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Bringing 4K and HDR to Anime at Netflix with Sol Levante

210 points by joubert 7y ago

fxtentacle 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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/
  - Hitton 7y ago
    There is also Anime4K [1]. It doesn't use machine learning though. [1]: https://github.com/bloc97/Anime4K https://github.com/bloc97/Anime4K
    - Daiz 7y ago
      waifu2x is not suited for actual anime almost at all - its upscaling is primarily trained on sharp lineart, and lineart in actual anime is generally quite soft. Anime4K has even less going for it than waifu2x does, it's pretty much just simple warpsharping with a fancy marketing name. Neither of these are particularly interesting as far as upscaling / remastering goes, and I'm saying that as someone who has done SD to HD anime upscaling/remastering projects from SD masters myself. And while you can get results that look pretty solid for the most part, it is ultimately still going to look like an upscale when compared to native footage. Here's a comparison with two examples: https://slow.pics/c/wNZKk3WQ https://slow.pics/c/wNZKk3WQ As you can see in the second example, the upscaled nature of the SD to HD conversion is especially clear in areas where the lineart has been very tightly packed originally.
      - aidenn0 7y ago
        waifu2x is quite reasonable for manga though; it's quite commonly sharp lineart. I ran it on some old poor-quality jpg scanslations I had, and the results were good.
  - willis936 7y ago
    Whenever I see that name, I immediately think “oh the poorly rebranded version of NNEDI3”.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      I'd say it's well branded, for the target demographic of weebs. It's also a generally memorable name.
      - willis936 7y ago
        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 7y ago
        > 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 7y ago
        “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.
        catalogia 7y ago
        I'm pretty confident that nagadomi intends for waifu2x to be used for anime fanart (they say as much) and for that, it is effectively branded. Just because something wasn't directed at a general audience doesn't mean it was poorly branded.
royjacobs 7y ago
Off-topic, but now I can't even read corporate blogs because Medium is forcing me to log in. Sigh.
- girvo 7y ago
  Same! When did they start doing that? Time to add medium to my hosts file...
  - pests 7y ago
    Over a year maybe? It's been awhile. Not everyone sees the gate all the time.
  - thejosh 7y ago
    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.
- yalooze 7y ago
  In this case, that only happened to me if I dismissed the blue Medium banner at the bottom of the page (on mobile). Which in itself is a truly awful dark pattern. But if you don’t dismiss it and just scroll you can read the article.
- jtvjan 7y ago
  Try turning off JavaScript.
  - Ntrails 7y ago
    Running NoScript, and had no problems reading without logging in
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  the thing I can't understand is, why do people continue to have their corporate blogs on medium - because that is where the readers are yes, but I think many people come in, get the news they have read too much the past month and then not read the blog. Does medium tell the corporate blog - you had 20,000 readers, or do they tell them you had 20,000 people who wanted to read but only 2000 got to because the rest had used up their free reads. I bet it's the first one because if it were the second I would move off of medium.
dlbucci 7y ago
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.
- ddrt 7y ago
  Have you seen the Eva remaster? It’s pretty good. Also, newer series like Haikyu!! Have issues on all streaming services. Just look at the lighter beige skin tones. They look blue in some areas due to the low quality, it’s just weird. So I’m all for hq anime.
- serf 7y ago
  >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. probably just depends on the type of anime you're into. School drama and slice-of-life? Who cares about resolution past a certain point, I agree. Mecha or technical sci-fi? I want to be able to count the bolts and read the warning labels.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    > Mecha or technical sci-fi? I want to be able to count the bolts and read the warning labels. You want to pay and wait the extra time and money it costs to have someone adding those extra bolts and labels too? Because I expect most anime is drawn with a keen sense of what you only need to hint at and get away with it.
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  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.
avhon1 7y ago
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/SolLevante/sollevante-cclicense.txt http://download.opencontent.netflix.com.s3.amazonaws.com/Sol... [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/
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  This is standard Commoditize Your Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement
  - btown 7y ago
    Yep. Netflix's complement is "content that is only/best experienced on Netflix." If they develop consumer tastes, and reduce costs, for content that is 4K and more suitable to stream than to distribute on physical media, they develop an ecosystem that becomes a natural organic sales channel. Of course, they don't want to commoditize competitors to their complement. They're not sponsoring projects that are useful to amateur YouTubers, for instance. But enabling anime producers to move towards digital workflows is right up their alley.
- diggan 7y ago
  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/
PudgePacket 7y ago
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
- Mashimo 7y ago
  Everyone who uses it on the app on their 4k TV.
  - avhon1 7y ago
    Not all of them. You have to pay more money (currently $16 / month [1]), have sufficiently fast internet, and watch content that is actually available in 4K. [1] https://www.netflix.com/signup/planform https://www.netflix.com/signup/planform
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      I think most households are on that plan anyway in order to get more than two streams.
    - dangus 7y ago
      Your internet doesn’t even need to be terribly fast. 25Mbps should do it: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306
- nfellaby 7y ago
  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.
Causality1 7y ago
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.
- fastball 7y ago
  Download it from where?
  - Causality1 7y ago
    Private filesharing sites. I don't see a moral problem with downloading content I already pay to access.
- conceptme 7y ago
  I bought a nvdia shield a couple of years ago, it still works fine and still receive updates for it.
  - CobsterLock 7y ago
    I bought one for plex, and it handles most codecs you can throw at it. Its almost like a mini HTPC! very happy with mine.
- tcd 7y ago
  The whole proposition by Netflix is hilarious. "Hey, everyone's at home now, so enjoy your SD kthx". If I pay for HD I expect HD, if I pay for 4k, I expect 4k. I should be able to play 4K on any device I like, even if it doesn't work properly (as I can do by downloading the MKV). Dumb Rights Management is and has always been a failure. I expect this anime to be on torrent sites shortly. All digital media goes onto torrents, and there's very little evidence to suggest DRM 'works', it only frustrates legitimate paying consumers (and makes consumers like me put off entirely). Maybe in some decade we'll get an actual competitor to that offered elsewhere. Mean while, I'll enjoy all the 4k/HD content I desire, without any hassle or throttling, and BS management decisions at the cost of my internet connection. Now that's a good deal - how close can Netflix get, so far, not close enough.
dharma1 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Afaik the iPad pros from 2018+ are HDR, aren’t they?
  - jrockway 7y ago
    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).
  - Mindwipe 7y ago
    They are, but mostly in supporting wide colour gamut than actually delivering more nits of brightness. They'll naively play back HDR content (with tone mapping as they don't get that bright), but it won't be as flashy as a TV that has so much extra power to play with. From an actual picture quality perspective you still have more graduation in dynamic range to play with though.
  - bsanr2 7y ago
    They're still backlit LED LCD screens with relatively low brightness and no local dimming AFAIK. They're HDR in the same way lower-end LG TVs of the past few years have been HDR, I suppose.
- eurekin 7y ago
longtermd 7y ago
Please make 4K the standard for all Youtube videos and all streaming! <3 Let's work on this together of putting quality first!
- LeoTinnitus 7y ago
  I think that's rather ambitious due to the file sizes. Plus most phones barely due 4k still.
  - snazz 7y ago
    It’s at least a nice option—I don’t own a single device that can play 4k video (and have it look any better than 1440p), but at least it’s available for people who have new televisions. YouTube downscales automatically for logical bandwidth usage.
  - ehsankia 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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).
coleifer 7y ago
I prefer 4:3 grainy shit from the 90s to a slick cg any day.
- devmunchies 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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.
  - the8472 7y ago
    There's a whole zoo of 3D styles. From the semi-realistic look complete with SSS-shaders for skin that more resembles videogame cutscenes than your average anime (kingsglaive movie[0]) over the plasticy half-way look that has realistic lighting on flat-colored materials and outlines (e.g. altered carbon or the blame movie[1]) to productions that more closely emulate the common manga/anime style, sometimes even mixing 2D and 3D the same scene[2] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UblcNFVVHT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UblcNFVVHT8 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwy806RC2-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwy806RC2-Q [2] https://youtu.be/N-VNG8vW5RA?t=116 https://youtu.be/N-VNG8vW5RA?t=116
knolax 7y ago
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.
jniedrauer 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Netflix has > 167,000,000 subscribers [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/media/netflix-q4-2019-earnings-nflx.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/media/netflix-q4...
  - jniedrauer 7y ago
    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.
derefr 7y ago
> 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.
DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
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 7y ago
  > 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 7y ago
    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.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  what about Spirited Away? 4K makes cheaply animated content look cheap. Sometimes that's ok, other times viewers want more. Another example outside anime is Fantasia 2000 on Disney+. That kind of content requires high fidelity. Disney+ looks and sounds bad and it harms the content. I think it's fantastic Netflix is doing what they can to make fidelity a competitive advantage for content creators, especially the ones that can't spend as much on it.

210 points by joubert 7y ago

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 7y ago
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/
- Hitton 7y ago
  There is also Anime4K [1]. It doesn't use machine learning though. [1]: https://github.com/bloc97/Anime4K https://github.com/bloc97/Anime4K
  - Daiz 7y ago
    waifu2x is not suited for actual anime almost at all - its upscaling is primarily trained on sharp lineart, and lineart in actual anime is generally quite soft. Anime4K has even less going for it than waifu2x does, it's pretty much just simple warpsharping with a fancy marketing name. Neither of these are particularly interesting as far as upscaling / remastering goes, and I'm saying that as someone who has done SD to HD anime upscaling/remastering projects from SD masters myself. And while you can get results that look pretty solid for the most part, it is ultimately still going to look like an upscale when compared to native footage. Here's a comparison with two examples: https://slow.pics/c/wNZKk3WQ https://slow.pics/c/wNZKk3WQ As you can see in the second example, the upscaled nature of the SD to HD conversion is especially clear in areas where the lineart has been very tightly packed originally.
    - aidenn0 7y ago
      waifu2x is quite reasonable for manga though; it's quite commonly sharp lineart. I ran it on some old poor-quality jpg scanslations I had, and the results were good.
- willis936 7y ago
  Whenever I see that name, I immediately think “oh the poorly rebranded version of NNEDI3”.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    I'd say it's well branded, for the target demographic of weebs. It's also a generally memorable name.
    - willis936 7y ago
      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 7y ago
        > 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 7y ago
        “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.
        catalogia 7y ago
        I'm pretty confident that nagadomi intends for waifu2x to be used for anime fanart (they say as much) and for that, it is effectively branded. Just because something wasn't directed at a general audience doesn't mean it was poorly branded.

royjacobs 7y ago

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

girvo 7y ago
Same! When did they start doing that? Time to add medium to my hosts file...
- pests 7y ago
  Over a year maybe? It's been awhile. Not everyone sees the gate all the time.
- thejosh 7y ago
  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.
yalooze 7y ago
In this case, that only happened to me if I dismissed the blue Medium banner at the bottom of the page (on mobile). Which in itself is a truly awful dark pattern. But if you don’t dismiss it and just scroll you can read the article.
jtvjan 7y ago
Try turning off JavaScript.
- Ntrails 7y ago
  Running NoScript, and had no problems reading without logging in
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
the thing I can't understand is, why do people continue to have their corporate blogs on medium - because that is where the readers are yes, but I think many people come in, get the news they have read too much the past month and then not read the blog. Does medium tell the corporate blog - you had 20,000 readers, or do they tell them you had 20,000 people who wanted to read but only 2000 got to because the rest had used up their free reads. I bet it's the first one because if it were the second I would move off of medium.

dlbucci 7y ago

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.

ddrt 7y ago
Have you seen the Eva remaster? It’s pretty good. Also, newer series like Haikyu!! Have issues on all streaming services. Just look at the lighter beige skin tones. They look blue in some areas due to the low quality, it’s just weird. So I’m all for hq anime.
serf 7y ago
>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. probably just depends on the type of anime you're into. School drama and slice-of-life? Who cares about resolution past a certain point, I agree. Mecha or technical sci-fi? I want to be able to count the bolts and read the warning labels.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  > Mecha or technical sci-fi? I want to be able to count the bolts and read the warning labels. You want to pay and wait the extra time and money it costs to have someone adding those extra bolts and labels too? Because I expect most anime is drawn with a keen sense of what you only need to hint at and get away with it.
diffeomorphism 7y ago
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.

avhon1 7y ago

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

abdullahkhalids 7y ago
This is standard Commoditize Your Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement
- btown 7y ago
  Yep. Netflix's complement is "content that is only/best experienced on Netflix." If they develop consumer tastes, and reduce costs, for content that is 4K and more suitable to stream than to distribute on physical media, they develop an ecosystem that becomes a natural organic sales channel. Of course, they don't want to commoditize competitors to their complement. They're not sponsoring projects that are useful to amateur YouTubers, for instance. But enabling anime producers to move towards digital workflows is right up their alley.
diggan 7y ago
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/

PudgePacket 7y ago

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

Mashimo 7y ago
Everyone who uses it on the app on their 4k TV.
- avhon1 7y ago
  Not all of them. You have to pay more money (currently $16 / month [1]), have sufficiently fast internet, and watch content that is actually available in 4K. [1] https://www.netflix.com/signup/planform https://www.netflix.com/signup/planform
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    I think most households are on that plan anyway in order to get more than two streams.
  - dangus 7y ago
    Your internet doesn’t even need to be terribly fast. 25Mbps should do it: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306
nfellaby 7y ago
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.

Causality1 7y ago

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.

fastball 7y ago
Download it from where?
- Causality1 7y ago
  Private filesharing sites. I don't see a moral problem with downloading content I already pay to access.
conceptme 7y ago
I bought a nvdia shield a couple of years ago, it still works fine and still receive updates for it.
- CobsterLock 7y ago
  I bought one for plex, and it handles most codecs you can throw at it. Its almost like a mini HTPC! very happy with mine.
tcd 7y ago
The whole proposition by Netflix is hilarious. "Hey, everyone's at home now, so enjoy your SD kthx". If I pay for HD I expect HD, if I pay for 4k, I expect 4k. I should be able to play 4K on any device I like, even if it doesn't work properly (as I can do by downloading the MKV). Dumb Rights Management is and has always been a failure. I expect this anime to be on torrent sites shortly. All digital media goes onto torrents, and there's very little evidence to suggest DRM 'works', it only frustrates legitimate paying consumers (and makes consumers like me put off entirely). Maybe in some decade we'll get an actual competitor to that offered elsewhere. Mean while, I'll enjoy all the 4k/HD content I desire, without any hassle or throttling, and BS management decisions at the cost of my internet connection. Now that's a good deal - how close can Netflix get, so far, not close enough.

dharma1 7y ago

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 7y ago
Afaik the iPad pros from 2018+ are HDR, aren’t they?
- jrockway 7y ago
  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).
- Mindwipe 7y ago
  They are, but mostly in supporting wide colour gamut than actually delivering more nits of brightness. They'll naively play back HDR content (with tone mapping as they don't get that bright), but it won't be as flashy as a TV that has so much extra power to play with. From an actual picture quality perspective you still have more graduation in dynamic range to play with though.
- bsanr2 7y ago
  They're still backlit LED LCD screens with relatively low brightness and no local dimming AFAIK. They're HDR in the same way lower-end LG TVs of the past few years have been HDR, I suppose.
eurekin 7y ago

longtermd 7y ago

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

LeoTinnitus 7y ago
I think that's rather ambitious due to the file sizes. Plus most phones barely due 4k still.
- snazz 7y ago
  It’s at least a nice option—I don’t own a single device that can play 4k video (and have it look any better than 1440p), but at least it’s available for people who have new televisions. YouTube downscales automatically for logical bandwidth usage.
- ehsankia 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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).

coleifer 7y ago

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

devmunchies 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
- the8472 7y ago
  There's a whole zoo of 3D styles. From the semi-realistic look complete with SSS-shaders for skin that more resembles videogame cutscenes than your average anime (kingsglaive movie[0]) over the plasticy half-way look that has realistic lighting on flat-colored materials and outlines (e.g. altered carbon or the blame movie[1]) to productions that more closely emulate the common manga/anime style, sometimes even mixing 2D and 3D the same scene[2] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UblcNFVVHT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UblcNFVVHT8 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwy806RC2-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwy806RC2-Q [2] https://youtu.be/N-VNG8vW5RA?t=116 https://youtu.be/N-VNG8vW5RA?t=116

knolax 7y ago

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.

jniedrauer 7y ago

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 7y ago
Netflix has > 167,000,000 subscribers [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/media/netflix-q4-2019-earnings-nflx.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/media/netflix-q4...
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  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.

derefr 7y ago

> 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.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago

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 7y ago
> 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 7y ago
  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.
unlinked_dll 7y ago
what about Spirited Away? 4K makes cheaply animated content look cheap. Sometimes that's ok, other times viewers want more. Another example outside anime is Fantasia 2000 on Disney+. That kind of content requires high fidelity. Disney+ looks and sounds bad and it harms the content. I think it's fantastic Netflix is doing what they can to make fidelity a competitive advantage for content creators, especially the ones that can't spend as much on it.