AI is training by giving examples of prompts and relevant responses. (It's actually a lot more complicated under the hood because they combine a lot of different algorithms and training types to get the convincing chatbots you see with GPT3+.) OpenAI wanted a chatbot that responded to user prompts, so that's what they trained it for. When Nvidia wanted DLSS, they wanted something that took 1080p game frames and upscaled to 1440p, or 1440p to 4k, etc. So, they trained their DLSS model on renders of the same video game frame at different resolutions. (Again, in reality they also did half a dozen other things to tune the results, but this is the core.) The benefit of AI is that you can train a model for a specific purpose on a specific data set suitable for that purpose.

[@clementineshamaney5137]

​@user-rm1jp6hf5h Its because a lot of AI tech was made by the computer scientists first, and then the Silicon Valley sales ppl try to find ways to sell it for investment and sales after the fact. With motivations like that, it invents problems for their solutions

[@trainsplanesmore]

Like you said: Get the negative, clean it, scan it, consult the original cinematographer about the color grading, grade it, done.

[@TheStOne1]

Yeah, but there's actually more to do. They need to digitally clean every single frame from scars, scratches and possible damage. The grain should be isolated in a separate layer before applying color corrections so it won't get affected by them. The blue screen especial effects would be in a different film negative and the CGI too, if not in a digital HDD. So both must be re-scanned too and re-composite on top of the original negative. Sometimes they just use already composited prints for the SFX scenes instead, but that would make the scenes with special effects look worse and less sharp than the rest of the film, which would be sourced from the original negative. Some people would remake the effects integration digitally, but that would be a less purist approach...

[@overportfilms]

@@TheStOne1 yeah it's a long road but necessary

[@brup123]

Yes but the low-effort way they're doing it now is cheaper, which is what all the spreadsheet-focused execs who make the decisions care about.

[@Enigmo1]

the original creatives getting involved in the remastering process sounds good on paper but in practice it's what leads to revisionism overdrive creatives see the flaws of their old work more than anyone and will use remasters more as an opportunity to "fix" those issues rather than preserve their original creation; this often leads to changes viewers dislike. a competent independent colorist will often do a better job of studying various original materials and produce a more faithful remaster than calling in the original creatives to dictate how the remaster should be

[@dubsurgeon1742]

yeah, it's so easy to do ! 🙄🙄😂😂🤣🤣😂😂

[@cinemamadness6920]

Have you also noticed how low effort 4k menus are? DVDs were always interactive and gimmicky packed with special features and love. 4ks usually have a still image menu, and no special features on the disc. As technology improves, quality degrades.

[@blatherskite3009]

I suspect it has more to do with universality than lack of care. With 4K Blu-rays, there's one disc for the whole world - so those menus have to be capable of being displayed in multiple languages; hence generic and minimalist menus. Back in DVD days, every country tended to get its own DVD, so disc-authors could go wild with custom fonts and animations. But, even back then, you could see the beginnings of what we have today with some studios putting out discs with oddly bland menus that used universal symbols or "icons" rather than words for menu options, e.g. a loudspeaker symbol for audio settings, a book symbol for chapter selection, and so on.

[@Shendue]

@@blatherskite3009 It's also a sad trend in design in general. Look at how they butchered Firefox's or MS Explorer's logo. Extreme minimalism is what they are literally teaching to design students.

[@schmoborama]

Apparently they started cutting special features for the rental copies of discs, to help with sales. And yes your last sentence is 100%, I'm fucking sick of it

[@k1lg0re50]

@@blatherskite3009 and a Breakfast of Champions a-hole symbol for extras. God I hate those menus!

[@miz4535]

I hate menus like that. It's a waste of time and a gimmick as you say, and it gets old fast. I care about the quality of the transfer and the bonus features. The cover art should be the original one too. "4ks usually have a still image menu, and no special features on the disc" Fine if they put them on the Blu Ray instead, bad otherwise.

[@arne6617]

you had me at :"You could argue that it’s impressive that the AI cleans up such old footage this well. You could also argue that it looks like creepy, uncanny digital shit."

[@kallemetsahalme5701]

i dont understand why no one (almost) argued the historical aspect. to me watching a movie from the 1980s or even 2010s is also about seeing the tech they used, the make ups and hairstyles they used, the actual faces of the actors, and so many more. its a historical document. when peter jackson made the colored war footage he at least sort of explained he respects and prefers the original footage but wanted to do his movie as a statement, experiment, alternative, but thats the rare view. most entertainment studios think only the newest, most edited mishmash is of value and the others can sit in archives. i rather watch 1080p quality on 4k tv with screen size decreased than watch this kind of forced editmess.

[@infinitestare]

@@kallemetsahalme5701 totally, I enjoy old movies precisely because it's a time capsule in every sense of the word, not just good quality acting and shots they achieved at the time. But the medium itself is the message to me. And they're just erasing it, killing it off. WTF

[@homerhat420]

Nerrel only complains about the things that matter. Keep the grain.

[@AMarvelousLife]

For a guy who develops cutting-edge new tech for his films, Jim Cameron seems to be perfectly fine with cutting corners and half-assing his movie re-releases...

[@carlotta4th]

I disagree. He's using it specifically because he sees AI as cutting edge technology--fits his mindset perfectly.

[@DeadManSinging1]

@@carlotta4th Yeah but hes using it as a crutch, not as a tool. Using AI for this is a good idea, but its like he just ran the movie under a filter then said "Yep, thats good enough"

[@BlokHeadAnim]

​@@DeadManSinging1 I agree. The idea has promise, but it would most likely require an in-house, specially trained model that is specifically fed footage with and without film grain so it can understand what you want it to do. With James Cameron's resources, that wouldn't even be that hard. Not compared to all the motion capture digital set stuff in Avatar, anyway.

[@cuttothechase6855]

I doubt Cameron was even in the room when this was being scrubbed. The man's a shameless liar when it comes to his involvement with projects for a single paycheck.

[@WildlandExplorer]

@@carlotta4th It's CTO thinking. "Magic AI software give magic easy result". The calculus stops when they see the savings over a staff of film restoration professionals. I've met some company leadership people in my day. They are all like this: make line go up with as little overhead as possible. It's shopping at Costco for your film restoration.

[@ZorroVulpes]

"I don't have six weeks" bro you release a movie once a decade how do you not have 6 weeks?

[@d3nza482]

Hitting the big seven-oh this year. Weeks be fewer and fewer.

[@Lucax97]

Famously James Cameron does nothing between those movies. He works the day it releases and then stares at Nerrel's channel the remaining 364 days a week.

[@yourguysheppy]

He's getting on in years, I could understand if he's just over it. If that's the case, though, find a few of the MANY people who *do* give a shit and have them remaster the films.

[@marreco6347]

​@@Lucax97jokes aside: come on, you really think James Cameron of all people couldn't hire a professional team and dedicate them to this project if he doesn't have the time?It's not like he's doing it for free.

[@etymonlegomenon931]

​@@yourguysheppy"I can understand if he doesn't care anymore, but he has to care FOREVER" Please, listen to yourself when you talk

[@haughtygarbage5848]

Watch out Nerrel, Jim just called out everyone criticizing these movies as basement virgins like a schoolyard bully....

[@purefoldnz3070]

he said get a life. Bhahahahaha

[@UrielX1212]

Cameron has not made a good movie since the 20th century.

[@purefoldnz3070]

@@UrielX1212 yeah, I wish he branched out to make some different movies.

[@zipnex5529]

Really disappointed with how Cameron turned to be a douchebag that won’t take criticism.

[@rocketmunkey1]

@@UrielX1212 I duno the sequel to True Lies, Nine Eleven was pretty entertaining lots of plot holes, a complete disregard for the laws of physics and a terrible script but OKish, the bit where they found the passport had me howling !

[@thisisfyne]

I sincerely wonder who decided that film grain and motion blur were the true enemy of the people....

[@AirLancer]

Like how every TV now has that gross looking movement smoothing effect turned on by default.

[@epoch151]

Film grain and motion blur in games sucks, but in movies its part of the image and should not be removed

[@Valoric]

@@AirLancerI hate the defaults for TVs with a passion. Why push this? Why appeal to people who want over saturated motion smoothed ugly rubbish?

[@infectedanimal9830]

Motion blur is 100% due to video games, same reason for the bad 60 fps bad upscale clips

[@skeletonpatch]

What I can’t wrap my head around is why every modern TV has the image slightly zoomed in, cropping off the edges, by default. Why? Why would you do this? Who asked for this? Why does every TV have a different name for that setting making it a pain in the ass to locate and change?

[@TheNerdWithASuit]

One testament that will always ring true to me will be the years upon years of work regarding Harmy's "Despecialized" Editions of the origial Star Wars trilogy and the 4K77/4K80/4K83 efforts. If fans with very limited money could make amazing high quality versions of the original theatrical releases without the use of AI, what excuse do official restoration projects done by multibillion corporations have?

[@taliker]

A corporation needs to make money, hobbyists don't. If the corporation doesn't think it's gonna make much money off of it why would they spend a lot of money doing it, which means the budget of restoration is generally going to be much lower for corporations than hobbyists. Corporations are not your friend, they do not give away money for no reason.

[@TheNerdWithASuit]

@@taliker Capitalism. A destroyer of art.

[@costelinha1867]

Right? I never watched 4k77, but Despecialized Edition, is at the moment my definitive way to watch Star Wars.

[@4Wilko]

It was the version of choice when I watched the original trilogy with my sister who had never paid Star Wars much attention when we were kids. She loved it.

[@josedorsaith5261]

​@@TheNerdWithASuit Oh dear 😂

[@rogueguardian]

AI advancing so quickly and being used on films like this is nerve racking. I've become a firm believer in film preservation but not like this. The graininess of older films like alien or star wars add to my immersion of the world these movies take me too. That old time film reel look is something special it would be horrible to try and just undo that.

[@dahahaka]

Restoration and preservation are two completely different things

[@daddykarlmarx6183]

Regardless I've literally never seen a grain removal that looks better than the original, you always lose details and make faces look waxy

[@dahahaka]

@@daddykarlmarx6183 I imagine ml models specifically trained on grain could legitimately do some really impressive stuff, but what these guys are doing seems pretty half assed

[@AfutureV]

Even the low resolution of early digitally filmed movies is part of their charm. Frankly, I have never desired an upscaling of any movie ever, even if done properly.

[@CuriousKey]

@@dahahaka Part of the problem is that the incentives toward using AI skews heavily towards saving effort and money - i.e. half-assing. You *could* do interesting things with the technology, but the people who think of using AI in the first place are more likely to be the people who want something done easier and cheaper, and so won't do anything interesting with it.

[@xcrack6364]

The work they did for the original Alien movie for a 4K release was amazing. It's so sharp and clean, you almost think they made the movie just in the last few years.

[@janiazace]

Especially the scenes of Nostromo floating in space. Those were very clean and sharp... NOT! It looked like a crappy 160p lowquality stream.

[@tonythesuperperson]

Aliens had such a unique look because of the weird film stock and Cameron has spent all this time trying to annihilate it.

[@jcp1984again]

It's his movie. If you can't deal with this, keep watching the 1080p Blu-ray and shut the f*** up. The Aliens 4K looks fine.

[@casedistorted]

It just proves that Talent comes with youth, and Cameron has lost all of his talent, along with his balls.

[@DG-iw3yw]

Its because his ex wife gets royalties from the original...New versions fall under new creative content or blah blah whatever

[@Womaninthedarkness]

The man is responsible for removing Ripley’s bush hairs frame by frame BEFORE it could be done digitally. He’s insane.

[@CheapCheerful]

@@Womaninthedarkness yeah I dunno man, she was hot, but I'm not sure I'm up for seeing 80s pube spillage

[@rymoEight]

"Fake detail" is a great way to put it. Nature is imperfect, and artists are imperfect. Therefore, perfection looks artificial

[@RTU130]

Hmm

[@infectedanimal9830]

The imperfections are ironically what make them perfect compared to the artificial over compensations

[@HydefHyde]

I don't think that's what he meant. Fake detail doesn't mean artificial perfection. It means that these AI upscaling routines are eliminating the fine details of the image that actually existed via grain removal, and then relying on algorithms to replace these now blank spaces with artificial elements that were never part of the film in the first place.

[@sonicwave779]

But that's not perfection... Fake detail means adding details that were not there in the first place.

[@This-Was-Sparta]

Not like these algorithms are perfect, that's kind of the whole problem. They make educated guesses based on their training data. If they're not confident they start guessing, leading to melty artifacting of the kind Nerrel describes.

[@dontaskme213]

The Twin Peaks bit over the credits is why this is the best channel.

[@GhostofDBCooper]

Agreed! Especially calling out Cameron for "borrowing" Norma's zinger of a line and giving to Rose. Ugh, at least Billy Zane seems like a cooler guy than the characters he plays in either Twin Peaks or Titanic.

[@chickenheelnakano]

@@GhostofDBCooperBilly Zane is in Twin Peaks?

[@Rottytoops]

@@chickenheelnakano among the slop in season 2, yes. He was Audrey's love interest for a bit there

[@theninjararar]

@@Rottytoops that's him lol

[@MarquisLeary34]

This makes me hug my DVD copy of the Alien/Aliens box set and whisper how much I love it....

[@connorharrison]

This is so much better than hearing Jeff from Reviews at Home tell us that, whatever you might personally think, the 4ks of Alien, True Lies and the Abyss are an improvement without discussion or debate. In my opinion, 4k blurays without grain are scrubbed and DNR'd too much

[@Armameteus]

It's a case of "bigger number better than smaller number", so, since it's 4K it's automatically better than anything less than 4K, apparently. It's a purely statistical way of viewing things, bereft of actual taste or a willingness to admit to the existence of one's subjective opinion in the face of other people's subjective opinions (which may not agree with your own). People that do that hide behind numbers and spreadsheets out of cowardice to protect their fragile egos from being confronted, since they believe you can't argue with the objective certainty of raw data. Spoiler alert: they're wrong.

[@lds_drive]

I stopped watching after that. He basically said just enjoy, don't complain and be glad they are still releasing physical media.

[@givlupi2686]

​@@lds_driveTo be fair, I'd much rather have crusty remasters on Blu-ray forever, than the opportunity to wade through progressively worse DRM year after year to watch the original editions of films I'll never own.

[@givlupi2686]

​@@lds_driveTo be fair, I'd much rather have crusty remasters on Blu-ray forever, than the opportunity to wade through progressively worse DRM year after year to watch the original editions of films I'll never own.

[@phitdemon]

Fuck that guy. His channel is the worst. He thinks he's Mr. Rogers.

[@streetfightinmanrs]

I prefer the grainy original looks. It’s nostalgic and since that is what was available at the time, they made sure to shoot it and edit it in a way that used those aesthetics to fit the story.

[@gaozhi2007]

If you have the dvd version it still looks really good on a CRT TV. Original color timing, no teal rubbish. True of Aliens and Terminator.

[@streetfightinmanrs]

@@gaozhi2007 my dvd collection hasn’t been unpacked since my last move in 2020. I’ll have to give it a look.

[@vylbird8014]

This is such an issue that the newer video codecs have a special feature for film grain reconstruction. They statistically analyse the grain, remove it in order to allow effective compression (which grain screws up), and after decompression generate a new random grain with the same statistical properties as the original and add that in. Grain originated as a limitation of the recording technology, but became part of the visual language of cinema. Like lens flare.

[@dennisjungbauer4467]

@@vylbird8014 Which codec, how's the feature called? That's new to me..

[@vylbird8014]

@@dennisjungbauer4467 Grain synthesis. I'm not sure if h265 supports it, but AV1 certainly does.

[@CuteSkyler]

I'm sorry but really grainy 4k footage looks a hell of a lot better than upscaling. Film basically has unlimited resolution, if James didn't have to the time to do a new 4k remaster, just delay it. Like what were they even thinking??

[@user-rm1jp6hf5h]

My guess: classic greed and money grubbing. Doesn't cost Jack to have a computer/algorithm do it. Looks way worse, but it's quick and free. Ridiculous.

[@AfutureV]

I never get people who want to ungrain film footage. Grains are part of the appeal of using celluloid.

[@Tony__S]

Typical film prints have about 2k resolution, maybe a little more, and color negative tops out maybe at 3.5k for very fine grain stocks in super 35.

[@genderender]

film and lenses do not have infinite resolution, the grain is just randomized so its less apparent than an equivalent digital sensor. combined with probably not that sharp of lenses compared to now, you are just straight up limited on resolution. i'd be surprised if the lenses used for aliens could resolve past 4k

[@Twinrehz]

@@Tony__S Not sure what you mean by "typical film print", but 35mm film has a theoretical detail limit of around 6K resolution.

[@AidanGS]

idk if this video specifically is the reason james cameron decided to call out critics of his restorations as basement-dwelling losers but i hope it is, more people need to know how godawful these things look

[@willwoolf]

Normally I find it hard to identify the issues in an upscaling but every part of that True Lies showcase had me gasping

[@edge85saint]

Who would have thought that artificial intelligence would make things look "Artificial."

[@TheKingWhoWins]

You take that back RN

[@АндроидБишоп]

But does it make things "intelligent"?

[@johngddr5288]

@@АндроидБишоп It definitely makes them look 'special'

[@griffinschreiber6867]

Take my like and leave.

[@gustavo9758]

This will age like milk in a few more years. Mark my words.

[@hawshimagical]

to be honest, this video revealed to me how bad i am at noticing crusty AI upscaling artifacts. i didnt know about these details and what to look out for.

[@MegamanStarforce2010]

i still can't notiche them even as i go frame-by-frame and he's pointing them out. like there's a bit of something else but it's so hard to see most of the time.

[@haruhirogrimgar6047]

I can notice a difference between 30 and 60fps in games. I can't tell you which thing was AI art/upscaled or not :P

[@AfutureV]

I will give props to the video for trying, but even with side by side and arrows pointing, I am not getting many of the criticisms. Especially if they are only noticeable if slowed down, which is not how anyone will watch the movie anyway.

[@kaylemathewcomendador6964]

@@AfutureV I can notice the skin looking either like smooth plastic or too wrinkly at times & there being more of a blue filter at times. So that’s weird how I can notice those as someone who doesn’t have the most keen eye for small details.

[@ASpaceOstrich]

Your eye as a skill that improves when you do art, and different kinds require different visual skills. They can be really obvious to people with the right background and really hard to spot for those without.

[@_.-_Crimpy-_..-.]

It kinda surprises me that James Cameron of all directors would be okay with this. I know that he likes to embrace new technology, but these 4Ks look terrible.

[@Jacks_game_room]

Whenever you showed footage of the AI upscaling I felt like I was having a stroke. Even when it’s not in your face terrible (which is rare) it always feels scarily off.

[@Boamere]

Yeah the eyes especially are terrifying

[@benhillman8384]

Often facial features seem to go for a little walk around the face as if trying to catch up with turns of the face that never happen - it's very offputting.

[@gioiacobucci]

The Aliens stuff I could understand a casual viewer not noticing/picking up on, but True Lies is just unbelievable! How did that ever pass QA? It's insane, it feels like a prank. Every shot of Jamie Lee Curtis had me feeling like I was physically recoiling

[@MenGrowingTOWin]

"They (AI) make their best guess about what an object is supposed to be, then pull new details out of their digital assholes and smear them across the screen." Lol, classic.

[@SPM2206]

all the "AI" did was remove the noise - thats it - it was a fuck up from the technology at the time - no director or DP goes out trying to make a grainy / noisy image - its a limitation of the technology - removing it isnt destroying the movie its correcting it back to what it was meant to be originally - u seen Alien? the versions ive seen are dark and grainy as fuck - it looks terrible - cant seem to find a decent copy - its a shame people are complaining about this - if u love old movies so much go back to watching VHS video movies - tell me that is better? losers

[@Travis-l8f]

​@@SPM2206 womp womp

[@DanielFerreira-ez8qd]

​@@SPM2206 You are wrong about basically everything you said

[@catliker68]

@@SPM2206this is hilarious

[@murrayshekelberg9754]

@@SPM2206 i hope you are trolling and not that clueless about film

[@Agos226]

It was crazy how much better the Let it Be remaster looked than Get Back because the director wouldn’t let them use AI upscaling

[@Eidechsenhund22]

I noticed something was off with get back when it first came out but could never understand or explain what it was until I learned about dnr.

[@TBL-AMELIA]

Fitting movie names too

[@Meofcourse2319]

100% This isn’t talked about enough, I was so glad to see Let It Be looking like actual film

[@heggy_69]

The problem with get back was 110% the dnr overkill

[@EbonyPope]

Upscaling like in THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD is okay even making the immersion better. There are plenty of documentaries who use the original copies. That is not what the documentary was about. It was about immersing yourself and it succeeded at that. But to upscale footage that is perfectly fine and already is in HD because Film has approximately 4 - 6 K of resolution is just stupid. Also film grain is information. You are literally removing detail from the picture. That is why old movies look so good. You can acutally see skin texture. Just compare the new Top Gun to the old one. You see so much more skin texture also probably because they didn't have digital filters back then. In addition to that ORANGE AND TEAL color grading is probably the biggest cancer in the movie industry right now. People look like oranges in the face.

[@bolttracks]

The grain is so important in preserving the feeling that the originals created in the cinema. Imperfections are absolutely part of the charm of the all-analog era.

[@captainnyet9855]

That 4k Aliens restoration really succeeded in making Lance Henriksen look like a robot.

[@EvenTheDogAgrees]

Unfortunately, also the rest of the cast along with him.

[@luigivincenz3843]

They ALL looked like robots. Seen the 4K version. Brad Pitt even said he hated it because all his warts are shown. I'll just stick with 1080.

[@c3bhm]

"Artificial person", you hateful bigot!!!

[@coerce1]

The most tragic thing about this is that AI could be used to sort through massive sound and art libraries to match game assets to the original textures and sound effects that were used for old video games before they got compressed to fit on a floppy disk or DVD or something. It could even be useful to restore the sound in a movie with degraded audio, to find samples to remaster music, re-render FMVs in 4K, etc. But instead of being seen as a tool to do a better job or to do the same job faster, it's being used to kill jobs and produce a product at the minimum possible cost.

[@darksidegryphon5393]

Quantity over quality.

[@sunspot5]

Companies have opened pandoras box just grab a few dollars inside

[@kotobaza2099]

Imagine having to search for original, unfaked media

[@tudlen]

the best way to describe a lot of the closeup shots of faces, is that they look like those spongebob closeup paintings

[@TheRubberStudiosASMR]

Cameron got pissed at this😂. This video was absolutely hilarious! A tonne of work must have gone into this. Well done

[@beary-boo3223]

I had no idea AI movie remasters were happening like this already and I also have never been so uneasy when looking at Jamie Lee Curtis in my life

[@aliasmcdoe]

The sad reality is that most people don't notice the issues with AI or don't care, and using AI is cheap and "good enough" so corporations will go with it regardless. AI is the greatest modern tragedy for art.

[@mgstation]

Don't notice because there's nothing to notice.

[@0L1]

@@mgstation You just proved their point. And here I was thinking that the 240fps Call of Duty kids would have slightly better eyes.

[@sci-fi.tsunami]

It just depends. The close up shots look bad/cartoony but I would never have noticed Vasquez really tiny in the background like that.

[@Jabler-]

@@sci-fi.tsunami The fact that it can be noticed by anyone makes it an issue because it WILL be noticed and it detracts and distracts from the film and art form, therefore destroying the entire scene/art.

[@johnlucas6683]

I'm sure people notice but just disregards it quickly because they had no idead what they actually saw, and what it should have been. It would be like "something seemed off there, but okay", ir an uncanny feeling. And this cheap and lazy way will only ruin it more -than- [edit: down] the line for other movies.

[@crow1994-bl]

It's amazing to me how much praise these 4K transfers are getting. It really shows a lot of physical media collectors, especially those who have KZbin channels, don't have a clue what they are talking about.

[@c-samleystudios1573]

I had a digital copy of Aliens on Apple TV/iTunes and it was automatically switched out for this nightmare version. Definitely taught me a lesson about settling for convenience instead of actually owning the movie.

[@Resuarus]

I was an early adopter for Blu-Ray and T2 was one of the first discs I got. I was shocked by the level of grain reduction and rubbery skin it caused on all the characters. It was literally the movie that taught me to look at image quality reviews. James Cameron has been fucking this shit up for decades.

[@tph2010]

Which edition was it?

[@tadpolegaming4510]

Huh? The Blu-rays look good, even if the 2009 print is lacking in special features. The 2017 4K is the one that looks like shit.

[@Resuarus]

@@tph2010 The Skynet Edition.

[@Resuarus]

@@tadpolegaming4510 That's always gonna come down to personal preference, but you can easily google it and find screen caps of the noise reduction that was done an the resulting softness/loss of skin detail.

[@DerpstonPDerp]

@@Resuarus The Skynet Edition is fine, a little soft but its grainy. The 2017 one is the grain-scrubbed disc

[@BallotBoxer]

Wow, actual footage of Cameron's Twin Peaks nightmare at the end is an amazing find. This dream dump tech is totally more interesting than the sharpened ghouls made by the "AI" up-res stuff.

[@robotortoise]

This is a fascinating analysis. As someone who's toyed with AI upscaling myself, this is an excellent example of how it can be done poorly when care or thought isn't put into it - or just incompetence, frankly. I know some of my earlier "restoration" jobs of official game art were hot garbage. Thanks for specifically pointing out Discotek Media, too - I love their restoration work so much.

[@chr1998is]

I’m 34, a movie buff and a cameraman. I love 4K scanned remasters. Some look excellent, others not so much. Love your explanation on gamma curves when resolution is increased. It’s amazing how many people don’t know that each resolution has its own colour space. It’s the reason I prefer physical disks to streaming, the bit-rate is far superior. I have watched the True Lies re-master and I think what makes the AI sharpening so distracting is, it’s making the edges and details sharper than the focal point of the shot and draws your eyes towards those details. It didn’t draw me out of the film but if you know what to look for, you can see some “waxy” skin tones

[@SpringdayAutumnmoon]

I'm so glad I'm not alone in my distaste for AI upscaling. I'm not big into movies, but I do like music videos, and it's infuriating how most official uploads have been replaced with disgusting 4K upscales.

[@radiokunio3738]

Trying torenting any old anime. Half the torrents have CRF or have some filter that mushs all the pixels together.

[@RAFMnBgaming]

I tend to just knock everything down to SD when watching, specifically to avoid, or at least hide, that.

[@radiokunio3738]

@@RAFMnBgaming Naked 720p is always better than 1080p with CRF or Noise Removal. But whatever has the bigger number gets seeded more unfortunately, especially older series.

[@nineouncenails]

@@radiokunio3738 no kidding. ive realized how much i prefer to watch it heavily compressed rather than mushy with random squiggly lines.

[@flamestoyershadowkill]

@@radiokunio3738 and 720p looks better on a 1440p screen than 1080. Scales equally well to a 4k dispay

[@ronanobrien47]

I honestly thought that James Cameron was going to release “EPIC” 4K Ultra HD Blu-Rays of his former films by scanning @ 6K-8K and downscaling to 4K - with minor cleanup when needed and grain intact! This “OFFICIAL” release is HORRENDOUS and he owns people their money back for this revisionist nightmare.

[@merez2089]

Funny, "dont have 6 weeks.." to re-release epic movies, ok, enuf said.

[@mathiasmoser4102]

Yes exactly, keep the grain!

[@EnterTheSoundscape]

I was on the fence about buying the Aliens 4K, thank you for letting me know to stick to the regular Blu Ray.

[@talec_arashi]

Yeah, I'm at the "don't have a 4k player yet, but anticipate having one eventually and will pick up films I like that come out on it" stage, so knowing about pitfalls like this is pretty important 😬

[@EnterTheSoundscape]

@@talec_arashi Get an OLED TV first. Once you have that, you’ll really notice the difference with a 4K player. There’s so many amazing 4K Blu Rays now! It’s just sad that Aliens isn’t one of them.

[@PulseRecognition]

The last 90 secs of this video is the most hilarious thing I've seen in ages. 😂Well done! I hope Mr. Cameron sees it.

[@myzamau428]

Grain is detail. Removing the grain is removing the detail. I don't care how much Cameron dislikes grain, that's what's on the negative. If that wasn't bad enough, as this video clearly demonstrates, the AI is just making shit up and guessing. Maybe an amateur film student might favour this, but it shouldn't be involved whatsoever with a huge film such as this. What a disappointment, but it was expected after the disaster that was Terminator 2.

[@12ealDealOfficial]

For an auteur like James Cameron, I can't believe he doesn't see how awesome grain was for the visceral quality of Aliens.

[@damboulton]

Nerrel posts video the same time as the ship of harkinian Majora’s Mask port goes live, this can’t be a coincidence.

[@whatsf2]

lol I really thought it was about that

[@mino2123]

omg your comment is how i find out about this

[@jorge69696]

Just checked and it's still version 8.0.5

[@DeepWeeb]

I remember how back when AI upscaling was first introduced it really felt like some sort of black magic (admittedly, even back then the results were kinda waxy-looking, but for a fan-made project you had to make-do) Now, for a professional commercial product? AI upscaling has severely reduced the standard of what looks acceptable, I think I rather watch a badly-aged VHS rip than the AI-upscaled version

[@12ealDealOfficial]

AI has done some wonders for games but it cannot do real people. FFIX and SH2 are unreal after fan upscaling. But AI is not ready for humans in reality.

[@Userloading]

I feel like Nerrel's channel is just the perfect level of watching niche content I care about being explained by someone who knows way more than I do.

[@creeping_deth2761]

Bro said “nits”. That’s how I know I’m watching the right nerd. ily Nerrel

[@MM-qm9ld]

Say it with me folks, GRAIN IS GOOD.

[@coreyander286]

"The grain is good. The face butthole is evil." :zardoz_statue:

[@itchytastyurr]

rice and the truth about grain.

[@Turahk]

nah

[@foilhattiest1]

THE GRAINER GOOD

[@racializedkanadian]

Compare the recent new Beach Boys doc to that freakish pile of dung that was Peter Jackson's doc on the Beatles 'Get Back' ...... savour the grain !!! The archival film footage looks gorgeously textured and detailed. The grain haters love that ridiculous overly vivid TV video-like look. It's the furthest thing from poetic that I can think of. Film is a poetic medium at the end of the day, for me. 4k HD is great for wing suit diving and sports and concerts. REPORTAGE basically. NOT FOR DRAMA. Which is why so many directors ADD FnG fake grain to their digitally shot movies. Look at the reaction to FURIOSA compared to FURY ROAD.

[@redpointrana]

That Twin Peaks ending is great! And yes, Cameron is now a hack fraud, there's no way someone who loves his films and cares about them will do this

[@OnTheRocks71]

Twin PAIks

[@Seriously140]

Whose face is in the little midget? Looks like Robert DeNiro?

[@Haulinbassracing]

james cameron died in the late 90s this asshole jim is what we have now

[@TheRenofox]

Cameron has literally said that "testosterone is a toxing that that you have to slowly work out of your system" and that he regrets the movies he's made. He has lost his spine AND his balls.

[@miamifiction]

That last part of the video could make a really scary horror movie....

[@TheTuubster]

When I denoise photos, I never denoise 100% but keep the original noise around 20% to 40% depending on when it becomes too aggressive. A noisy image is actually natural because even the receptors in the eyes produce a natural grain, this is not only film related.

[@cartermilan]

this is something I don't think many people realize - the photorecptors in our eyes are constantly firing "false-positive" impulses to our brain (because complex biochemistry reasons). it's why everything looks so grainy at night even though there are so relatively few photons are reaching the rods in the back of our eyes. A completely grain-free image can look artificial or uncanny for that very reason

[@madwlad799]

smiilar how I do renders

[@thadonis.]

"Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?" "I have now"

[@HOTD108_]

"I yam what I yam"

[@d3nza482]

Negative. I am a meat popsicle.

[@bened22]

Good one!

[@LalitoTV]

After a while, the AI errors went from funny and/or amusing, to... disturbing, in a way i cannot describe.

[@VanguardSupreme]

I think it’s when people started selling the stuff for money. It’s all fun and games till we’re expected to cough up money for half-baked tech and take it seriously.

[@cameronabshire1195]

There's no horror like AI horror. I'm waiting for someone to make a film that ratchets up the AI horrorshow to really show how messed up it can get. I've seen some disturbing and scary stuff, but nothing hits quite like Burger Blast 1995 or that one episode of Bob Ross that was run through Google's old DeepDream tech. Faces folding into layers of grotesque food and meat, hands and fingers twisting into horrible insect-like eyes and limbs all fusing into each other at random... It's fittingly an interpretation of biological life that only computers are able to synthesize. I've never seen anything like it even from artists who illustrate in the midst of a psychedelic trip.

[@jetrexdesign]

At first it was like making fun of something that seemed harmless and odd. Now it feels like a nebulous creature slowly worming its way into the spaces we hold dear. Something inhuman with no regard for what makes humanity good, what makes stories, songs, and images good. These are not human errors that we come to celebrate, they are the errors of something 'other' that cannot comprehend humans. And people are letting it happen, either blinded by new technology or gleeful that the art world's days are numbered. There's a sort of sick feeling behind all of it, and I don't think it will ever go away, for me personally.

[@CRT_sRGB]

The word that comes to mind is _contamination._ As Nerrel points out, some of these may become the default options for the public. Think about this: even people who train these AI models don't want to feed them material processed or generated by similar AI. Why? Because, doing so apparently degrades the performance of the AI model. It makes sense. Those bizarre details as shown in the video are information of zero value, with no relation to reality. Any system aiming to better mimic the real world has no use for such worthless information. We humans are robust, but, as we've already seen with social media, we shouldn't be surprised if this AI-generated deluge ends up having long-term effects on society.

[@Sketchy_2]

​@@jetrexdesign Oh sweet, man made horrors beyond comprehension!

[@costelinha1867]

"The problem is that AI has to be used carefully" Yeah, but it's not just film remasters that aren't using it carefully.... it seems ALMOST NO ONE, IN ANY FIELD IS USING THIS SHIT CAREFULLY!

[@angeldude101]

People are basically treating AI like it's magic, when it's not only far from magic, but also so dumb it doesn't deserve the "I" in the acryonym. It _can_ be a valuable and useful tool, but without completely overhauling the industry's entire approach to the topic, it will never be what most people seem to want it to be and will instead _only_ be a tool.

[@ProjectionProjects2.7182]

You make a good point. We really should use AI as a tool to help speed up the process of people restoring film not entirely replace the people doing their jobs.

[@MeepChangeling]

Hard disagree. We should be moving toward a post-labor society as fast as possible. For a large variety of reasons.

[@ProjectionProjects2.7182]

​@@MeepChangeling I can kinda see what your saying, but if we are going to have this kind of society then we should transition gradually not suddenly. Take my comment as me saying that we should not just replace jobs with AI immediately the instant we can, as the tech still needs improving.

[@weirdotzero7065]

@@ProjectionProjects2.7182 Every comment here that says "the tech still needs improvement" sounds very dystopian.

[@ProjectionProjects2.7182]

​@@weirdotzero7065 Yeah I know. The only reason why I said what I said in my response is because I did not want to start an argument with someone about if jobs should exist or not. I just made my comment work with his comment.

[@Grim2]

Thank God for fan made HD film transfers. It boggles the mind how people whose PROFESSIONAL JOB it is to remaster movies keep dropping the ball. Even before Ai, just take a look at Predator for example, making every actor look like wax.

[@PanoptesDreams]

I find way better remasters/regrades on Ship Sailing enthusiast websites. Even some that 'fix' a director's remaster after they fudge the grading.

[@ZX3000GT1]

It doesn't boggle anyone's mind if you realize this - fans do it for the love of the media, studios do it for the paycheck and revenue. Simple as that.

[@Patrick-jj5nh]

its funny as a filmmaker/not-quite-cinematographer as soon as 4k cameras became almost industry standard everyone was concerned about what faces would look like in large closeups, oversharpened etc but I feel like that was sage advice from oldschool cinematographers who knew sharp lenses etc, then most of us young guns kept using smaller/older and vintage lenses which mostly destroyed any high resolution benefit of 4K sensors and exports... so the faces were saved ... however now with AI sharpening and other post tools 4K faces oversharpening is back with a vengeance. it's definitely something to be aware of and i'm quite surprised professional postproduction and mastering places don't look out for it more.

[@jeegie_4000]

thank you so much for talking about this. The topic of 4K restoration and film scanning needs to be more normalized

[@bt3743]

Stop using words when you don't know what they mean

[@jeegie_4000]

@@bt3743 LOLOL

[@toxie_]

@@bt3743 🤓

[@Nerrel]

No, my voice-overs aren't AI. Yes, I live in my mom's basement

[@raven_vae]

incredibly based, nerrel

[@makotover]

om nom nom nom

[@nickjunes]

No one talks with a consistent downward inflection right at the end of a sentence. If this is how you talk in real life people would ask what’s wrong with you.

[@FollowMe4REP]

@@nickjunesThey’d know he was doing a funny ironic AI voice. Context cues would help, like the merciless constant roasting of AI. Jesus.

[@jamesvan2201]

Are you sure? 😂😂😂

[@Nicky9nore]

I’m genuinely baffled how horrible the ai upscaling in these movies looks.

[@godbelow]

A WHOLE WEEK OF YOUR TIME CAMERON!? How did you ever fit that in.

[@buddyisbored2355]

Im a completely fucked up individual that doesn't notice bad CGI in movies I wasn't bothered by Grand Faux Tarkin when watching Rouge One in theaters. Superman's stiff mouth in the intro of Batman V Superman in theaters as well. Even this AI shit I can see before you play it back and point it out, which tells me this shits FUCKED for people with a facial sense better than mine.

[@thelemonadestandman]

8 minutes in and I suddenly realized Nerrel wasn't making a joke that went over my head at the start about watching in HDR, whoops.

[@thatcat_]

Seeing a new Nerrel video less then a month from the last one is a good suprise

[@flymetothemoon5138]

What concerns me is that this is cultural vandalism akin to dodgy retouches of DaVinci paintings, future generations may never get to see the original versions of these films

[@blaiprat]

Why did I get one of the best HDR and Wide color explanation from a videogame channel than from when I read movie reviews? Great job Nerrel on explaining this 4k upscaling techniques! I would haven't known.

[@RiainRamblez]

This is the type of stuff I love. Detailing the technical details of 4K Home Releases and with the smooth "I don't want to really be here right now" tones of Nerrel

[@leftyfourguns]

At least we do get a look at the true power of AI here. The ability to make Ed Harris look both wet and dry at the same time is very impressive

[@volchonokilliR]

Thanks for bringing up this issue... I would've never guessed that anyone would consider re-releasing movies with such processing... I cannot imagine people involved in this having any comprehension of what they are trying to do or achieve

[@Mr_Mendelli]

I've been on a recent crusade to rip and preserve CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays. It's frustrating I have to research what to buy simply under reasonable speculation that the latest releases are botched from AI or tampered color grading. My latest addition is the Matrix trilogy. One of the re-releases of the films removed the green and blue color grading used for the Matrix and the real world respectively. This was apparently caused by being neglectful as the mastering to disc was done by a third-party and they mistook the color grading as error. If Warner Brothers cared, this would have been quickly and easily caught. I'm glad you are bringing more attention to this. So far, I'm more content with most of my digital rips being 1080p DVD rips.

[@ginogatash4030]

Wasn't it the other way around? With the green tint being an error made on the DVD while the 4k release resembled the theatrical look better?

[@g1234538]

Nerrel, you always make such great videos on video games, I feel like I followed this debacle closely for the past half year and the depth you went into on it and hit so many main points so accurately and succinctly is so satisfying! All those discussions trying to compare the bluray to the UHD upscales aren't as effective as the way you show here, zooming in, slowing down, going back and forth, etc. It was super effective! All the stuff about the weird eyes and plasticky hair and textures in True Lies - heugh. But you explained and showed them all perfectly! Even the further work you did of showing points of comparison with the same stocks, earlier stocks, _the same film stock used to film the same actress a couple years apart_ were really eye-opening and I hadn't even seen something doing such a comprehensive job to show how bad THESE remasters have dropped the ball. On the subject of stocks, it's even more crazy that this was done to films _after_ T-grain emulsions were commonplace. By the 90s, low speed stocks had ridiculously amazing image quality, which you can see from all the properly done 4k masters from this time. The Matrix, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction; these films look incredible being shot on the same or similar stocks and are what True Lies and T2 should have looked like. Not to mention Cameron preferred to rate stocks slower in darker scenes to build up more exposure and not get poopy yucky shadows, something that's important for his style. Despite everything for it, we got this terribly heavy handed postprocessing. It's so unnecessary and frustrating. I have to commend you the same for your detail in comparing how The Abyss and Titanic compared to those, which I think Abyss might look the best because some of Titanic's shot look quite strange despite having fared better. They're not as bad as True Lies and Aliens, thankfully, but they could be so much better. All of these films can be so much better. Furthermore, highlighting Cameron's weird statement about looking at "every damn pixel" ringing untrue when the result had all these glaring issues. Then his complaint about spending time (did he say weeks or _a week_ ??) on it while he's spent over _15 years_ between the Avatar movies - so far. One aspect of irony is that Park Road Post acquired a special 10k scanner. You would presume this would mean they would have been able to make incredible masters, but LoTR only got a weird upscale and these projects Cameron did through them did this work on older masters or ruined newer ones. Anyway - Fantasia on a Theme was a really pretty choice c: so yes, incredible unexpected Nerrel video on these mush remasters!!

[@craigjohns5263]

What jumps out at me is that theme of AI having a tendency to glitch and not fully understand human made constructs and forms, as literally shown in both of Cameron's Terminator films, reminds me of these glitchy artifacts in the Aliens 4K remaster. In The Terminator there is of course the stilted way that the T800 interacts towards the random people he encounters in LA 1984. Or when he rams his boosted squad car into a concrete wall because he was so fixated on his mission, and ignored some of the immediate dangers that a human is much more aware of. As for interacting with the pedestrians around him, you could say the same about the T1000 in T2. There is just something subtly "off" about this cop. Anyways, the one that really applies here is how the T1000 in T2 would glitch at points, that wave of liquid metal kind of flowing up through its body after it morphed back into the default Robert Patrick police officer identity. There is only a brief glimpse of this in the theatrical cut, but the director's cut has it more front and center during the steel mill showdown. Cameron actually meant that to symbolize the T1000 having suffered too much molecular damage and can't reform as perfectly at this point. The whole idea being that this synthetic being was no longer able to perfectly maintain the illusion of looking like a human after being shot to hell and blown up so many times. I remember reading that detail in Starlog or some other old magazine interview, or the DVD commentary maybe. It is pretty wild that a form of this T1000 glitch is reminiscent of these AI upscaling glitches for these 4K Blu-rays. Certainly a more mundane form of it, but kinda blows my mind it is happening on a Cameron film remaster.

[@BartvanderHorst]

Man I wish you were head of R.O.M.I Restoration of Movies Industry. I am very impressed by your observations. And I just can't believe that professionals have such a disregard for their original products.

[@GANONdork123]

The "aliasing" artifacts you pointed out at 4:24 look like interlacing artifacts. For those unaware, interlacing is a technique for transporting analogue video data that would alternate between the odd and even scanlines. This was done to reduce screen flickering on CRTs as well as a few other reasons. This is significant though, as actual film reels don't use interlacing. This means they did one of two things: A) they used a film scanner that only outputs interlaced video for some weird reason, or B) They simply took the video data from an already digitized source, such as a DVD. Given they used AI upscaling, its likely option B is what they went with, as if they used the original film reels, there'd be no need for AI upscaling. This means what you're looking at is most likely an upscaled DVD rip. A 480i video that's been blown up to 4K with machine learning attempting to fill in the gaps. If thats truly the case, its truly astounding.

[@JohnDoe11VII]

interlaced video wasn't done to reduce flickering, it was how standard TVs functioned, until component output DVD players came out, everything was 480i in the US. If you played 480p content on a 480i TV, you wouldn't see any difference. But when you play 480i content on a modern/progressive display, you won't stop noticing the holdover interlaced artifacting in moving shots. It gets really bad in 4:3 formatted, 16:9 preserved with added black bars, interlaced content on a DVD with a modern display. DVDs were very capable of handling 480p. House Season 1 is an example of a 480i 4:3 presented, 16:9 preserved DVDs, and it's terrible on anything not a standard 4:3, composite/S-Video TV.

[@GANONdork123]

@@JohnDoe11VII It was done that way because drawing every scanline sequentially would take too long, and the topmost scanlines would fade by the time you finished drawing the entire screen, causing the picture to flicker.

[@GANONdork123]

@@CorruptedDogg Look closely when he mentions "aliasing" and "banding" artifacts. You'll notice evenly spaced horizontal lines going across the image.

[@mangomation3945]

It's definitely not DVD, the 4k is based on a genuine but iffy 4k restoration by Lowry that was then put through Park Road's AI upscaling process to try and further remove grain and make it look modern and digital. Especially as it's an effects shot, I imagine it might just be some quirk of the workflow used on the effects that the AI is exacerbating here. I've seen odd artifacts like that pop up in the middle of genuine HD transfers, sometimes films just have these messy oddities to them in the source.

[@little-endian5957]

@@CorruptedDogg Considering that any interlaced formats would have eventually been created from the film source and thus share the same time phases between the fields, it would already be an achievement to mess that one up. Not that I wouldn't trust Cameron and his gang to accomplish exactly that.

[@megamillion5852]

"Emperor Palpatinism" had me dying, but the edit immediately after made me want to die. Thanks, Nerrel!

[@travis590]

Sure wish I'd seen this before buying them. Half the reviews complained and the other half said they were exaggerating and I couldn't get good visual comparisons at the time.

[@ToonamiAftermath]

there are new algorithms coming out that does amazing temporal inference based on past and future frames, looking forward to movies done with those

[@ItsRetroPlanet]

Not only are you informative, but you're also entertaining. That to me makes a great channel. This topic is genuinely important, and I'm glad that somebody is covering it.

[@Mote.]

I saw a "Brainrot Ratatouille" edit a few days ago. It sounds 90% real as if the voice actors actually said the lines.

[@Niberspace]

For people who thinks that he's exxagerating, you need to consider that if you watch it on an large OLED screen, details like this will be 10x more obvious than if you're watching it on a regular screen

[@OFFCODEV2]

I'm watching it on a larger screen , an literally the freeze frames shoes nothing wrong with True Lies , now unless he watches movies 1 inch away from the screen , you can't tell the difference

[@Niberspace]

@@OFFCODEV2 large screen has nothing to do with it, you regular screen is so blurry that you can't see any details. I'm talking about OLED screens

[@OFFCODEV2]

@@Niberspace u just said if you watch it on a larger screen that the details will be more obvious,now you say it doesn't matter ..it's obvious that y'all are just nitpicking

[@Niberspace]

@@OFFCODEV2 emphisis on the OLED part. if I had said "if you have a large amount of money" and you said "I have a large amount of pinecones" that would not be the same

[@OFFCODEV2]

@@Niberspace I know you said OLED screens an that's what I have , there's is zero difference ,

[@Trailminer]

This video got me to look into 4k remasters, which got me to look into physical media in our current age of "don't buy it, rent it forever." I'm now the proud owner of the first 17 seasons of The Simpsons on DVD, and a bunch of my favorite movies in 4k. It really feels nice to own the things I love instead of paying for them in perpetuity only for them to be taken away for tax reasons.

[@shodanargie1574]

The Criterion Collection has put out a lot of material explaining how delicate this process is and how many times they have to make assumptions based on looking at the body of work of the cinematographer and director when they are unsure about some details in contrast remapping. I dont think AI has the finesse for this and wont for quite a while.

[@ginogatash4030]

AI like any other tool needs human supervision/guidance, people now just use it like it's magic because they think it can do everything right with no effort required, but even as technology progresses I don't think AI can ever truly just perfectly remaster footage all on its own, there will always be stuff the AI can't correctly guess how to best treat no matter how trained it might be cause every film is different, and unless they become sentient and learn to think exactly like what the directors and rest of the crew operated at the time, AI simply can't make perfect remasters alone just like how human beings need to check their resources and consult the directors or whoever to get good results.

[@existentialselkath1264]

Allow me to introduce The Fellowship Of The Ring, and Star Wars. 4k releases have one job, you don't need to reinvent the wheel, just do it properly.

[@theninjamaster67]

The 4K releases of both of those films are incredibly fucked up which is why I'm glad fan made remasters exist.

[@MintyRoot]

Especially the ones for the prequels, they took movies shot at less than 2K on digital cameras, upscaled them and tried to grade SDR images to look HDR.

[@OcarinaofKillingTime]

@@MintyRoot The Phantom Menace was shot on film. Your point stands for Episode II and III.

[@MintyRoot]

@@OcarinaofKillingTime Oh yeah, I should have been more specific. They did scan at 2K all the shots that required special effects and then reprinted them, so even there you'd end up with having to upscale that footage or rerender everything again.

[@theninjamaster67]

@@OcarinaofKillingTime Yes but two out of three the point still stands. Although I will say Phantom Menace is the only one even slightly watchable so it looking the best out of prequels is probably for the best.

[@THEMADDMAXX67]

Basically if it's been AI corrected, there should be a label in the box so people know it's shit.

[@charliekill88]

the twin peaks 4k restoration looking real good Nerrel

[@donniecatalano]

In a way I think it's like when the music business started mastering tracks with only loudness and mp3 in mind.

[@Selrisitai]

And the prize goes to. . . .

[@marcoelhodev]

As someone who just "lost" his job to the AI hype, I'm laughing deeply, thank you very much.

[@mildlyconcerning]

How are you doing?

[@arbiter8246]

What was your job if you don't mind me asking?

[@marcoelhodev]

@@arbiter8246 Android Software Developer, at a multinational smartphone company. Brazilian located, of course.

[@arbiter8246]

@@marcoelhodev You have my sympathies.

[@marcoelhodev]

@@arbiter8246 Thank you. For now, we have to get on the hype train, but I think one day people will realize how infamous and low quality the "made with AI" seal really is.

[@lunaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

Extremely surprised Cameron approved of this. AI upscaling should be reserved for films shot digitally to begin with, and the tech currently isnt ready.

[@i_never_asked_for_an_alias]

Thank you very much for digging into this. Thats why we always need PEOPLE who know whats going on and AI should stay a tool and not a "one button solution for everything". Oh and i love your editing. Keep it on, Sir and keep it real.