[dmitrybrant]

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.

[cout]

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]

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.

[ClassyJacket]

> 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.

[janalsncm]

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]

Upscaling exactly 2x is also an option.

[MyFedora]

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]

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.

[fnordpiglet]

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]

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]

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.

[icehawk]

For anything that's not just "grab a camera and shoot the movie" the format that it is shot in is absolutely taken into account. I don't think you can separate the story from how the image is captured.

[wolverine876]

One perspective:

'Film buff' responses are common to every major change in technology and society. People highly invested in the old way have an understandably conservative reaction - wait! slow down! what happens to all these old values?! They look for and find flaws, confirming their fears (a confirmation bias) and supporting their argument to slow down.

They are right that some values will be lost; hopefully much more will be gained. The existance of flaws in beta / first generation applications doesn't correlate with future success.

Also, they unknowingly mislead by reasoning with what is also an old sales disinformation technique: List the positive values of Option A, compare them to Option B; B, being a different product, inevitably will differ from A's design and strengths and lose the comparison. The comparision misleads us because it omits B's concept and its strengths that are superior to A's; with a new technology, those strengths aren't even all known - in this case, we can see B's far superior resolution and cleaner image. We also don't know what creative, artistic uses people will come up with - for example, maybe it can be used to blend two very different kinds of films together.

These things happen with political and social issues too. It's just another way of saying the second step in what every innovator experiences: 'first they laugh at you, then they tell you it violates the orthodoxy, then they say they knew it all along'.

[Cthulhu_]

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]

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.

[cratermoon]

Yes, back in the mid-late 80s Turner Entertainment colorized a huge number of old films in their vaults to show on cable movie channels. It was almost universally panned. It was seen at first as a way to give mediocre old films with known stars a brief revival, but then Turner started to colorize classic, multi-award-winning films like The Asphalt Jungle and the whole idea was dismissed as a meretricious money-grab.

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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.

[caconym_]

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.

[spiderxxxx]

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.

[nottorp]

> Non-film buffs, i.e. most viewers, don't care about this.

... consciously ...

Assuming competent cinematography, it will have an effect on the viewer whether they can analyze it or not.

[Unfrozen0688]

They do but they dont know.

See new Netflix show Ripley.

All shot in B&W, beautifully shot.

[nostromo]

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_]

> 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.

[rightbyte]

To watch Star Wars as it was originally you need to break US law.

[Mahnahnohnah]

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]

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

[kelseyfrog]

How do you feel about extended cuts?