Slashdot Mirror
Classic Cartoons Marred by Digital Restoration
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "When classic animated films undergo digital restoration, key features can get lost in translation. The Wall Street Journal reports that the process meant to smooth over scratches and dirt specks on old film "can also remove some of the lines that make up the animation -- for example, blurring Tom's face in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, or erasing lines in Woody Woodpecker's fast-moving beak." "
here's a non-registration-required before-and-after example.
The linked-to images are not before and after examples.
They are examples of artifacts that appear and then disappear in the post-restoration material.
The artifacts do look bad, but there are no "before" images to judge how much good, if any, the restoration is doing.
What rolls down stairs
Alone or in pairs...
Rolls over your neighbor's dog?
What's great for a snack
And fits on your back?
It's Log! Log! Log!
It's Lo-og, it's Lo-og
It's big, it's heavy
It's wood!
It's Lo-og, Lo-og
It's better than bad
It's good!!!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
In this case, it is the tool. Or more precisely, misusing the tool. The DVNS tech is designed for live action movies and thus does a poor job on drawn cartoons. The "correct" method for restoring cartoon film is to take apart each cell and restore the cell individually. This process is similar to colorizing a black and white movie, and produces results that can look better than the original film!
According to the article given by the first poster, they even have digital tools to speed up this process as well. Thus the only real excuse is "we don't want to spend the time or money". *shrug*
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
This is also evident in digitisation of music: it's the old sample rate issue. CD sampling at 44 kHz means a maximum resolvable frequency of 22 kHz, which some audiophiles notice. The same thing happens with images.
Now, we do have some tools that have high enough resolutions to prevent noticable pixelation of lines at angles, so the fact that these weren't used is important. However, there are differences between digital and analog that need to be acknowledged.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
You haven't actually said it, but I've heard many people say "Han shot first". That makes no sense, "Greedo shot first" does.
I mean, when you say "Greedo shot first", you can then go on and say "...And then Han shot back and killed him/it". But you just can't say "Han shot first"... and what, Greedo shot next?
So my advice to you, my dear friends, is to quit saying "Han shot first". You should instead be saying "Only Han shot" or "Greedo never shot", or pointing people to the Top 10 Other Things that Han Shot that Didn't Shoot at Him First page.
Here is David Mackenzie's website (mentioned in the WSJ article, but not linked), which shows a lot of examples:
http://lyris-lite.net/dnr.htmlGood point. One WB cartoon I haven't seen in decades is arguably the funniest. Can't find it anywhere:
In one (very recursive) scene, we find ourselves inside a movie theater, with a carefully illustrated scene of Bogart and Bacall playing on the screen. The "movie", of course, is the weird take of Jones, Freleng, et al. on live action: for example, Bogie casually tosses a flame-thrower to Bacall, instead of a Zippo, when she asks for a light.
At one point, something explodes in Bogie's face (hey, WB cartoon, gotta have at least one explosion). With his soot-covered face, "Bogie" suddenly does an impersonation of Rochester, Jack Benny's long-suffering man-servant.
Now, we can argue back and forth about the racism involved, but the sad fact is that it was a very funny short that fell well within even the most progressive norms of its day. (I honestly don't think any kids today would even get the Rochester joke -- if yours can, dear reader, you have some darn erudite children, I must say.)
Now, if this cartoon was produced today, it would be deemed offensive, and rightfully so. But shouldn't we be allowed to see these older shorts.. while not removing them from the context of their times?
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Something that often gets forgotten with regards to older cartoons is that most of them were released theatrically first, and were shot in a widescreen format.
Converting those to the scrunched 4:3 aspect of TV, most of them simply lopped off the edges and zoomed in on a certain part of the actual cartoon.
If you watch old Tom and Jerry or Droopy cartoons on Cartoon Network, many times it is hard to even tell what is going on, because much of the character action takes place just off screen. Other times, people's faces and heads are awkwardly chopped off at the sides.
It may be the case that the theatrical reels have been lost forever, but to me that is far more disappointing than some of the digital hazing that inevitably comes with shoddy, speed-oriented transfers.
I don't know about visual media, but claims of remastering are already occurring with digital audio recordings. I've seen a number of classical music titles which were originally recorded as fully DDD in the early '80s, but which are now being rereleased with the claim of being remastered for better sound quality.
How can you get 24 bit sound resolution out of 16 bit source material?
Anakin Simpson: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy--ooh, donuts!
The mastering step of audio production involves the final EQ, compression/limiting, and output to the final media. When something is remastered, the mix tape is reprocessed. If you have the multitrack tape or stems, then you can remix to a higher bitdepth, saving some rounding/dithering degredation, master from this, and then dither to 16-bit as a final step. If done right, the end result is often better than the original, especially since dithering algorithms and other processing has improved greatly in the last few years.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
It is a conversationally convenient shortcut to avoid the longer, more precise explanation, "Han shot before Greedo tried to shoot Han."
But more relevantly, there is no reason to assume this enumeration must continue beyond the first instance. When you count to four, do you always insist that there must actually be a fifth object to count? If Greedo hadn't been instantly killed and someone said, "Han shot first, and Greedo shot second," what then? Why stop there? Who shot third, Chewie? Your assumption of succession is unwarranted.
Plus, of course, it makes a great bite-sized rallying cry for people who are annoyed with the namby-pamby decision Lucas made to change this bit of the movie, effectively turning our beloved hardboiled anti-hero into a wishy-washy cockroach.
I know you posted that mainly as a joke (and I thought it was fairly clever), but it did start me thinking about why that particular choice of words didn't bother me. Plus the mainframes are toast, so I'm having a particularly uneventful day at the office.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
You're right to be concerned, but it's unlikely that these cartoons are ever going to be flushed from our memories--there's a huge group of people out there who collect these racist/sexist/ultraviolent cartoons that are unlikely to be shown on Saturday mornings anymore. Do a search on eMule for "banned cartoons" and you'll see what I'm talking about. A lot of them are war-themed, dirty, or make cigarettes look really really cool. Occasionally, some companies will license these cartoons and sell them in collections on the internet or on late-night TV. I know it may seem like they're being lost if you're not really looking for them, but they're never going to be forgotten, especially if people are interested in them and willing to pay for them.
This process could actually destroy a gag in a cartoon....
Magical Maestro - 1952 - Tex Avery
"One of the most famous Tex Avery gags is his use of a (possibly Rotoscoped) hair in Magical Maestro (MGM, 1952) that acts like a hair caught in the gate of a projector, until Spike plucks it out."
If DNR removes the hair, the entire gag is lost...
This is what happened to _Fantasia_. Around 1985 or 1986 in the dawn of the CD era, Disney decided to digitally re-record the entire soundtrack following the original score exactly with a new orchestra. The VHS tape you saw no doubt contains the new recordings. A lot of people felt that the re-recordings were inferior to the original soundtrack, which was conducted by the great Leopold Stokowski. Disney decided to restore the original soundtrack for the DVD. In fact, the digital re-recordings have been out of print for some years and to my knowledge the only soundtrack CD available is now the original recordings conducted by Stokowski. Since you don't like the DVD music, I'm sorry, but it is what the original film had and what you liked was the re-recordings. I don't criticize you for a question of taste, but I want you to realize that the vast majority of fans of this film prefer the original recordings in all its faulty, mono sound. So you see, the VHS tape you saw is arugably the worst of both worlds - inferior video (even you admit this) and a re-recorded soundtrack in place of the original one.