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You can find the full interview here. Not very long but some interesting titbits on various projects including a new Terminator (he reveals nothing).
I mean, Cameron is a douche, but he's right in this case. There's a lot to complain about with his body of work, but grain levels just aren't on the list.
It's a straw man. A lot of the 4k cameron remasters are not good. Color correction being extremely off being one of the biggest sins.
Also. His argument is awful "my team has done this forever"... Well they've done it wrong, guy. Literally have not heard of any other movie getting criticism for a 4k remaster except his
It feels like he's jumped on the one time the criticism wasn't that valid, to invalidate all the times legitimate complaints have been raised.
The comparison images from the link sure seem to show reducing the grain was the right decision, but I haven't seen it in motion.
They focus on the grain reduction nagging in Aliens when that was not even that big of an issue.
My main problem with these recent 4K releases was True Lies, it has straight up AI hallucinations in it, I really doubt he rewatched the final product at all.
The grain isn’t the issue. They are straight up AI upscales filled with artefacts and barely any use of HDR colour capabilities. Fan edits have done better jobs.
He made some really good movies barely watchable with AI upscaling. Imagine walking by a bridge construction and you ask the guy responsible why the two ends don't line up and he says: get a life loser, i build a lot of bridges.
lol, honestly respect him for not bending over backwards or giving a “political” response.
Sometimes you just need to tell people to fuck off and suck it up, especially when you’ve got nerds looking for a reason to be angry.
God forbid someone exhibit humility and introspection. Nope, just commit to being right and never listen to anyone.
The Aliens transfer is possibly the best I have ever seen, of any movie. WTF is wrong with these people?
EDIT: Gang, I apologize. I know what’s wrong with them. I was just venting in the form of a question.
Modern social media gives a huge voice to the dipshits who just want to be mad at something. So they find some miniscule issue they can be made at and social media amplifies it as if it were a legitimate critique.
Most of these types of "complaints" can be safely ignored. Just as Cameron points out here, with no fucks given to their feelings.
5 minutes ago I knew nothing about this, and honestly I don't have the "discerning eye" necessary to notice these issues even if they did exist.
That being said, I have been looking for something to get mad at...
Lemmy user SquirtleHermit SLAMS famous director and is kept waiting for response DISRESPECTFULLY!
How much time do you have?
I have no complaints. Was just happy it FINALLY came out in 4K. Was on my wish list for years.
I think this is the one where they used a really bad AI? Like, True Lies looks awful. Aliens looks ok, but it seems theres nothing new there.
But is it worse than Terminator 2
I see images like this and I have no idea what I'm supposed to be upset about.
It's blurry
Agreed
It's blue. da ba dee da ba da
It's the one on the left the blue one? To me the right image looks better.
So what's wrong with a little grain? off colors? I mean, the audio world is shifting back to vinyl because it is imperfect but unique in a way that you can only appreciate when you hear other versions and dislike them because they don't "pop, skip, smoosh" the same way as you record does.
But the problem with Cameron is that he's removing the grain almost completely, using AI to help do it and it's making the films look worse.
To be fair he's using it at different levels, Titanic and The Abyss look the best but Aliens and Truth Lies look the worse.
The replies to this post make me think most people haven't seen the videos showing the hideous face distortions in the latter two.
I haven't and am not having luck finding them. Got a link by chance?
Here's a general one about Aliens. The problem with grain removal with the help of AI is that your also removing the fine detail on skin for example. People start to look waxy. Also, AI can fuck things up. Look at what it did to Hick's face in the background of a scene!
The comparison here is easier to see between the old and new copies of True Lies.
Oh my god look at Arnold's hair on that last one, it's chiseled from pure bronze
Thanks! Things in motionsure can look a lot different than static images.
It doesn't. I hadn't looked at any screen captures before watching the disc and it's just as terrible and super distracting in motion. Thankfully only 3-4 scenes are marred by this. Oddly, it's usually Tom Arnold's face.
I think this one is the one I watched which breaks down both and was pretty interesting.
Hot damn that really does show the problems a lot better than the single image.
The vinyl analogy can be used for these 4k remasters, but it's more akin to using AI to clean up audio in a vinyl recording and adding a bunch of distortion in the process.
Bad question framing and bad answer. The issue is the AI distortions, not the grain. Cameron surely knows this, so he's responding with a straw man.
Get a life? It's your industry, man. And maybe don't denigrate the people buying your movies. Lots of other studios get this right.
That said, I think the online criticism of True Lies (haven't watched the Aliens disc yet) is overblown except for maybe 3-4 scenes where it's super obvious, awful, and distracting.
At least The Abyss looked great.
I HATE DENOISING I HATE DENOISING.
I jest. I've watched some 35mm transfers and the noise is distracting
Transcription:
So you've also had recently the 4K transfers of Aliens and True Lies that came out. It did get blowback in the fan community, some feeling that the image quality wasn't as high as they wanted it to be. You obviously have a very high standard. So l'm wondering what you thought?
When people start reviewing your grain structure, they need to move out of mom's basement and meet somebody. Right? Im serious. I mean, are you fucking kidding me? I've got a great team that does the transfers. I do all the color and density work. I look at every shot, every frame, and then the final transfer is done by a guy who has been with me [for years]. All the Avatar films are done that way. Everything is done that way. Get a life, people, seriously.
He’s fine saying that, as long as AI wasn’t used to hallucinate details.
He and his great team did a bad job. 4k is dumb anyway but I want a high Def version of a movie to look like the film being projected directly.
Why is 4K dumb?
They used AI upscaling. Not only it completely defeats the point of a release like this, it looks like a blurry mess that's paradoxically also oversharpened. People's faces jump from looking like a mannequin to one of those Ren & Stimpy closeups
Too many Ks. Unless you have a really really huge TV or you sit super close to it, and also have absolutely no vision problems, there's a pretty good chance you're not gonna tell the difference between 1080p and 4k.
Optimum viewing distance, optimum viewing angle—these are defined things. In my experience, most people are clueless about how to properly set up a TV. So yes, I expect if a TV isn't set up correctly, the difference between 1080p and 4K wouldn't be as noticeable. Transfer quality and TV quality also matter.
So your saying it doesn't matter for normal people
Not sure what point you're trying to make. 4K shouldn't be an option because you don't care about it? Most people aren't the target audience for 4K or even Blu-ray. You're always free to stick with streaming movies and driving a Camry, normal people do and it works for them.
I watch my DVD collection on my 50 inch 4k television, and you know what? they're okay. It's a 16:9 television, so I get to choose between letterboxes with widescreen releases or pillarboxes with pan n' scan releases, but we all do. I'm not worried about 4k content. Honestly I'd be fine with a 1080p panel there.
A computer monitor is a different story; you typically sit a lot closer to it, so pixel density is more significant. I can genuinely tell a difference between my 27" 1080p monitor and my 34" 1440p ultrawide monitor. The latter takes up more of my visual field while retaining about the same PPI. I still don't think I need 4k here though.
Doesn’t film have a definition roughly equivalent to 2K?
Not sure why they didn’t just do a digital transfer to 2K.
No. 8 mm is roughly equivalent to 2K. 16 mm 4K, 35 mm around 5-6K, and 70 mm around 6-12K. 35 mm is the most common.
I don't really think going higher than 1080p really does much for a movie, after that point the finishing returns start to set in unless you have an absolutely giant TV or you're sitting super close to a still pretty big TV. Maybe for vidya games or something it could make a difference or something filmed in native 4k could potentially look a bit better but especially for something being digitized from a film negative, it can be a choice between keeping analog grit or smoothing it all out digitally and I'd prefer a movie shot on film to continue to look like it was shot on film.
Topaz Video AI has a great grain removal feature. I already do this to other upscaled Hollywood junk.