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The artists' intent argument doesn't hold up, but is one that continues to be used as justification for "tradition". Most people aren't watching movies strictly

The artists' intent argument doesn't hold up, but is one that continues to be used as justification for "tradition". Most people aren't watching movies strictly in IMAX or even a color calibrated TV. Most default TV settings, even on the most high end devices, have things like dynamic saturation and motion smoothing on by default. The most popular brands of headphones do have custom eq from the factory, most people don't listen to studio monitor style flat audio. Most people don't realize there is a difference. The meaning of art is up to the viewer, not the artist. There's nothing wrong with having a preference, like using things like temporal denoising or increasing/decreasing saturation. Even an IMAX movie theater isn't enough because that's not what the film was graded with. Pretending that art shouldn't be modified because it moves away from the artist's intent is a bad faith argument. There were certain House of Dragon color grading decision that made me feel very disappointed, and I was watching in Dolby Vision on a nice high dynamic range TV. Artists' intent is useless if 99.999% of the population can't enjoy the actual art. https://www.vulture.com/article/why-house-of-the-dragon-episode-7-driftmark-was-so-dark.html https://www.vulture.com/article/why-house-of-the-dragon-epis...

rtev 4y ago
Your first paragraph seems to be “others are already doing it”. That’s a problem, not a justification for doing more of it. It’s a shame to see embedded analog grain stripped out because it was inconvenient for a dev team. It strikes me as a good example of the bad reputation developers hold for constantly prioritizing their own convenience over the end user’s experience. To address your second- I think that’s an example of the “slippery slope” fallacy. I’m stating only that film noise and grain is a big part of the atmosphere of many movies and shouldn’t be removed; I’m not suggesting that a viewing experience needs to be done in a world-class theater under perfect conditions to capture artistic intent. Anyone with a basic HD television can see analog noise and grain.
- knaik94 4y ago
  We fundamentally disagree on how removing film grain, or changing things like saturation, affects end user experience. I don't believe it harms the viewing experience in a meaningful way. I respect that you care about artists' intent, but I think you're assuming more people care or notice than actually do. I don't believe adhering so strictly to the artists' intent will lead to a better watching experience. For some films where only a 1080p master remains, if you don't denoise before upscaling and then adding in artificial film grain, it'll look terrible. There is an endless list of poor Bluray and UHD Bluray transfers where the the film grain makes it unwatchable. The unfortunate thing is that the nicer the display is, the sharper the image and the more distracting the grain. In some cases, I would trust the AV1 endcoder decoder to do a better job at adding a more reasonable amount of grain than the 4k transfer did. It's not a slippery slope, bad transfers and poorly color graded films/shows already exist. Mistakes exist in both directions, the UHD remaster release of Terminator 2 is a exceptionally horrible example of too much DNR. In my opinion T2 is bad enough to bring real actors into the uncanny valley. The developers aren't doing anything different from what films do when going through an analog to digital transfer.
  - jychang 4y ago
    ... you don't think changing things like saturation affects viewing experience in a meaningful way??? Jesus. Every engineer who's worked on color implementation just choked on their drink. You can literally scroll down a little further and find blog posts on how iMessage green vs blue saturation creates tiny changes in readability. The human experience matters a lot more than what engineers (who can't tell apart two shades of women's fingernail polish) decides matters.
    - knaik94 4y ago
      You're making a lot of incorrect and dismissive generalizations. If you're able to notice the differences in color calibration and film grain, more power to you. Most people can't explain the difference between the saturation in video when watching something on a phone compared to watching it on their TV, if they even detect it. For what it's worth, I just did a Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test and got a perfect score again. I'm not sure why telling apart fingernail polish shades would make a difference in how meaningful or noticeable changes in saturation or film grain are to people. Readability is dependent on screen brightness and difference in contrast between background and foreground colors. These decisions aren't based on what engineers assume matters, it's dependent mostly on A/B testing and perception psychology. It's the same kind of research that went into making the OPUS audio codec and deciding which parts people will notice missing and which parts don't really make a difference. Tiny to moderate changes in visibility/readability make a much smaller difference than you imagine. https://www.colorblindnesstest.org/farnsworth-munsell-100-hue-test/ https://www.colorblindnesstest.org/farnsworth-munsell-100-hu...
KaiserPro 4y ago
The problem is, like 24fps is that film grain makes things feel "filmic". The hobbit doesn't feel like a film in 60fps. it feels like a play, or something from TV. Now. to your point, that motion smoothing stops this, its not strictly true. There are still artefacts that happen because its film. this then becomes the marker for "film". > The meaning of art is up to the viewer, not the artist. yes, but the delivery is key. your point about imax doesn't really add up. Unless you are printing out IMAX prints (which most people don't) they you'll at least do a technical grade for the IMAX to make it look like the version that the DoP/director agreed. The House of Dragons chose to make it look like that. Mainly because I suspect the director was trying to chase the fashion for removing colour from everything. Grading, like most things is prone to fashions, and pushing against "what came before" is par for the course. Some people do it well, others are shite.

rtev 4y ago

Your first paragraph seems to be “others are already doing it”. That’s a problem, not a justification for doing more of it. It’s a shame to see embedded analog grain stripped out because it was inconvenient for a dev team. It strikes me as a good example of the bad reputation developers hold for constantly prioritizing their own convenience over the end user’s experience. To address your second- I think that’s an example of the “slippery slope” fallacy. I’m stating only that film noise and grain is a big part of the atmosphere of many movies and shouldn’t be removed; I’m not suggesting that a viewing experience needs to be done in a world-class theater under perfect conditions to capture artistic intent. Anyone with a basic HD television can see analog noise and grain.

knaik94 4y ago
We fundamentally disagree on how removing film grain, or changing things like saturation, affects end user experience. I don't believe it harms the viewing experience in a meaningful way. I respect that you care about artists' intent, but I think you're assuming more people care or notice than actually do. I don't believe adhering so strictly to the artists' intent will lead to a better watching experience. For some films where only a 1080p master remains, if you don't denoise before upscaling and then adding in artificial film grain, it'll look terrible. There is an endless list of poor Bluray and UHD Bluray transfers where the the film grain makes it unwatchable. The unfortunate thing is that the nicer the display is, the sharper the image and the more distracting the grain. In some cases, I would trust the AV1 endcoder decoder to do a better job at adding a more reasonable amount of grain than the 4k transfer did. It's not a slippery slope, bad transfers and poorly color graded films/shows already exist. Mistakes exist in both directions, the UHD remaster release of Terminator 2 is a exceptionally horrible example of too much DNR. In my opinion T2 is bad enough to bring real actors into the uncanny valley. The developers aren't doing anything different from what films do when going through an analog to digital transfer.
- jychang 4y ago
  ... you don't think changing things like saturation affects viewing experience in a meaningful way??? Jesus. Every engineer who's worked on color implementation just choked on their drink. You can literally scroll down a little further and find blog posts on how iMessage green vs blue saturation creates tiny changes in readability. The human experience matters a lot more than what engineers (who can't tell apart two shades of women's fingernail polish) decides matters.
  - knaik94 4y ago
    You're making a lot of incorrect and dismissive generalizations. If you're able to notice the differences in color calibration and film grain, more power to you. Most people can't explain the difference between the saturation in video when watching something on a phone compared to watching it on their TV, if they even detect it. For what it's worth, I just did a Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test and got a perfect score again. I'm not sure why telling apart fingernail polish shades would make a difference in how meaningful or noticeable changes in saturation or film grain are to people. Readability is dependent on screen brightness and difference in contrast between background and foreground colors. These decisions aren't based on what engineers assume matters, it's dependent mostly on A/B testing and perception psychology. It's the same kind of research that went into making the OPUS audio codec and deciding which parts people will notice missing and which parts don't really make a difference. Tiny to moderate changes in visibility/readability make a much smaller difference than you imagine. https://www.colorblindnesstest.org/farnsworth-munsell-100-hue-test/ https://www.colorblindnesstest.org/farnsworth-munsell-100-hu...

KaiserPro 4y ago

The problem is, like 24fps is that film grain makes things feel "filmic". The hobbit doesn't feel like a film in 60fps. it feels like a play, or something from TV. Now. to your point, that motion smoothing stops this, its not strictly true. There are still artefacts that happen because its film. this then becomes the marker for "film". > The meaning of art is up to the viewer, not the artist. yes, but the delivery is key. your point about imax doesn't really add up. Unless you are printing out IMAX prints (which most people don't) they you'll at least do a technical grade for the IMAX to make it look like the version that the DoP/director agreed. The House of Dragons chose to make it look like that. Mainly because I suspect the director was trying to chase the fashion for removing colour from everything. Grading, like most things is prone to fashions, and pushing against "what came before" is par for the course. Some people do it well, others are shite.