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." "

Comments

Re:and now...

[Kjuib]

It does not look like the orignals had any scratches or dust (from the examples). Of course it is going to be harmful (don't fix what ain't broke). Anyone have any example of poor/dusty film that this might help with?

blaming the tools

[lazuli42]

Why are they complaining about the tools when it's apparent that it's the workmanship that's at fault?

For an excellent counter example, check out the beautiful work that Animeigo did restoring the original Macross series when they released it on DVD a few years ago. The cleaned up print makes the series look like it was ten years newer.

Re:blaming the tools

[friolator]

for release on televisions, 1080 line HD is considered by the industry to be high enough quality. at this point, anything bigger than that [2k or 4k, for instance] i used only for material going back out to film, or for insanely high-budget work. it's rapidly moving towards 2k and 4k, but for now, they're still primarily used for digital intermediates, where the target medium is film.

Actually, in older film stock its not, and thats why we have the whole noise reduction process... to eliminate the "grain" caused by the crystals in the film being noticably large.

The point of NR is not to eliminate grain at all - in fact, grain is part of the image, and ideally is not removed or damaged when doing noise reduction. NR was designed for the removal of *noise* in a video image. as in, random noise on analog tapes. used properly [and lightly], a DVNR unit is an invaluable tool in DVD production. unfortunately, it's usually not used properly. ...and it has the unfortunate side effect of decimating the grain structure of the original film.

My company offers digital restoration services for feature films. We recently completed the restoration of the animated film "Rock & Rule," which is due out on DVD in a couple weeks. this was a restoration done by hand on an MTI CORRECT system, which allows you to manually correct each frame. It does automate some processes, and some of the cleanup is done by pulling data from surrounding frames, which has the effect of erasing defects while leaving the grain structure intact [at least, perceptually - you are actually changing the grain a little].

But again, done right this means someone has to be sitting at the machine looking at every frame. It took our restoration artist a full month - about 180 hours - to go through all 112,000 frames of that film, and that was somewhat of a budget job, were we were simply removing defects [deep scratches, dirt, chemical stains, splice marks] on a release print, not defects that existed in the original cells and were permanently printed into all release prints.

We use a DigitalVision DVNR for some analog material that goes to DVD because there's more random noise in analog, and the DVNR is dangerous if not used correctly. It's a box that's designed for broadcast applications, a set-it-and-forget-it kind of deal. but we've found that it's most useful when used sparingly, and only on select scenes rather than the whole movie. I mean, just take a look at most digital cable or satellite broadcasts to see heavy noise reduction artifacting.

the tools are not perfect, and it's going to be a long time before they are. So lots of manual work is involved in this kind of restoration, at least for the forseeable future...

-perry

Re:Or...

[svallarian]

Or, completely removing scenes from cartoons.

(Ever seen the bugs bunny cartoon where the fish jumps out of the water, pulls a gun on himself and kills himself?)

Manual retouching ?

[AT-SkyWalker]

I'm not sure if this is practical, but how hard is it to actually manually add the missing information after the restoration is done ? Just put back the "Missing Vine" and your done :-D

There's a simpler way of restoring old animations.

[bartyboy]

Just re-draw every single cell.

Same Thing Happens In Audio Too

[devphaeton]

Different process, but similar concepts. Lots of old music recordings get "destroyed" by digital remastering.

In a case like this (with both the cartoons and the music), i would personally put up with hiss, scratches, dirt and pops until they've got the remastering tools perfected.

My $0.02 + 5.5% tax

Re:Is this even necessary?

[sharkb8]

I gotta agree with you there kickabear. This is the same argument that people make for not touching up old music. The old analog recordings gave older music a tone, warth, and quality that a lot of nodern digital recordings don't have. A lot of musicians still love the old tube amplifiers for the same reason. True music afficianados listen to Jimi Hendrix in non-remastered form.

Censoring cartoons

[Anonymous Coward]

They removed the "mammy" voice from the black maid in at least one Tom & Jerry and replaced it with a generic white woman's. Only her legs (black) are shown when she is talking to them. Granted it is mildly racist by today's standards but I'd rather see the original and understand the norms of the time than to be treated like a mindless child who needs to be shielded.

Re:and now...

[bigbigbison]

Here's another article about DVNR Screwups with more examples of the problems poor restoration can cause.

Re:Poor quality control

[badasscat]

Although I'm not surprised, I'm disappointed that this isn't part of the standard process. To me, just running the film through DNR is lazy and indicative of a company just trying to make a quick buck. If you want to use a DNR machine, you gotta get a real person to check the work. Period.

I agree, but Disney's talking about manually correcting every single frame and for a 2 hour film you're talking more than 175,000 individual images. That is a huge number of man-hours, and frankly, there's really no need for it.

There's nothing inherently bad about DNR systems. They're a tool, and like any tool they can be used for good or evil. The problems come in when you start asking them to do things that they're not very good at doing - like removing hairs or specks of dust. These objects are not "noise" - which is what "noise reduction" is supposed to get rid of - these are things that do need to be manually removed by somebody that knows that a drawn line and a hair are not the same thing. A computer is not going to make the distinction reliably.

I think ideally what you want to do is light digital noise reduction to reduce noise, and then further manual correction of individual frames that need it (or really, the other way around). There's no reason to manually go through 175,000 frames, though - there should really only be maybe 1,000 or so that would need manual attention on any given film. That's a cost-effective way of ensuring high quality without breaking either the budget or the schedule.

Unfortunately, a lot of studios apparently don't even go that far; they just rely on the computers to do everything. There are still QC monitors at the end of the process, but when all is said and done do you think their complaints that "the picture looks a little fuzzy" are going to be met with anything other than "there's no noise, there's no hairs, ship it out!"?

Re:I'm more concerned about censorship

[davidmcw]

One of the biggest examples of this I can remember is the Disney cartoon 'Song of the South'. I only saw it while very young, but still remember the songs and characters. Was it really that offensive or just a victim of over zealous censorship.

I wonder what would happen to "Magical Maestro"?

[Rob the Bold]

In that 1952 Tex Avery classic, a character reaches into the edge of the frame to pluck a "hair" from the image. It would be sad to see this gag lost to digital restoration.

Mammy Two-Shoes

[shotgunefx]

I love how it was so un-PC to have a black stereotype like Mammy but the fix was to make her a an Irish stereotype.

Re:and now...

[arazor]

To be fair the re-release of ET on DVD included a seperate DVD that did show the agents with guns. I would not have purchased the DVD otherwise.

Re:I'm more concerned about censorship

[xjerky]

I realize they mean well, but that only causes movements like Neo-Nazism to drive more underground and probably more violent.

At least in the US the KKK is free to roam, and are able to be publicly ridiculed and challenged as a result.

Re:1984 and chaning history?

[STrinity]

You act like this is a new phenomenon. It's not. There are works of Medieval literature where the bad guys were changed from Vikings to Saracens, because Viking raiders are, like, soooooo Eleventh Century, and some Middle Age Akiva Goldsman decided to, like, totally cash in on the whole Crusade fad.