[14:17 Sun,16.June 2024 by Thomas Richter] |
James Cameron recently released three of his most popular film classics (The Abyss (1989), Aliens (1986), and True Lies (1994)) in new UltraHD 4K quality on Blu-ray. However, instead of going the traditional route of rescanning the original negatives of the films in 4K and then digitally restoring this material, Cameron decided to upscale already digitized old film material in lower resolution to 4K using AI and also have it cleaned up. ;)
&s face in the new 4K UHD Blu-ray version Cameron used a Deep Learning algorithm developed specifically for this purpose by Peter Jackson’s  Park Road Post Production, which had already been used in Jackson’s own documentaries "The Beatles: Get Back" and "They Shall Not Grow Old" to "modernize" old footage. However, to some viewers, the new 4K AI versions of Cameron’s old classics appear very strange: while they are extremely sharp, faces often look odd. ;) &s face in the new 4K UHD Blu-ray version "True Lies" with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis is particularly in the spotlight of criticism - YouTuber Nerrel, for example, describes close-ups of Schwarzenegger&s face as a "menagerie of parasites, burn scars, and porcelain cracks," where his wrinkles are sometimes oversharp and his facial skin looks like wrinkled leather, and other times unnaturally soft-focused. Additionally, the AI-added (false) details have no temporal consistency, i.e., they change every few frames. In poor lighting conditions, even stranger things happen to faces. Here is Nerrel&s very entertaining critique of the new Cameron 4K versions with many examples of AI errors: And here is a comparison of the new 4K UHD Blu-ray with the D-Theater D-VHS But what is the cause of these errors? Quite clearly, it is the AI used for upscaling and film restoration, which - due to its system - has to guess which image details are lost due to the low resolution and then add them when upscaling to a larger resolution. Not with arbitrary image information, but - based on the training material - with probable ones. However, since this guessing process occurs anew from shot to shot, there are inconsistencies in the portrayal in longer sequences - the (somewhat older) AI does not recognize that different images of Schwarzenegger’s face always depict the same face. ;) Lee Curtis in comparison of the old D-Theater and the new 4K UHD Blu-ray version Why did Cameron take the easy route of AI restoration and not traditionally restore his films? Were the high costs of traditional film restoration the decisive factor? The danger exists that in the future, many film classics will be released in 4K versions on Blu-ray, which are also only "improved" by AI and do not use the original film material, which - digitally cleaned - would provide excellent quality even in 4K. (Thanks to Cantsin)  more infos at bei www.youtube.comdeutsche Version dieser Seite: KI verschlimmbessert Hollywood-Klassiker für neue 4K-Versionen |
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