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My biggest gripe with these AI film enhancements is that they are adding information that was never there. You're no longer watching the original film. You no l

My biggest gripe with these AI film enhancements is that they are adding information that was never there. You're no longer watching the original film. You no longer have a sense of how contemporary film equipment worked, what its limitations were, how the director dealt with those limitations, etc.

Mahnahnohnah 2y ago
Its definitly an interesting point you bring up with the contemporary film equipment. Nonetheless, i do believe that most film makers are actually want to make a film not work around contemprary limitations.
rullelito 2y ago
Do most people care? I just want to eat popcorn and watch a movie.
cout 2y ago
I don't think that's universally true of all AI enhancement though. Information that is "missing" in one frame might be pulled in from a nearby frame. As others have pointed out, we are in the infancy of video enhancement and the future is not fundamentally limited. If that takes away from the artistic nature of the film I understand the complaint, but I look forward to seeing this technology applied where the original reel has been damaged. In those cases we are already missing out on what the director intended.
- pimlottc 2y ago
  In part, we need more vocabulary to distinguish different techniques. Everyone is just "AI" right now, which could mean many different things. Standard terminology would help us discuss what methods are acceptable for what purposes and what goes too far. And it has to be terminology that the public can understand, so they can make informed decisions.
  - sandspar 2y ago
    I also think we already have a bunch of old words for the techniques, like "upscaling" or "statistics". It's "AI" everything now but the old words for the old techniques are waiting to be used again.
- ClassyJacket 2y ago
  > Information that is "missing" in one frame might be pulled in from a nearby frame Yeah - does anyone know if anyone is actually doing this? Like some sort of DLSS for video? I'd love to read about it.
kelseyfrog 2y ago
How do you feel about extended cuts?
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Where would you draw the line though? What is acceptable non-AI remastering? I'm 99% confident that similar issues were raised with e.g. recolored films, HD upscales, etc.
- mrob 2y ago
  I draw the line at edits that consider semiotic meaning. Edits are acceptable if they apply globally (e.g. color correction to compensate for faded negatives), or if they apply locally based on purely geometric considerations (e.g. sharpening based on edge detection), but not if they try to decide what some aspect of the image signifies (e.g. red eye removal, which requires guessing which pixels are supposed to represent an eye). AI makes no distinction between geometric and semiotic meaning, so AI edits are never acceptable.
  - orbital-decay 2y ago
    Easy counterexample: dumb unsharp masking will ruin close-up scenes that are shot for softness and/or have bokeh. ML upscalers can do this too when applied mindlessly. But you can also train an upscaler on the same type of footage, or even on the parts of the same footage available in higher definition. Even if you don't, matching the upscaler with the intent behind the content is your job. The separation you're talking about is imaginary, the line doesn't exist. Any tool will affect the original meaning if it doesn't match the execution. Remastering is an art regardless of the tool, and it's always an interpretation of the original work. It's fine to like or dislike this interpretation.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      Remastering can screw up intent with something as simple as color grading. But there is a line here. An editor that's using simple tools knows exactly what they're changing, and if they're using simple frame-global tools then they're not introducing anything that wasn't already there. If you throw an AI at things, it will try to guess what things in the image are, and make detail adjustments based on that. So that's three categories of edit, easily distinguished: human making frame-global changes, human deliberately changing/adding details, AI changing/adding details in a way that's basically impossible to fully supervise. It sounds like they accept category 1 in remastering, even though it's not foolproof, and reject 2 and 3.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> how contemporary film equipment worked, what its limitations were, how the director dealt with those limitations, etc. Non-film buffs, i.e. most viewers, don't care about this.
- Unfrozen0688 2y ago
  They do but they dont know. See new Netflix show Ripley. All shot in B&W, beautifully shot.
- spiderxxxx 2y ago
  I agree, most people watch the movie for the story that unfolds. Few are looking at things like framing the subject, the pull of the focus, subtle lighting differences between scenes, they are interested in the story, not the art of filmmaking. The people offended by this are the ones that are crying about the art being taken out of it.
  - Unfrozen0688 2y ago
    [dead]
- caconym_ 2y ago
  Any art and/or media production executed well enough to be culturally significant rests on an enormous depth of artistic and technical choices that most audiences have zero awareness of—and yet, if you took them all away, you would have nothing left. Every change takes you further from the original artist's vision, and if all you want to do is Consume Slop then that's fine I guess, but the stewards of these works should aim higher.
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    Well there are movies which were technically well executed with poor stories, and great stories with poor execution. And there were movies which did well in both areas. For example Tenet. Cool story, poor audio mix. (I don’t buy the explanation that Nolan had any reason other than expediency for this.) If we use “AI” to fix the audio after the fact, that’s a win in my book. I’m not a film buff or a purist though. I watch movies with subtitles which is certainly not what the director had in mind, but that’s ok.
nostromo 2y ago
The originals still exist and you’re free to watch those instead. This just provides a new way to watch older movies should you choose to do so. Or not.
- caconym_ 2y ago
  > The originals still exist and you’re free to watch those instead. This is far from certain, unless "you" are willing to engage in piracy. It's often difficult or impossible to legitimately buy (or even rent) the original, unadulterated versions of older films.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    <cough> Try buying the original versions of Star Wars... and that was before "AI".
- rightbyte 2y ago
  To watch Star Wars as it was originally you need to break US law.
fnordpiglet 2y ago
I get how a film buff might care, and agree the original version should be available, but isn’t there space for people who just want to see the story but experience it with modern levels of image quality? The technical details of technology at some point of time is definitely interesting to some people, but as say the writer or others associated with the creative and less technical aspects of a film I may find the technical limitations make the story less accessible to people used to more modern technologies and quality.
- dml2135 2y ago
  What does "modern levels of image quality" mean in this context? The article is about AI upscaling "True Lies", which was shot on 35mm film. 35mm provides a very high level of detail -- about equivalent in resolution to a 4k digital picture. We're not talking about getting an old VHS tape to look decent on your TV here. The differences in quality between 35mm film and 4k digital are really more qualitative than quantitative, such as dynamic range and film grain. But things like lighting and dynamic range are just as much directorial choices as script, story, any other aspect of a film. It's a visual medium, after all. Is the goal to have all old movies have the same, flatly lit streaming "content" look that's so ubiquitous today? I think the argument against "isn’t there space for people who just want to see the story but experience it with modern levels of image quality" is that such a space is a-historical -- It's a space for someone that doesn't want to engage with the fact that things were different in the (not even very distant) past, and (at the risk of sounding a bit pretentious) it breeds an intellectually lazy and small-minded culture.
- orbital-decay 2y ago
  The problem with that is the content is usually shot with the certain definition in mind. If you don't film certain scenes from scratch, they can end up looking weird in higher definition, simply because certain tricks rely on low definition/poor quality, or because you get a mismatch between old VFX and new resolution, for example. It's a widespread issue with the emulation of old games that have been made for really low resolution/different ratio screens and slow hardware, especially early 3D/2D combinations like Final Fantasy, and those that relied on janky analog video outputs to draw their effects.
MyFedora 2y ago
Most people don't care. Photographers had a real great time pointing out that Samsung literally AI replaced the moon, but some Samsung S21 Ultra users were busy bragging how great “their” moon pictures turned out. Let's judge AI enhancements like sound design: Noticeably good if done well, unnoticeable if done satisfactory and noticeably distracting if done poorly. The article shows a case of noticeably distracting, so they're better off with the original version.
- dml2135 2y ago
  It's a fundamentally different concept of photography though, one that becomes more similar to a painting or collage than a captured frame of light. Regardless of the merits of one over the other are for the purposes of storytelling, it's a bit worrisome when the distinction is lost on people altogether.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
janalsncm 2y ago
If there is a movie which is only shot in 1080p and I have a 4k TV, it seems like there’s three options. One, watch it in the original 1080p with 3/4 of the screen as black border. Two, stretch the image, making it blurry. Three, upscale the image. If you give me the choice, I’m choosing 3 every time. Sorry if it sounds crass, but I feel the process of shooting the movie is less important than the story it is trying to tell.
- planede 2y ago
  Upscaling exactly 2x is also an option.
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    That’s what I meant by option 3?
    - planede 2y ago
      How do you differentiate between "stretch" and "upscale"? Or how would "stretching" by exactly 2x would make the image blurry?
      - tstrimple 2y ago
        Upscaling algorithms vary from the extremely basic to the ML models we see today that straight up replaces or adds new details. Some of the more naive algorithms do indeed just look blurry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_gallery_of_image_scaling_algorithms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_gallery_of_image_sc...

Mahnahnohnah 2y ago

Its definitly an interesting point you bring up with the contemporary film equipment. Nonetheless, i do believe that most film makers are actually want to make a film not work around contemprary limitations.

rullelito 2y ago

Do most people care? I just want to eat popcorn and watch a movie.

cout 2y ago

I don't think that's universally true of all AI enhancement though. Information that is "missing" in one frame might be pulled in from a nearby frame. As others have pointed out, we are in the infancy of video enhancement and the future is not fundamentally limited. If that takes away from the artistic nature of the film I understand the complaint, but I look forward to seeing this technology applied where the original reel has been damaged. In those cases we are already missing out on what the director intended.

pimlottc 2y ago
In part, we need more vocabulary to distinguish different techniques. Everyone is just "AI" right now, which could mean many different things. Standard terminology would help us discuss what methods are acceptable for what purposes and what goes too far. And it has to be terminology that the public can understand, so they can make informed decisions.
- sandspar 2y ago
  I also think we already have a bunch of old words for the techniques, like "upscaling" or "statistics". It's "AI" everything now but the old words for the old techniques are waiting to be used again.
ClassyJacket 2y ago
> Information that is "missing" in one frame might be pulled in from a nearby frame Yeah - does anyone know if anyone is actually doing this? Like some sort of DLSS for video? I'd love to read about it.

kelseyfrog 2y ago

How do you feel about extended cuts?

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

Where would you draw the line though? What is acceptable non-AI remastering? I'm 99% confident that similar issues were raised with e.g. recolored films, HD upscales, etc.

mrob 2y ago
I draw the line at edits that consider semiotic meaning. Edits are acceptable if they apply globally (e.g. color correction to compensate for faded negatives), or if they apply locally based on purely geometric considerations (e.g. sharpening based on edge detection), but not if they try to decide what some aspect of the image signifies (e.g. red eye removal, which requires guessing which pixels are supposed to represent an eye). AI makes no distinction between geometric and semiotic meaning, so AI edits are never acceptable.
- orbital-decay 2y ago
  Easy counterexample: dumb unsharp masking will ruin close-up scenes that are shot for softness and/or have bokeh. ML upscalers can do this too when applied mindlessly. But you can also train an upscaler on the same type of footage, or even on the parts of the same footage available in higher definition. Even if you don't, matching the upscaler with the intent behind the content is your job. The separation you're talking about is imaginary, the line doesn't exist. Any tool will affect the original meaning if it doesn't match the execution. Remastering is an art regardless of the tool, and it's always an interpretation of the original work. It's fine to like or dislike this interpretation.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    Remastering can screw up intent with something as simple as color grading. But there is a line here. An editor that's using simple tools knows exactly what they're changing, and if they're using simple frame-global tools then they're not introducing anything that wasn't already there. If you throw an AI at things, it will try to guess what things in the image are, and make detail adjustments based on that. So that's three categories of edit, easily distinguished: human making frame-global changes, human deliberately changing/adding details, AI changing/adding details in a way that's basically impossible to fully supervise. It sounds like they accept category 1 in remastering, even though it's not foolproof, and reject 2 and 3.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> how contemporary film equipment worked, what its limitations were, how the director dealt with those limitations, etc. Non-film buffs, i.e. most viewers, don't care about this.

Unfrozen0688 2y ago
They do but they dont know. See new Netflix show Ripley. All shot in B&W, beautifully shot.
spiderxxxx 2y ago
I agree, most people watch the movie for the story that unfolds. Few are looking at things like framing the subject, the pull of the focus, subtle lighting differences between scenes, they are interested in the story, not the art of filmmaking. The people offended by this are the ones that are crying about the art being taken out of it.
- Unfrozen0688 2y ago
  [dead]
caconym_ 2y ago
Any art and/or media production executed well enough to be culturally significant rests on an enormous depth of artistic and technical choices that most audiences have zero awareness of—and yet, if you took them all away, you would have nothing left. Every change takes you further from the original artist's vision, and if all you want to do is Consume Slop then that's fine I guess, but the stewards of these works should aim higher.
- janalsncm 2y ago
  Well there are movies which were technically well executed with poor stories, and great stories with poor execution. And there were movies which did well in both areas. For example Tenet. Cool story, poor audio mix. (I don’t buy the explanation that Nolan had any reason other than expediency for this.) If we use “AI” to fix the audio after the fact, that’s a win in my book. I’m not a film buff or a purist though. I watch movies with subtitles which is certainly not what the director had in mind, but that’s ok.

nostromo 2y ago

The originals still exist and you’re free to watch those instead. This just provides a new way to watch older movies should you choose to do so. Or not.

caconym_ 2y ago
> The originals still exist and you’re free to watch those instead. This is far from certain, unless "you" are willing to engage in piracy. It's often difficult or impossible to legitimately buy (or even rent) the original, unadulterated versions of older films.
- nottorp 2y ago
  <cough> Try buying the original versions of Star Wars... and that was before "AI".
rightbyte 2y ago
To watch Star Wars as it was originally you need to break US law.

fnordpiglet 2y ago

I get how a film buff might care, and agree the original version should be available, but isn’t there space for people who just want to see the story but experience it with modern levels of image quality? The technical details of technology at some point of time is definitely interesting to some people, but as say the writer or others associated with the creative and less technical aspects of a film I may find the technical limitations make the story less accessible to people used to more modern technologies and quality.

dml2135 2y ago
What does "modern levels of image quality" mean in this context? The article is about AI upscaling "True Lies", which was shot on 35mm film. 35mm provides a very high level of detail -- about equivalent in resolution to a 4k digital picture. We're not talking about getting an old VHS tape to look decent on your TV here. The differences in quality between 35mm film and 4k digital are really more qualitative than quantitative, such as dynamic range and film grain. But things like lighting and dynamic range are just as much directorial choices as script, story, any other aspect of a film. It's a visual medium, after all. Is the goal to have all old movies have the same, flatly lit streaming "content" look that's so ubiquitous today? I think the argument against "isn’t there space for people who just want to see the story but experience it with modern levels of image quality" is that such a space is a-historical -- It's a space for someone that doesn't want to engage with the fact that things were different in the (not even very distant) past, and (at the risk of sounding a bit pretentious) it breeds an intellectually lazy and small-minded culture.
orbital-decay 2y ago
The problem with that is the content is usually shot with the certain definition in mind. If you don't film certain scenes from scratch, they can end up looking weird in higher definition, simply because certain tricks rely on low definition/poor quality, or because you get a mismatch between old VFX and new resolution, for example. It's a widespread issue with the emulation of old games that have been made for really low resolution/different ratio screens and slow hardware, especially early 3D/2D combinations like Final Fantasy, and those that relied on janky analog video outputs to draw their effects.

MyFedora 2y ago

Most people don't care. Photographers had a real great time pointing out that Samsung literally AI replaced the moon, but some Samsung S21 Ultra users were busy bragging how great “their” moon pictures turned out. Let's judge AI enhancements like sound design: Noticeably good if done well, unnoticeable if done satisfactory and noticeably distracting if done poorly. The article shows a case of noticeably distracting, so they're better off with the original version.

dml2135 2y ago
It's a fundamentally different concept of photography though, one that becomes more similar to a painting or collage than a captured frame of light. Regardless of the merits of one over the other are for the purposes of storytelling, it's a bit worrisome when the distinction is lost on people altogether.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

janalsncm 2y ago

If there is a movie which is only shot in 1080p and I have a 4k TV, it seems like there’s three options. One, watch it in the original 1080p with 3/4 of the screen as black border. Two, stretch the image, making it blurry. Three, upscale the image. If you give me the choice, I’m choosing 3 every time. Sorry if it sounds crass, but I feel the process of shooting the movie is less important than the story it is trying to tell.

planede 2y ago
Upscaling exactly 2x is also an option.
- janalsncm 2y ago
  That’s what I meant by option 3?
  - planede 2y ago
    How do you differentiate between "stretch" and "upscale"? Or how would "stretching" by exactly 2x would make the image blurry?
    - tstrimple 2y ago
      Upscaling algorithms vary from the extremely basic to the ML models we see today that straight up replaces or adds new details. Some of the more naive algorithms do indeed just look blurry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_gallery_of_image_scaling_algorithms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_gallery_of_image_sc...