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It's not entirely about compression - some "remasters" have been de-noised (i.e. no more grain - which in my opinion (and it is opinion) loses some of the atmos

It's not entirely about compression - some "remasters" have been de-noised (i.e. no more grain - which in my opinion (and it is opinion) loses some of the atmosphere of a film (hell, if grain is unimportant, why do so many games have shaders which add it?)), some are run through a sharpen filter to deal with out of focus scenes and to "improve" the image quality, and so-forth - so it's not so much about compression as it is about other subjective "improvements" made to the transfer. An example of something which has been done wonderfully, again in my opinion, is last year's restoration of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". Interestingly, they re-added the original tints to the remaster, as what's not commonly known is that many "black and white" films were projected through a coloured glass slide, in order to either give the entire scene a hue, or even to make the ground red/brown and the sky blue.

mapt 11y ago
"Interestingly, they re-added the original tints to the remaster, as what's not commonly known is that many "black and white" films were projected through a coloured glass slide, in order to either give the entire scene a hue, or even to make the ground red/brown and the sky blue." I'd always wondered where Top Gear gained its impressive cinematic style - they must have happened upon a treasure trove of those two-color filters, and asked what it would feel like applied digitally to every other scene with the saturation pumped up.
- mcguire 11y ago
  And then they went crazy with it, to the point where you were watching a purported car review that successfully concealed the color of the vehicle by the application of art. It became distracting. But not as distracting as Top Gear's urge to rotate the camera to emphasize the slope when a car is going up or down hill. Or HGTV's urge to run segments containing fireplaces in reverse.
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  You can still buy such things - I use them in photography - See Cokin, for instance - it's their entire business. http://www.cokin.co.uk/ http://www.cokin.co.uk/
lfowles 11y ago
> (hell, if grain is unimportant, why do so many games have shaders which add it?) I seem to recall there even being an added grain parameter in the h264 spec!
ars 11y ago
> (i.e. no more grain - which in my opinion (and it is opinion) loses some of the atmosphere of a film I hate film grain. I don't like flat images either, but I'll take them over film grain. When I look at grass I don't see dots randomly moving all over the place, so I don't want to see them in a film either.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Maybe you prefer the look of video. I very much prefer the look of film (tough I use both) but not because of fidelity. It's like a waxwork in Madame Tussaud's is more lifelike than a stone or bronze statue, but I prefer the latter.

mapt 11y ago

"Interestingly, they re-added the original tints to the remaster, as what's not commonly known is that many "black and white" films were projected through a coloured glass slide, in order to either give the entire scene a hue, or even to make the ground red/brown and the sky blue." I'd always wondered where Top Gear gained its impressive cinematic style - they must have happened upon a treasure trove of those two-color filters, and asked what it would feel like applied digitally to every other scene with the saturation pumped up.

mcguire 11y ago
And then they went crazy with it, to the point where you were watching a purported car review that successfully concealed the color of the vehicle by the application of art. It became distracting. But not as distracting as Top Gear's urge to rotate the camera to emphasize the slope when a car is going up or down hill. Or HGTV's urge to run segments containing fireplaces in reverse.
madaxe_again 11y ago
You can still buy such things - I use them in photography - See Cokin, for instance - it's their entire business. http://www.cokin.co.uk/ http://www.cokin.co.uk/

lfowles 11y ago

> (hell, if grain is unimportant, why do so many games have shaders which add it?) I seem to recall there even being an added grain parameter in the h264 spec!

ars 11y ago

> (i.e. no more grain - which in my opinion (and it is opinion) loses some of the atmosphere of a film I hate film grain. I don't like flat images either, but I'll take them over film grain. When I look at grass I don't see dots randomly moving all over the place, so I don't want to see them in a film either.

anigbrowl 11y ago
Maybe you prefer the look of video. I very much prefer the look of film (tough I use both) but not because of fidelity. It's like a waxwork in Madame Tussaud's is more lifelike than a stone or bronze statue, but I prefer the latter.