Classic Cartoons Marred by Digital Restoration 296
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." "
and now... (Score:5, Informative)
here's a non-registration-required [awn.com] before-and-after example.
Re:and now... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:and now... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:and now... (Score:3, Funny)
Couldn't have said it better myself!
Re:and now... (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:and now... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:and now... (Score:3, Insightful)
At first thought, it seems silly to put new cartoons through DVNR because they shouldn't be dirty, or so you'd think. Danny Antonucci, creator of Ed, Edd n Eddy, says that when negatives come back from Korea, they are so dirty that it's a necessity to run them through DVNR.
Yikes. From the sounds of it, you'd think they're processing the film in grass huts!
NOT before and after (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:and now... (Score:4, Interesting)
regardless (Score:4, Funny)
So in other words... (Score:2, Insightful)
Restoration... apparently that word does not mean what I think it means.
- MreX
Not just cartoons (Score:5, Funny)
This problem isn't limited to cartoons - I hear that they're running into to similar problems during the restoration of early Ron Jeremy videos.
Or... (Score:5, Funny)
Or making one character seem to fire their blaster first when you were sure that the other fired first last time your watched it.
Re:Or... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Ever seen the bugs bunny cartoon where the fish jumps out of the water, pulls a gun on himself and kills himself?)
Censoring cartoons (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Censoring cartoons (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Censoring cartoons (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, they're shielding themselves from idiotic public outry. A vocal minority getting their dander up and organizing a stupid boycott is more dangerous than a lawsuit. A lawsuit needs to have a claim of damages, and any suit wherein damages are claimed as a result of simply viewing a cartoon will likely be summarily dismissed at little cost. A baseless rumor that a TV station is "racist" because they showed a historically accurate cartoon is the bigger threat. You can't get a judge to order public sentiment to turn and go the other way.
Re:Censoring cartoons (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed. It's not so ridiculously over-the-top racist like "Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarves". Now there's a cartoon we'll never see on
Re:Censoring cartoons (Score:3, Insightful)
Oddly, the mammy character is probably the most sane character in those cartoons. I'm not sure why they voiced her over. Children might wonder why a cat and a mouse would be living in a household with a black lady?
But then again, when I was little, I didn't think that Bert and Ernie had to explain their living arrangement.
Re:Or... (Score:2)
Interestingly enough, Cartoon Network Europe appears to have completely different content from Cartoon Network USA and you can still see a lot of those classic cartoons on that network in their
Re:Or... (Score:2)
IIRC, the line was "Now I've seen everything", in a Peter Lorre [imdb.com] voice.
Re:Or... (Score:3, Informative)
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 [fecundity.com]
Four shalt thou not count... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Or... (Score:3, Funny)
And to the poster above me: LOL! I just saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail today, and the movie rocks!
Anyway, here's an Alternate Scene [wurzeltod.ch] about Han and Greedo, and it's... different.
Poor quality control (Score:5, Insightful)
Walt Disney Co. has largely avoided criticism of its cartoon restorations. For most of its projects, Disney doesn't use digital noise reduction, relying instead on artists to inspect each frame of film and remove defects either manually or with proprietary software. "If you just take a film and throw it through a noise-reduction system, you're never going to get the same standard of quality," says Jeff Miller, president for world-wide post-production and operations.
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.
Clearly, those responsible have no excuse for it. Again, FTFA:
Craig Hoffman, a spokesman for Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros., which released the Looney Tunes DVDs last fall, declines to comment on the complaints about the restored cartoons. "There's a wide audience: children, collectors, people who grew up loving them," he adds.
What exactly does a wide audience, or people who grew up loving [Looney Tunes] have to do with your quality control? Is passing a shoddy product off to some members of that wide audience acceptable? I can understand that young kids may not know the difference, but if you're targeting a wide audience, you gotta account for more than young kids.
Re:Poor quality control (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Poor quality control (Score:3, Interesting)
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 nee
blaming the tools (Score:5, Interesting)
For an excellent counter example, check out the beautiful work that Animeigo did restoring the original Macross [animeigo.com] 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 (Score:5, Informative)
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*
Re:blaming the tools (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, "Tom & Jerry" ain't exactly "Gone With the Wind" is it?
Re:blaming the tools (Score:5, Insightful)
No kidding. Tom & Jerry is WAY more important!
Re:blaming the tools (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:blaming the tools (Score:2, Informative)
Re:blaming the tools (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, in older film stock its not, and thats why we have the whole noise reduction process... to eliminate the "grain"
Log (Score:5, Funny)
Of course.
Re:Log (Score:2)
Re:Log (Score:5, Informative)
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!!!
Re:Log (Score:3, Funny)
Cling tenaciously to my buttocks!
Re:Log (Score:2)
then i stopped, and haven't watched any since.
Remember the crocodile mating call?
Remember toast-man?
Remember stimpy as rapunzel who let down her hair, so that ren could climb up and rescue her? And when he gets to the top, its a nose hair?
Re:Log (Score:2)
So what you mean to say is that now you have a life?
Re:Log (Score:2)
Yes. in 1991 when i was 16, i can definitively say that i had no life. what else ya got?
Re:Log (Score:2)
Well, yeah (Score:2)
1984 and chaning history? (Score:2, Insightful)
Star Wars IV-VI, Disney cartoons, now these.
Where does it end?
Where did I leave my tinfoil hat?
Re:1984 and chaning history? (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:1984 and chaning history? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:1984 and chaning history? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:1984 and chaning history? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's quality control that everyone is getting up in arms about. These companies are releasing these videos to give a more permanent collectors edition but in the rush to do it quickly and cheaply, they are using techniques that somtimes noticably changes the cartoons.
This is much more akin to intel rushing production of a processor and having a defect in all processors, making them less effective
Manual retouching ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Manual retouching ? (Score:2, Insightful)
This problem is analogous to digital sound restoration. You can use
Re:Manual retouching ? (Score:3, Funny)
If Michelangelo had provided key frames to his Korean tweeners I'm sure it wouldn't be quite to blasphemous to paint over the problem areas.
Don't rush it! (Score:5, Insightful)
What about compression artifacts? (Score:2)
Re:What about compression artifacts? (Score:2)
About five years ago, I pointed out the compression artifacts (the whole picture showed a grid of contrast between the macrob
Re:What about compression artifacts? (Score:2)
Well. You can still find them on 16mm probably. Then you could restore them yourself. It'd be fun! Or not: project that old stuff the
There's a simpler way of restoring old animations. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm more concerned about censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm more concerned about censorship (Score:4, Funny)
On a related note, we should start a petition to keep the topless woman frame in The Rescuers [snopes.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I'm more concerned about censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
However, there was the idea that the public would get the works in the future.
That, my friend really IS theft. The work exists no longer.
And we, the public have paid for it to be locked away.
Re:I'm more concerned about censorship (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I'm more concerned about censorship (Score:2)
"Oh, Rochester.." (Score:5, Informative)
Good 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?
Re:"Oh, Rochester.." (Score:3, Informative)
Censorship, and questionable touch-ups (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm more concerned about censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Examples are becoming sanitized. Certainly the Tom & Jerry with Tom in blackface should be shown as an example of not so far off cultural norms. I think that the whole heckle and jeckly thing was somewhat disturbing. Certainly there are many shows that are proof of the cultural norms that many now wish to deny. Like in Family Guy European Road Trip, when the German tourguide censored the entirety of WWII out of his talk, claiming Germany was 'invited'.
Re:I'm more concerned about censorship (Score:4, Interesting)
At least in the US the KKK is free to roam, and are able to be publicly ridiculed and challenged as a result.
Re:I'm more concerned about censorship (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's not FINE. (Score:2)
Re:It's not FINE. (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank god they have backups... (Score:2)
Anyway, I just think the clarity of the cartoon never mattered. There's this theory that says that the closer the look gets to humans the lesser the real human-ness we feel. Which could explain why most of the cartoons involve talking animals :)
But I don't think Picasson should've used finer brushes either...
Same Thing Happens In Audio Too (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Is this even necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this even necessary? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is this even necessary? (Score:3)
I won't listen to his music in anything but the original Klingon.
Cashing in on past classics. (Score:5, Insightful)
That has changed over the past 5-6 years. At first I thought it was just me outgrowing the charm of cartoons (I'm 27). But then I realized it wasn't me or my tastes that were changing. It was the quality of the new productions that was sadly deteriorating.
This applies to most of the cartoons produced by the major animation houses in Hollywood - WB, Disney, etc. The new Tom and Jerry cartoons are a joke compared to their witty and charming predecessors. It seems that most of the focus now is on better animation and special effects through computer animation, and less focus on the *wit* and everyday humor that made them so popular in the first place.
Take any old Tom and Jerry cartoon (directed by Fred Quimby) - you'll see it based on a cat and mouse chase in the familiar settings of a house or backyard. Fastforward to their newer counterparts (incidentally directed by Chuck Jones) and you'll see a sophisticated setting like a Spaceship or France, with better graphics, but almost *no* wit or simple but *clever* plots that were common in the episodes of old.
The same holds for the Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Mickey Mouse and other classics. The trend seems to be towards slicker animation, with little or *no* emphasis to creative wit/humor. The newer cartoons are all rehashes or remakes of the successful plots with smaller "Tiny Toon" versions of the characters.
I prefer completely new (and independently produced, I think) cartoons like Johnny Bravo, Courage the Cowardly Dog, etc better to these incredibly non-creative rehased versions of the classics, that the studios seem to want to cash in on.
I agree. (Score:2)
Re:Cashing in on past classics. (Score:5, Insightful)
That has changed over the past 5-6 years. At first I thought it was just me outgrowing the charm of cartoons (I'm 27). But then I realized it wasn't me or my tastes that were changing. It was the quality of the new productions that was sadly deteriorating."
I think that there are two main reasons for this: The classic "cartoons" were made for a mixed audience, either to be shown with feature motion pictures or to be shown on prime time television. The quality of the classic cartoons was intended to be good and the stories were intended to appeal to adults. The original Flintstones episodes included cigarette advertising with the characters smoking Winstons (they stopped smoking when Pebbles was born).
Cartoons have since then degenerated to be child entertainment. The fact that cartoons are now considered to be children's entertainment, along with skin flint budgets and tight schedules makes for crappy cartoons.
Should read 'classic cartoons marred by (Score:5, Insightful)
If anyone has a pointer to a copy of 'Popeye in the Land of the Goons', I have been looking for years...
Editing? How about censoring? (Score:2, Insightful)
No worry (Score:4, Funny)
Website with lots of examples of the issue (Score:4, Informative)
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.html [lyris-lite.net]50 years from now (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:50 years from now (Score:2, Informative)
How can you get 24 bit sound resolution out of 16 bit source material?
Re:50 years from now (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Widescreen vs. Fullscreen cartoons (Score:2, Informative)
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, pe
Re:Widescreen vs. Fullscreen cartoons (Score:2)
Re:Widescreen vs. Fullscreen cartoons (Score:2)
I think there's only a small subset of (inparticular the MGM) toons that were released in 'scope' which wasn't even used greatly until when, the late 50's early 60's?
Until then it was 4:3 ratio. So to say that 'most' were done this way is just not correct.
Restoration of cartoons & old movies in genera (Score:3, Insightful)
I also have a DVD of Metropolis (1926), restored as best as modern technology will allow. But that's a lost cause, in this instance, since all the movie destruction was accomplished by its 1927 release in the US, and all the present resoration can do is add 15 minutes to the US release, which means there are still 45 minutes missing somewhere, presumed never to be seen. The modern soundtrack uses the original orchestration.
It's too easy to say that modern resorations get it wrong. The problem is, modern CHEAP restorations don't do as good a job as modern EXPENSIVE restorations, and at that point we have to consider whether the restoration costs will ever be recovered. I don't know if the restoration of Snow White made a profit, but perhaps from Disney's perspective it was more important to have a high-quality modern digital conversion. Although Metropolis is a movie that should be preserved for eternity (750 minor roles plus 30,000 crowd scenes for what ultimately proved to be a gigantic leap beyond Birth of a Nation, a mere decade before; contrast with our modern ability to discuss minor plot and tech improvements over 3 decades between the various Star Wars episodes), it's unlikely that anyone attempting a definitive preservation will ever actually recover the costs involved.
At the dawn of cinematography, they used the best technology that was available year-by-year. In the late 1960's, much of the film industry moved away from that concept to filming on what is basically consumer-grade Ektachrome, with the Technicolor equipment having been sold off to China. So we have two or more decades of movies that will simply vanish unless we start protecting them now. The problem is, we need to protect the junk as well as the good stuff, in case future generations modify our values. Mre recently, the situation has improved because stock is more likely to be on digital media.
But when we think we're failing to preserve old movies, we shouldn't necessarily blame ourselves. In recent decades, the original movie makers made that decision for us.
I for one.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Absolutely true - and not for images only! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, about 4 years ago we purchased Fantasia on DVD, and as wewatched, I had the strange feeling that "this is just not right". I could not put my finger on it, but the music sounded devoid of excitement.
Then I remembered an old friend from primary school who had Fantasia on a very old VHS tape, and watched it. The picture had imperfections, the color was not as stable as on the DVD, but nothing that would bother me. And the music - well, it was completely different.
I came to the conclusion that, during the digital remastering, they must have done some DSP magic to remove noise and stuff, and actually killed it. Yeah, it's kinda the same music, it just feels wooden, to me totally useless. Why are the MPAA companies doing this? Obviously, because they don't care. I imagine that the larger majority of the public would not notice the difference, except that "hey, there's less noise, it must be better, right?".
Fantasia (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder what would happen to "Magical Maestro"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mammy Two-Shoes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Smoothing effects (Score:2)
Re:Smoothing effects (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow we all managed to watch them and not turn out to be homicidal maniacs. Today, if a cuddly teddy bear trips and lands on his butt that might get banned for promoting the dangerous act of falling on ones rump.
Re:Smoothing effects (Score:2)
I wonder what you would say about Itchy and Scratchy!
Re:Smoothing effects (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say that they are a parody of how violent Tom and Jerry were.
Re:Smoothing effects (Score:2)
Somehow we all managed to watch them and not turn out to be homicidal maniacs. Today, if a cuddly teddy bear trips and lands on his butt that might get banned for promoting the dangerous act of falling on ones rump.
Don't forget Bugs Bunny (repeatedly) dressing up in womans clothing and kissing Elmer Fud. Or the many explosive failures of Wiley E