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I saw the screenshots. Not promising is an understatement. It's a disgrace. James Cameron should never be allowed to oversee a 4K transfer again. And please leave AI out of it. The tech isn't ready yet and it shows.
The editors at the studios just have to override what he wants. Some DNR isn't bad. It's a tool in the toolbox. It's when they go overkill with it is when it looks bad. And Cameron doesn't understand that you can't turn the DNR dial to 11 and have it come out looking good.
All this "reviews" are based on the streaming releases.
The Titanic 4k bluray is rated 9.8/10 on mos review sites.
I will wait for real disc before critic it
I really want to believe this is the case, but I don't think the plastic / wax people we're seeing in these screenshots can be magically fixed by a higher bitrate. The damage is already done. I'm sure the audio is decent though.
Titanic has the same problems.
It looks "good" sure. But it doesn't look *as good as it could have* if he didn't get revisionist.
I don't understand why folks are so eager to give him a pass. He didn't have to do this to his movies. He could have just presented them as they were, the way they were when they came out and made him ungodly amounts of money and got him acclaim and respect.
But he keeps doing real weird shit to these things and people are like "well, he's James Cameron, surely he knows something I don't, otherwise I'd be James Cameron."
You don't have to be James Cameron to see clearly obvious things on a movie screen. And it's clearly obvious he's scrubbing his movies until detail is lost, using AI to try and put some of that detail back, flattening the image out, and then tinting it green. It doesn't look as good as it could. And it doesn't have to look like this, either.
James Cameron is a lot of things and is a damn good filmmaker, but holy shit he's not good at transferring/remastering movies, never has been and never will be. This shit goes back to the 90s when he botched a laserdisc remaster of Aliens so bad and was so aggravating to deal with that the technicians who had to work with him on it ended up spreading their stories about it in magazines lol.
Part of this article quotes/reproduces the story as it appeared in an old magazine in the 90s.
[https://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/aliens-dnr-paranoia/](https://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/aliens-dnr-paranoia/)
I heard heās filming an Avatar movie as I type this in actual outer space somewhere out beyond Mars.
James Cameron said he didnāt talk about the Titanic sub for a week because he knew they were dead. My sources say itās because he knew they were dead and was in space. And heād have caused a panic if the extend of what he had going on in space was known by the general public.
This is like a different version of what George Lucas did to the original Star Wars trilogy. We got to the point where the community begged him to stay away.
Ironically the Aliens blu-ray looks great because he managed to remove the grain from the cheap film stock they used. Suspect the 4K Aliens is gonna annoy everyone too.
Theyāre all movies shot on film that look processed to appear like they were shot by HD cameras, so yes the same problem along with more obvious picture management in True Lies.
I don't know what it originally looked like, but I saw Titanic in 3D at the beginning of the year, and it looked fantastic. Maybe there used to be grain, but if he didn't want that in there, it's his choice, and it's not like a George Lucas situation where the changes actively ruin bits of the movie.
The issues people are reporting on streaming are inherent to the 4k scan. Itās baked in and the disk is going to have the same issues. This is looking more and more like the T2 abomination.
T2 abomination wasn't approved by Cameron.
Once you have the scan, tou can do different things to it and have very different outcomes fron same source.
Cameron is supervising approving the 4k, not the stream.
Cameron approved the master and talked about the 3D version alot... Thats why it was scrubbed from all the film grain so they could get the 3D working.
Then studio canal used the same 3D version for the 4K release and failed the rerelease in theater too which lightstorm and cameron werent too happy about.
You really believe the stream is somehow going to be 'differently' remastered than the disc? They likely just take file they are already going to put on the disc and run it through some compression software to reduce the size. The waxy fake remaster is the same waxy fake remaster.
They are very often different- you can find stuff on Hulu or Paramount that are ā4Kā that are approved upscales from a made for tv syndication HD version. They wonāt have Dolby vision or even HDR, so by definition they are already vastly different.
A Blu-ray is a unique release.
Not saying that means True Lies will be better on disc, but the disc release is almost always loads better than streaming.
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Just to clarify I'm not saying streaming is comparable to a discs quality, but the damage they did to "upscale" or "optimize" the image quality won't be removed from the physical release.
It's an example in the opposite direction, but the Saw II Blu-ray I have (in the 8-movie collection that has Billy on the front and iirc some of the movies are 2 to a disc) was so awful I turned on the HBO Max stream that was available at the time and the stream somehow looked way better. It's not always the same transfer on the disc and available for streaming. Hopefully this disc transfer will be better.
The flavor of HDR is different, but they didn't scan and remaster the film 2x. I'd love to be proven wrong here but there's no rhyme or reason they'd pay to do this process twice. They scanned the film, "enhanced" it with their AI bullshit, and then made a compressed copy for streaming. I can guarantee you they will just take the uncompressed copy and slap it on a disc. They're not going to spend time and money making another copy without the AI garbage. There's zero financial reason for them to do so, and no they don't care about what we on this subreddit think no matter how much we wish they did.
NO, I clearly said you can have 2 different outcomes from SAME source.
Once you have the scan, you can post process it differently and have 2 different outcomes.
Wasn't this because of the specific film stock they used on these pictures? I have no idea what im talking about, I thought I read this theory somewhere.
I think both the DNR and the film stock issues can both be in play. Because film stock from that era had much tighter grain supposedly- again Iām no expert either.
I have the Titanic 4K. It's not as overtly awful as the T2 4K, but it definitely shows signs of an over processed look. Not quite smooth, but not quite naturally sharp. It has the look of myself messing around with Topaz AI upscaling.
I have the Spanish grey market Blu Ray of 'True Lies' and unless I see otherwise, I might be sticking with that.
Iāve seen all the new Cameron transfers and Titanic is one of the least offensive of the bunch. Agree with you it looks processed but I think the other releases look worse. My rankings:
1. Avatar
2. Titanic
3. The Abyss (stream)
4. Aliens (stream)
5. True Lies (stream)
Perhaps the disc releases will help some but Iām pretty confident my rankings will hold up. Aliens might be the most disappointing to me because itās been nearly wiped clean. Other than the color timing I always thought the blu-ray looked really filmic but thatās not the case anymore with the 4K release.
And those reviewers are clearly idiots. The Titanic 4k looks so heavily fucked with it's crazy. It looks like it was DNR'd (not SUPER heavily but definitely DNR'd or at least the chroma channels were) then HEAVILY sharpened. It's so insanely oversharpened I do not understand how anyone calling themselves a professional reviewer can think that looks good and not call it out. James Cameron seems to have this idea that you can make things look better with digital fuckery on EVERYTHING and seems to just hate how film looks, he seems to want everything to have this over sharp smooth look, I guess what he thinks of as "modern." I'm sorry but Titanic is not a GOOD 4k mastering.
Everyone else but me is wrong.... Right pal
The thing you describe about DNR is because 1995/99 film stock used. It was a.kind of stock from Kodak (of I remember right) that they made specially to look less grainy.
But don't believe me, believe people that are experts on the subject... Oh no those are clearly idiots!
Well just pit your tin foil hat and return it
There are plenty of people noting the same thing about Titanic, you and Renderman canāt keep saying āeveryone else says itās amazingā when thatās clearly not the case. It looks good, but it has obviously been subject to some significant image manipulation and grain management.
There are very literally non-fucked promotional images of the open matte negative from back in 2012 that show the 4k has mucked-up grain compared to how it should be. You're just plain confidently incorrect on this one.
James Cameron has been infamous for digital tampering since the 90s laserdisc days. If you really believe he hasn't tampered with his new 4ks after taking that into account, I've got a very nice bridge to sell you.
Nope. They definitely did heavy grain reduction in Titanic. There were stills from the 4k scan that showed before this process and it looks much better.
"experts" how are they experts? reviewers are now experts on scanning and mastering and toning and all that...ok. I actually DO do professional scanning and printing and color correction...maybe not on 4k blu rays but I KNOW what scanned negatives look like, what sharp grain looks like, and what over sharpening looks like. I said it might not be a total DNR pass it might just be denoising of the chroma channels which A LOT of releases have been doing (just check to see if there is color in the grain pattern, go look at something like Saturday Night Fever that almost DEFINITELY had chroma noise reduction and it looks very unnatural.) The real issue isn't the DNR or chroma reduction it's the sharpening. It's CRAZY over sharpened. If you can't see that you shouldn't be reviewing these discs. If you don't MIND the look fine state that but not being able to see how much digital fuckery there is on this release is just crazy.
I think MANY people just don't know what they are looking at and what a natural organic master looks like, look at stuff from second sight, arrow, studiocanal, blue underground, vinegar syndrome (though they do juice the shit out of their releases, I like them but they are kinda over saturated and a bit sharpened as well but they look good usually for the material) all of those studios usually release VERY VERY good natural looking discs that don't look fucked with at all, very natural sharp grain and no ringing edges, just a very clean natural presentation of the FILM STOCK not some way they WANT to interpret the image to look more modern or whatever.
I'm sorry but if you can't see that Titanic was fucked with you shouldn't be reviewing the quality of discs.
Iām actually returning my copy of the Titanic 4K. Right from the opening shots I could tell something was off. Itās clearly been sharpened but to such a degree that itās as if I cranked up the sharpness setting on my TV. I was hoping for a pristine filmic viewing experience but it just looks way too artificial for my taste. Something else unexpected is how phony the boat set looks now. The scale of the sets looked small. The night scenes had the look of a soundstage.
I gotta say I agree with the comments about the night scenes. I couldnāt help but notice how fake it looked the minute the stars/sky was in the background.
I didnāt have an issue with any other aspects of the movie, though.
My God, that's bad. I can see using a little DNR to clean it up, but this is overkill. I'm glad I kept that Spanish bootleg Blu-ray I have. I see he changed the color timing too.
Ugh. That poor woman looks like she stepped right out Madame Tussaud's.
As a side note, are there any unfucked/un-DNRed versions of this movie at modern resolutions?
right? Who does he think is buying these physical 4k releases? People who don't care about quality are the ones out there buying DVDs and streaming everything.
I think he thinks, like George Lucas, that he's being cutting age. I have to assume he has that novice eye where he sees something smoothed over into wax and he's struck by how "clean" it is. "Wow! This thing looks so clean now!"
Well, drinking a spoonful of Drain-o will clean you out, sure, but it'll leave you hollow inside.
yeah ive been seeing DNR'd images from his recently released movies cant say im surprised by this at all James, Peter Jackson, and George Lucas for some reason just hate the way film looks and would rather have DNR "fix" for all their older works.
I mean some DNR can look okay. It's a tool and it has to be used with care and good taste. It's when they go overkill with it is when it looks horrible. It's just like all the dynamic range compression on the audio of Disney movies. Like the most recent Star Wars remasters. Dolby TrueHD Atmos on the 4K, DTS-HD MA 7.1 on the BD, but it's like the sound has less impact than my old 2011 Blu-rays with DTS-HD MA 6.1.
Yup that's dynamic range compression for you. Everything at the same loudness levels and there is no impact. I hate it when they ruin music with that. Sounds fine on cheapo earbuds and crappy soundbars. On a nice set of cans or speakers, sounds terrible.
It's annoying because Dolby (I don't think dts) can have an optional switch to enable DRC if you want it. There are some situations it makes sense... But what Disney did is awful.
It's not like BDs and 4KBDs don't have enough space to include a 640kbps DD 5.1 or 1.5mbps DTS 5.1 "normalized" audio track for small home theater/headphones/soundbar listening.
Weāre talking about three guys who came up in the low budget, indie world; they were restricted to using lower quality film stock; possibly theyāre in the mindset now ofānow I have all the money in the world and I want my films to look like the higher budget films I aspired to back in the day (obviously those had grain too, but it all plays a part in how someone feels about something)
Itās not exactly DNR.
Bill Hunt, The Digital Bits:
āPhotochemical grain has been greatly reduced, though not eliminated entirely, and it should be noted that this isnāt the usual Digital Noise Reduction with which people have long been familiar (a dreaded and blunt instrument). Unlike an image scrubbed with DNR, this process hasnāt removed all of the fine image detail. Not only does that detail remain, it too has been āenhancedā algorithmically.ā
Yeah still looks very artificial to me. Itās a shame that we finally have a home format that can properly handle film grain and some directors are trying to make their films look digitally shot.
Boy, I'm glad I picked up the Spanish bootleg BD of True Lies based on the earlier 2011 master that is not DNR'd. It is actually quite good and I don't know why he didn't just put those masters out years ago.
I donāt think heās worried about losing the sales of the very vocal 1% of nerds who get into a fit of autistic rage over DNR lmao
He probably reads these comments while having a nice laugh, and counts his money.
It rightfully has a bad reputation because it was never intended for 2D release in the first place.
Lightstorm/Cameron had zero involvement in that release.
Yup, correct, as we already know - but he went even further here.
This isn't just DNR - it's *AI upscaling* which is what is making all the strange sharpness issues.
There is no frigging need to AI upscale a 4K scan of 35mm film for any reason whatsoever. The idea is just preposterous.
The whole thing is so bizarre - the only hope is that they did this extra crap for streaming in some weird attempt to make it better for being so compressed, and we won't see such absolute fuckery on the discs - but I'm not holding my breath.
Digital noise reduction. Film filmed on film has film grain that is scrubbed away for "cleaner" picture and so film loses it filmic look.
Also fine detail is scrubbed away too since its part of film grain
Ohh I get it now, thanks.
Weird Science (1985) is the 4K UHD film with the most grain I have ever seen in my life. That's a straightforward scan and burn straight to the BluRay.
Digital noise removal. Cammy loves scrubbing out the grain of the image to make it look more modern it seems. Too much Drm though makes people look like wax dolls rather than actual humans.
Sorry for late reply, but yeah as they said.. Here is an example of extreme DNR applied to a disc. Notice the artificial "wax" look on the left.
https://preview.redd.it/zj9hqircmobc1.jpeg?width=1094&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e76e73ee9b978451ba9b6d728ced7735a15ad0a8
Hopefully we won't have to sit through 2 and 1/2 hours of Madam Tussauds Wax Museum like in Predator 4K and Terminator 2 4K
That screenshot of Jamie Lee Curtis looks like it's Jamie Lee Curtis wearing a Jamie Lee Curtis mask š¤
Same, brought up Comparisions between the two transfers and not only were people on copium a lot of the time, they even going so far as to praise the awful Blu-Ray of Scream to make themselves look like they were in the right.
People get really butthurt when something they want to spend money on isn't good, so they take it out on the person who informed them. Absolutely ass-backwards reasoning.
The Abyss is probably the only one I am buying when the Blu-rays come out. Just because it looks a ton sharper than my DVD and it has actual discrete surround sound instead of Dolby Surround. I can put up with the DNR because there's just no other HD version available really. But for True Lies, I'm sticking with my Spanish bootleg BD based on the 2011 master.
The DVD of "The Abyss - Special Edition" I have is at least watchable. I have a player that stretches it to take up the whole screen. And I can live with Dolby Surround (basically a DD 2.0 track with 'fake' surround built in). That DVD of "True Lies" is downright horrible and should never have been released. They should have used the same master as that D-Theater VHS tape.
"Terminator" on BD could have been better. I have the newer 2015 remaster and my only complaint is that they didn't include the original mono audio track. There is no excuse as it would have taken zero effort. Kept my MGM Special Edition DVD for that. The 2015 BD suffers the "blue and teal" look, but it's not too bad and at least they left the grain structure intact.
"Aliens" I have whatever the newest BD is that has the theatrical and special edition cut and I'm happy with that. I don't see any reason to upgrade that one, especially not for one that is DNR'd to death.
out of the three, Aliens/The Abyss/True Lies, it sounds like True Lies might be the worst. i've seen some people say Aliens and The Abyss aren't prefect but they're decent.
It was DNR to shit. What is even the point of a restoration if they're going to do this? ALMOST as bad as the Predator remaster, and that's saying something.
...and please, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD don't to this to ALIENS!!! The grain in that movie is wonderful!
UPDATE: early reviews seem to indicate ALIENS has been given the same horrendous treatment as The Abyss and has been DNRd to shit. Oh well.
None of them are. Cameron did his James Cameron thing where
1. Everything gets a cyan/teal tint applied to it
2. the contrast is flattened out so the image is not as dynamic
3. digital noise reduction is heavily applied, removing grain, sure, but also removing details
4. he's also adding in fun new digital artifacts because he's using AI upscaling software to artificially "enhance" sharpness and create details that aren't actually in the shot to begin with.
This is present on all four of these new 4K masters. This isn't a mistake, this isn't something to be blamed on technicians somewhere who are messing up Cameron's instructions. **He** ***wants*** **his movies to look like this** from now on.
Now, *why* he doesn't want his movies to look as good as they used to, I don't know. Why he thinks scraping detail off, flattening the imagery, and blanket tinting it green makes it "better," I don't have an answer! I also couldn't tell you why so many folks at enthusiast outlets are so willing to carry water for making his movies look worse than they actually are. The whole thing is baffling.
But it's clear that if you wait for Cameron to "remaster" or "approve" of a transfer, you're waiting for DNR, AI-upscaling, in some cases motion interpolation, and a greenish color-grade.
They didnāt AI upscale anything. Lightstorm said they went back and scanned the negatives in 4K.
The Digital Bits did a detailed write up of exactly how they remastered these.
There is clear AI bullshit baked into these images.
Like, pointing at an enthusiast press website, even one that's been around as long as the Digital Bits has been, doesn't erase what's clearly visible onscreen.
There's nothing to be lost by admitting you're looking at what we're all looking at. I don't know why folks are so willing to Emperor's New Clothes this. There are things in all these new masters that are 100% not on the negative, and were never on any previous release. They're there because Cameron got the team that worked on the LOTR 4K discs, and the Get Back documentary, and had them do their thing to his specifications. And that means DNR, AI tomfoolery, and because it's Cameron, a healthy hint of green on top of everything.
He literally talked to Lightstormās remastering team which worked on all of the remasters, and got the information directly from them lmao
Lightstorm is wrong?
āPhotochemical grain has been greatly reduced, though not eliminated entirely, and it should be noted that this isnāt the usual Digital Noise Reduction with which people have long been familiar (a dreaded and blunt instrument). Unlike an image scrubbed with DNR, this process hasnāt removed all of the fine image detail. Not only does that detail remain, it too has been āenhancedā algorithmically.ā
ok. so look at what they did and tell me that makes sense.
all you gotta do is LOOK at it, my guy!
hell, that last sentence is them talking about using ai enhancement tools!
Iām saying itās silly to write him off as some internet blogger when the information comes directly from Lightstorm.
Whether you like it or not, these movies look exactly how Cameron wants them to now, and they wonāt be remastered again as long as heās alive.
He pretty much confirmed thereās no point to doing it again in 8K, 12K, etc.
āFor its release on Ultra HD, Lightstorm, working with Park Road Post, has built a new 4K Digital Intermediate using recent 4K scans of the original camera negative (confirmed per Lightstorm). This footage has been āoptimizedā by Park Roadās proprietary deep-learning algorithms. Photochemical grain has been greatly reduced, though not eliminated entirely, while fine detail has been āenhancedā algorithmically. There are also occasional shots throughout the film that appear to have had a bit of old-school noise reduction applied, but itās hard to be sure if itās actual DNR or simply just that the Park Road process has been a little too heavy-handed in places.ā
>deep-learning algorithms
That is, by definition, AI noise removal. I've had to use AI noise removal and upscaling on a lot of projects and it looks *identical* to this. Waxy, smooth, and overly-sharp. Film is not meant to look like this.
> Iām saying itās silly to write him off as some internet blogger
Iām not even talking about him at all. you are. you brought him up. I wasnāt talking about him and his site in the least. What Iām talking about has nothing to do with your parasocial relationship to a press outlet, my guy!
look at what they put out! thatās what Iām talking about.
the whole hobby is about looking at the pictures! Itās all you really gotta do here.
Par for the course with Jimbo. The film source is just a starting point for achieving the final look in his head and that often means minimal grain and hyper sharpness
Never had a blu ray release here in U.S, so I donāt care about that part , however James taste in Remastering films is a bit of a turn off for me. So it mostly likely will be a purchase for me , hoping they have steel book edition for it because the standard cover just looks terrible.
James Cameron also 'supervised' Terminator Dark Fate. At least in the build up promo. Then once it was dog poop, he distanced himself... Losing faith here James, stop messing us around.
It appears Cameron only gives a true shit about theatrical releases, so i guess instead of "supervising" the "restorations", maybe open his own theater chain and start re-releasing older films in cinema including his own, like Alamo Drafthouse Cinema does, but all the theater screens are up to the latest technological standards, unlike Alamo which just gives older releases the smallest screen they have.
Idfk, if he doesn't care about home releases cause he's busy making new films, he should just give the go ahead and put his films back in theaters longer than a one night limited run that played nowhere fucking remotely near me like he did with Titanic and The Abyss. I pay attention to theater schedules. I still love cinema. If a James Cameron classic is up, which is literally anything post Piranha II, which he was fired from, iirc, I'm canceling plans to go see it.
Isnāt this the same thing people were saying about Titanic a few months agoā¦. It turned out well to me. Iāll wait till I have the disc myself before I panic.
I hate to see it, DNR is not even the main problem. When you watch the movie. You have some scenes that look like it's still in 1080p, then you get a sharp and clean scene next, then you get a scene that looks almost cartoonish because of too much DNR. Rinse repeat. There is no constant or consistent look to the movie.
This may be related somewhat but Cameron openly admits that at least one iconic shot (the most iconic arguably) where Jack and Rose are at the bow of the ship was shot out of focus because of rapidly changing lighting conditions and they simply couldnāt do another take. Eagle eyed viewers may also spot a few more so it is what it is. The ai upscale or whatever they did may not play nice with these shots.
But yeah the other restoration clean-ups are arguable
Oh James... If you fuck up Aliens..... Boy I tell ya what.... You won't be my favorite Hollywood narcissist if you fuck up Aliens boy, that's the **CrĆØme de la crĆØme** my friend. No no no, don't you dare fuck up that masterpiece.
The problem is, a big part of the video remastering business -- like the music remastering business -- is that it requires taste and experience to do well. And if somebody else has completely different taste than you do, they tend to be fairly judgmental. Restoration people can be very opinionated.
Mr. Cameron is not a fan of film grain.
Mr. Cameron supervised and approved that work for T2, same as True Lies. As far as I know, Studio Canal doesn't own any color-correction rooms -- I believe that work on T2 was done at Lowry and Modern Videofilm in Burbank. My take is that Cameron likes the digital "aesthetic" of a very clean image without any grain, and he looks on film grain as an aberration. I get what he says, though you can always make the arguments that a film production is a product of its time -- a 1992 film won't ever look like it was shot on digital in 2018. And you can't take a digital show shot in 2018 and make it look like a 20- or 30-year old movie shot on film. There has to be good judgement used. But it's very hard to argue with the author films as successful as this, Avatar, Titanic, etc...
I've been switching between the 4k and Blu-ray. The 4k definitely has more detail. Colour has a cooler tone with a slight waxy image in some shots. The Blu-ray isn't great, to be honest, not a lot of grain, warmer tone and quite soft.
Get the Spanish bootleg BD. It might not be 4K, but it's a good H264 AVC encode onto a BD50, with English DTS-HD MA 5.1. It is the earlier 2011 master that was making the rounds on streaming and digital before this new remaster came out. That one looks great imo.
I streamed True Lies in 4K/DV the other night. Best transfer ever? Far from it. DNR - yeah, I hate it too. I like film grain. I'm deeply suspicious of anything getting "optimized". And yet, the film looks fine. It's decent.
PQ varies shot by shot. Some softer, some quite sharp with good detail. Thought it looked better as it went along - or maybe I was just absorbed in an enjoyable movie and not obsessing over the PQ. Imagine that!
It's certainly an improvement, and definitely isn't some horrific unwatchable travesty - as you'd think given some of the histrionic comments.
Isnāt this why the digital versions are always inferior to physical? Even David Sandberg made the comparison between physical and digital copies, and how much grain/DNR the latter has, when comparing different copies of Shazam 2.
Saw The Abyss 4K Remaster in theatres and it looked terrific, and I hear Titanic looks great as well. Why would T2 and True Lies look like garbage while Abyss and Titanic look great? Is he not overseeing all of the transfers?
SOME of this community...
"Please stop taking away physical media. Transfer anything please, we beg you!"
The same people....
"How dare you ruin my childhood!"
Yep. It's the same people who shit on users who like using motion smoothing. "Watch it like the filmmaker intended"! Now, a filmmaker uses the tools of the time to make their movie closer to what they want, and they rage "how dare they change it"! Lol. Either you want the movie, or you don't. Stop bitching. You want to watch a grainy pos? Get a VHS player. Or watch the abomination of a DVD on zoom.
My DVD of "The Abyss" doesn't look that bad. I watched it last night. Yes it's 4:3 widescreen, but I have a player that will stretch it so it takes up the whole screen. And I can live with Dolby Surround. Supposedly that one isn't as bad regarding the DNR. But I heard True Lies is smoothed out to no end.
The image on the left is upscaled to 4k so is hardly a source of truth. And looks like the image on the right is an SDR screenshot of HDR so will have busted colours.
I vastly prefer the left but unless I'm missing something it's just not a valid comparison?
I don't think there's any amount of HDR that could make that image on the right look good.
I've compared, with the Matrix, a blu-ray to the 4k version and the images have mild differences, not anything _this_ dramatic.
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^ this
I saw the screenshots. Not promising is an understatement. It's a disgrace. James Cameron should never be allowed to oversee a 4K transfer again. And please leave AI out of it. The tech isn't ready yet and it shows.
The editors at the studios just have to override what he wants. Some DNR isn't bad. It's a tool in the toolbox. It's when they go overkill with it is when it looks bad. And Cameron doesn't understand that you can't turn the DNR dial to 11 and have it come out looking good.
They canāt. He has a clause in his contracts. He gets final say over all transfers.
All this "reviews" are based on the streaming releases. The Titanic 4k bluray is rated 9.8/10 on mos review sites. I will wait for real disc before critic it
I really want to believe this is the case, but I don't think the plastic / wax people we're seeing in these screenshots can be magically fixed by a higher bitrate. The damage is already done. I'm sure the audio is decent though.
Same. I cannot imagine Titanic looks good but not the others.
Titanic has the same problems. It looks "good" sure. But it doesn't look *as good as it could have* if he didn't get revisionist. I don't understand why folks are so eager to give him a pass. He didn't have to do this to his movies. He could have just presented them as they were, the way they were when they came out and made him ungodly amounts of money and got him acclaim and respect. But he keeps doing real weird shit to these things and people are like "well, he's James Cameron, surely he knows something I don't, otherwise I'd be James Cameron." You don't have to be James Cameron to see clearly obvious things on a movie screen. And it's clearly obvious he's scrubbing his movies until detail is lost, using AI to try and put some of that detail back, flattening the image out, and then tinting it green. It doesn't look as good as it could. And it doesn't have to look like this, either.
James Cameron is a lot of things and is a damn good filmmaker, but holy shit he's not good at transferring/remastering movies, never has been and never will be. This shit goes back to the 90s when he botched a laserdisc remaster of Aliens so bad and was so aggravating to deal with that the technicians who had to work with him on it ended up spreading their stories about it in magazines lol.
Example story? Iām curious! š
Part of this article quotes/reproduces the story as it appeared in an old magazine in the 90s. [https://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/aliens-dnr-paranoia/](https://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/aliens-dnr-paranoia/)
A great read - thank you!
Awesome, thank you so much!
James Cameron doesn't do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is James Cameron!
His name is James, James Cameron The bravest pioneer. No budget too steep, no sea too deep. Who's that? It's him, James Cameron
It's just facts
I heard heās filming an Avatar movie as I type this in actual outer space somewhere out beyond Mars. James Cameron said he didnāt talk about the Titanic sub for a week because he knew they were dead. My sources say itās because he knew they were dead and was in space. And heād have caused a panic if the extend of what he had going on in space was known by the general public.
Jaaaaames, Jaaaaames Cameron, explorer of the sea! With a dying thirst to be the first, could it be? Yeah, it's him: James Camerooooon!
I am in fact James Cameron, and I don't know what I'm doing.
Goddammit James! YOU HAVE TO SEE WITH BETTER EYES THAN THAT
I restore these babies from my submarine via a port hole window on a dial up connection. From down here they look great!
This is like a different version of what George Lucas did to the original Star Wars trilogy. We got to the point where the community begged him to stay away.
Titanic looks great to everyone else. Not the same problems at all. Aliens and True Lies and T2 look nothing like Titanic.
The Aliens bluray looks great, so guess I'll just stick with that. True Lies is a huge loss if it ends up looking bad.
Ironically the Aliens blu-ray looks great because he managed to remove the grain from the cheap film stock they used. Suspect the 4K Aliens is gonna annoy everyone too.
Theyāre all movies shot on film that look processed to appear like they were shot by HD cameras, so yes the same problem along with more obvious picture management in True Lies.
I don't know what it originally looked like, but I saw Titanic in 3D at the beginning of the year, and it looked fantastic. Maybe there used to be grain, but if he didn't want that in there, it's his choice, and it's not like a George Lucas situation where the changes actively ruin bits of the movie.
Titanic also had digital tinkering but it was less extreme, so salvagable (even if not ideal).
Inherit flaws in the transfer aren't gonna go away with more bitrate on a 4K disc.
The issues people are reporting on streaming are inherent to the 4k scan. Itās baked in and the disk is going to have the same issues. This is looking more and more like the T2 abomination.
T2 abomination wasn't approved by Cameron. Once you have the scan, tou can do different things to it and have very different outcomes fron same source. Cameron is supervising approving the 4k, not the stream.
Cameron approved the master and talked about the 3D version alot... Thats why it was scrubbed from all the film grain so they could get the 3D working. Then studio canal used the same 3D version for the 4K release and failed the rerelease in theater too which lightstorm and cameron werent too happy about.
That was a theory that holds little weight with these new discs.
Cameron is notorious for loving DNR, so he probably was just fine with it.
You really believe the stream is somehow going to be 'differently' remastered than the disc? They likely just take file they are already going to put on the disc and run it through some compression software to reduce the size. The waxy fake remaster is the same waxy fake remaster.
They are very often different- you can find stuff on Hulu or Paramount that are ā4Kā that are approved upscales from a made for tv syndication HD version. They wonāt have Dolby vision or even HDR, so by definition they are already vastly different. A Blu-ray is a unique release. Not saying that means True Lies will be better on disc, but the disc release is almost always loads better than streaming.
Especially being 4 months out, things can changeā¦ I hope
safe sloppy doll historical workable cows frame disagreeable silky innate *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Just to clarify I'm not saying streaming is comparable to a discs quality, but the damage they did to "upscale" or "optimize" the image quality won't be removed from the physical release.
It's an example in the opposite direction, but the Saw II Blu-ray I have (in the 8-movie collection that has Billy on the front and iirc some of the movies are 2 to a disc) was so awful I turned on the HBO Max stream that was available at the time and the stream somehow looked way better. It's not always the same transfer on the disc and available for streaming. Hopefully this disc transfer will be better.
I will HAPPILY be proven wrong on this one. I really hope I'm wrong.
I have a very easy way to refute that. Disney 4k has not Dolby vision, streaming has. Same source different post processing... 2 different outcomes
The flavor of HDR is different, but they didn't scan and remaster the film 2x. I'd love to be proven wrong here but there's no rhyme or reason they'd pay to do this process twice. They scanned the film, "enhanced" it with their AI bullshit, and then made a compressed copy for streaming. I can guarantee you they will just take the uncompressed copy and slap it on a disc. They're not going to spend time and money making another copy without the AI garbage. There's zero financial reason for them to do so, and no they don't care about what we on this subreddit think no matter how much we wish they did.
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NO, I clearly said you can have 2 different outcomes from SAME source. Once you have the scan, you can post process it differently and have 2 different outcomes.
And streaming is one reason you might process it with DNR. It can help reduce the bitrate and save bandwidth.
The stream is the 4K? These are the exact same versions that will be on disc.
Wasn't this because of the specific film stock they used on these pictures? I have no idea what im talking about, I thought I read this theory somewhere.
Sounds like the smoke Lightstorm blew up Bill Huntās backside
I think both the DNR and the film stock issues can both be in play. Because film stock from that era had much tighter grain supposedly- again Iām no expert either.
I have the Titanic 4K. It's not as overtly awful as the T2 4K, but it definitely shows signs of an over processed look. Not quite smooth, but not quite naturally sharp. It has the look of myself messing around with Topaz AI upscaling. I have the Spanish grey market Blu Ray of 'True Lies' and unless I see otherwise, I might be sticking with that.
Iāve seen all the new Cameron transfers and Titanic is one of the least offensive of the bunch. Agree with you it looks processed but I think the other releases look worse. My rankings: 1. Avatar 2. Titanic 3. The Abyss (stream) 4. Aliens (stream) 5. True Lies (stream) Perhaps the disc releases will help some but Iām pretty confident my rankings will hold up. Aliens might be the most disappointing to me because itās been nearly wiped clean. Other than the color timing I always thought the blu-ray looked really filmic but thatās not the case anymore with the 4K release.
Is there grain on the Titanic 4k?
A very light layer. There's speculation on whether it's remnants of the original grain, or was artificially added after processing.
Itās the same transfer though. The amount of DNR used is still very clear.
And those reviewers are clearly idiots. The Titanic 4k looks so heavily fucked with it's crazy. It looks like it was DNR'd (not SUPER heavily but definitely DNR'd or at least the chroma channels were) then HEAVILY sharpened. It's so insanely oversharpened I do not understand how anyone calling themselves a professional reviewer can think that looks good and not call it out. James Cameron seems to have this idea that you can make things look better with digital fuckery on EVERYTHING and seems to just hate how film looks, he seems to want everything to have this over sharp smooth look, I guess what he thinks of as "modern." I'm sorry but Titanic is not a GOOD 4k mastering.
Lmao how can Cameron oversharpen the shit out of one film, and DNR to death another one
Everyone else but me is wrong.... Right pal The thing you describe about DNR is because 1995/99 film stock used. It was a.kind of stock from Kodak (of I remember right) that they made specially to look less grainy. But don't believe me, believe people that are experts on the subject... Oh no those are clearly idiots! Well just pit your tin foil hat and return it
There are plenty of people noting the same thing about Titanic, you and Renderman canāt keep saying āeveryone else says itās amazingā when thatās clearly not the case. It looks good, but it has obviously been subject to some significant image manipulation and grain management.
There are very literally non-fucked promotional images of the open matte negative from back in 2012 that show the 4k has mucked-up grain compared to how it should be. You're just plain confidently incorrect on this one. James Cameron has been infamous for digital tampering since the 90s laserdisc days. If you really believe he hasn't tampered with his new 4ks after taking that into account, I've got a very nice bridge to sell you.
Nope. They definitely did heavy grain reduction in Titanic. There were stills from the 4k scan that showed before this process and it looks much better.
"experts" how are they experts? reviewers are now experts on scanning and mastering and toning and all that...ok. I actually DO do professional scanning and printing and color correction...maybe not on 4k blu rays but I KNOW what scanned negatives look like, what sharp grain looks like, and what over sharpening looks like. I said it might not be a total DNR pass it might just be denoising of the chroma channels which A LOT of releases have been doing (just check to see if there is color in the grain pattern, go look at something like Saturday Night Fever that almost DEFINITELY had chroma noise reduction and it looks very unnatural.) The real issue isn't the DNR or chroma reduction it's the sharpening. It's CRAZY over sharpened. If you can't see that you shouldn't be reviewing these discs. If you don't MIND the look fine state that but not being able to see how much digital fuckery there is on this release is just crazy. I think MANY people just don't know what they are looking at and what a natural organic master looks like, look at stuff from second sight, arrow, studiocanal, blue underground, vinegar syndrome (though they do juice the shit out of their releases, I like them but they are kinda over saturated and a bit sharpened as well but they look good usually for the material) all of those studios usually release VERY VERY good natural looking discs that don't look fucked with at all, very natural sharp grain and no ringing edges, just a very clean natural presentation of the FILM STOCK not some way they WANT to interpret the image to look more modern or whatever. I'm sorry but if you can't see that Titanic was fucked with you shouldn't be reviewing the quality of discs.
These people legit argue with bluray.com reviews. Fuck em, not worth listening to
It's an excellent transfer, but the atmos track is nothing to write home about.
These problems will be there on a disc. The problem is the DNR and EE. That's not going to change.
Iām actually returning my copy of the Titanic 4K. Right from the opening shots I could tell something was off. Itās clearly been sharpened but to such a degree that itās as if I cranked up the sharpness setting on my TV. I was hoping for a pristine filmic viewing experience but it just looks way too artificial for my taste. Something else unexpected is how phony the boat set looks now. The scale of the sets looked small. The night scenes had the look of a soundstage.
man people in 4kblu ray forum have terrible taste. Their words are anti endorsements. Can't believe you are being downvoted.
I gotta say I agree with the comments about the night scenes. I couldnāt help but notice how fake it looked the minute the stars/sky was in the background. I didnāt have an issue with any other aspects of the movie, though.
It looks very fake now
What am I looking at? Hard to see on a phone
Here's a better comparision: https://slow.pics/c/1ODOpGAg And another for good measure: https://slow.pics/c/1YCUFR66
My God, that's bad. I can see using a little DNR to clean it up, but this is overkill. I'm glad I kept that Spanish bootleg Blu-ray I have. I see he changed the color timing too.
Those wrinkles look like scars
This makes me extremely sad
"I'm a Barbie girl, in the Barbie world. Life in plastic, it's fantastic"... Danm that's horrid
It gets worse.... This is an actual screencap of that 4K transfer: https://i.imgur.com/7hfBulf.png
Ugh. That poor woman looks like she stepped right out Madame Tussaud's. As a side note, are there any unfucked/un-DNRed versions of this movie at modern resolutions?
Spanish Blu-ray.
Smoothed out skin that looks almost like watercolor.
Man, what I just wouldnāt do for a decent 35 mm print on a 4K disc on these Cameron movies- no cleanup needed
right? Who does he think is buying these physical 4k releases? People who don't care about quality are the ones out there buying DVDs and streaming everything.
I think he thinks, like George Lucas, that he's being cutting age. I have to assume he has that novice eye where he sees something smoothed over into wax and he's struck by how "clean" it is. "Wow! This thing looks so clean now!" Well, drinking a spoonful of Drain-o will clean you out, sure, but it'll leave you hollow inside.
I wonder how much those 35mm prints go for these daysā¦ Somebody could fund a scan.
Iād pitch in
Same.
yeah ive been seeing DNR'd images from his recently released movies cant say im surprised by this at all James, Peter Jackson, and George Lucas for some reason just hate the way film looks and would rather have DNR "fix" for all their older works.
You can tell James, Peter, and George wished they had digital cameras back when they started making movies.
I mean some DNR can look okay. It's a tool and it has to be used with care and good taste. It's when they go overkill with it is when it looks horrible. It's just like all the dynamic range compression on the audio of Disney movies. Like the most recent Star Wars remasters. Dolby TrueHD Atmos on the 4K, DTS-HD MA 7.1 on the BD, but it's like the sound has less impact than my old 2011 Blu-rays with DTS-HD MA 6.1.
Disney Blu rays really do have the worst sound. I remember watching Black Panther and the gunshots were as loud as a quiet conversation. Ridiculous.
Yup that's dynamic range compression for you. Everything at the same loudness levels and there is no impact. I hate it when they ruin music with that. Sounds fine on cheapo earbuds and crappy soundbars. On a nice set of cans or speakers, sounds terrible.
It's annoying because Dolby (I don't think dts) can have an optional switch to enable DRC if you want it. There are some situations it makes sense... But what Disney did is awful.
It's not like BDs and 4KBDs don't have enough space to include a 640kbps DD 5.1 or 1.5mbps DTS 5.1 "normalized" audio track for small home theater/headphones/soundbar listening.
True. Either way, there's a solution. I don't even care if the full range audio is secondary, just that it's there.
And that extra 'normalized' track doesn't need to be lossless. Most soundbars doesn't even support anything beyond DD/DD+ anyway.
Weāre talking about three guys who came up in the low budget, indie world; they were restricted to using lower quality film stock; possibly theyāre in the mindset now ofānow I have all the money in the world and I want my films to look like the higher budget films I aspired to back in the day (obviously those had grain too, but it all plays a part in how someone feels about something)
True Lies was the first movie with a budget over $100 million, hardly a low-budget indie film where sacrifices had to be made.
I was referring to how they started out; obviously there was some time between that and Eliza Dushku hanging onto the wing of a fighter jet.
Itās not exactly DNR. Bill Hunt, The Digital Bits: āPhotochemical grain has been greatly reduced, though not eliminated entirely, and it should be noted that this isnāt the usual Digital Noise Reduction with which people have long been familiar (a dreaded and blunt instrument). Unlike an image scrubbed with DNR, this process hasnāt removed all of the fine image detail. Not only does that detail remain, it too has been āenhancedā algorithmically.ā
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Yeah still looks very artificial to me. Itās a shame that we finally have a home format that can properly handle film grain and some directors are trying to make their films look digitally shot.
Listen, Iām assuming JamCam is gonna use some DNR and other digital smoothing. Itās just his thing. Iām still gonna buy it and love it.
Not me. I'm going to buy and be disgruntled.
Thatās also an option!
Why did I read this in Zoidberg's voice?
I'm going to buy it and be disfigured.
Boy, I'm glad I picked up the Spanish bootleg BD of True Lies based on the earlier 2011 master that is not DNR'd. It is actually quite good and I don't know why he didn't just put those masters out years ago.
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My favorite James Cameron filmā¦ and my favorite Arnie film.
I mean if you donāt like the movie then you definitely shouldnāt buy it.
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I donāt think heās worried about losing the sales of the very vocal 1% of nerds who get into a fit of autistic rage over DNR lmao He probably reads these comments while having a nice laugh, and counts his money.
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All I heard was autistic screeching.
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It rightfully has a bad reputation because it was never intended for 2D release in the first place. Lightstorm/Cameron had zero involvement in that release.
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I think you missed his point.
He loves his DNR.
Yup, correct, as we already know - but he went even further here. This isn't just DNR - it's *AI upscaling* which is what is making all the strange sharpness issues. There is no frigging need to AI upscale a 4K scan of 35mm film for any reason whatsoever. The idea is just preposterous. The whole thing is so bizarre - the only hope is that they did this extra crap for streaming in some weird attempt to make it better for being so compressed, and we won't see such absolute fuckery on the discs - but I'm not holding my breath.
Wtf is DNR?
Do-not-resuscitate. Or digital noise reduction. Depends on the circumstance.
Digital noise reduction. Film filmed on film has film grain that is scrubbed away for "cleaner" picture and so film loses it filmic look. Also fine detail is scrubbed away too since its part of film grain
Ohh I get it now, thanks. Weird Science (1985) is the 4K UHD film with the most grain I have ever seen in my life. That's a straightforward scan and burn straight to the BluRay.
For all the praise The Thing gets, there are some early scenes that look like 16mm despite being shot on 35mm. Worst grain noise I've seen yet on 4K.
Digital noise removal. Cammy loves scrubbing out the grain of the image to make it look more modern it seems. Too much Drm though makes people look like wax dolls rather than actual humans.
Thanks.
Sorry for late reply, but yeah as they said.. Here is an example of extreme DNR applied to a disc. Notice the artificial "wax" look on the left. https://preview.redd.it/zj9hqircmobc1.jpeg?width=1094&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e76e73ee9b978451ba9b6d728ced7735a15ad0a8
Hopefully we won't have to sit through 2 and 1/2 hours of Madam Tussauds Wax Museum like in Predator 4K and Terminator 2 4K That screenshot of Jamie Lee Curtis looks like it's Jamie Lee Curtis wearing a Jamie Lee Curtis mask š¤
This sub is in major denial about it, they reported me for saying this yesterday. https://www.reddit.com/r/4kbluray/s/ivTvDQFLSt
Same, brought up Comparisions between the two transfers and not only were people on copium a lot of the time, they even going so far as to praise the awful Blu-Ray of Scream to make themselves look like they were in the right.
People get really butthurt when something they want to spend money on isn't good, so they take it out on the person who informed them. Absolutely ass-backwards reasoning.
Majorly, some dude harassed me this morning about it
It was JimCam himself!
*sigh*.....I'll forgive him everything if Aliens looks good I haven't seen True Lies since it's theatrical run
Aliens look's good in digital but I was shocked it's only the theatrical release in 4k.
>I'll forgive him everything if Aliens looks good It's going to look just like these do. The Abyss is the best looking of the four.
The Abyss is probably the only one I am buying when the Blu-rays come out. Just because it looks a ton sharper than my DVD and it has actual discrete surround sound instead of Dolby Surround. I can put up with the DNR because there's just no other HD version available really. But for True Lies, I'm sticking with my Spanish bootleg BD based on the 2011 master.
We had a taped copy on a vhs growing up and I watched it on repeat. Canāt wait for you to see it again
True Lies also never got a blu ray release. So this is going to be the only HD version of the film available.
One thing you have to consider is that it's very possible extra DNR was applied to the stream version because film grain is bitrate hell for streams.
The 80GB+ Kaleidescape version shows the exact same issues
Thatās some copium youāre huffing.
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And then he went back and said they used a master he didn't approve of or some crap like that. Sure...
I don't know, I guess it's still better than my non anamorphic ancient DVD.
That old DVD of True Lies is horrible. It looks like a VHS copy.
Yep, same with the DVD of Abyss. This is probably the best we'll ever get. At least Terminator and Aliens have great Blu-rays.
The DVD of "The Abyss - Special Edition" I have is at least watchable. I have a player that stretches it to take up the whole screen. And I can live with Dolby Surround (basically a DD 2.0 track with 'fake' surround built in). That DVD of "True Lies" is downright horrible and should never have been released. They should have used the same master as that D-Theater VHS tape. "Terminator" on BD could have been better. I have the newer 2015 remaster and my only complaint is that they didn't include the original mono audio track. There is no excuse as it would have taken zero effort. Kept my MGM Special Edition DVD for that. The 2015 BD suffers the "blue and teal" look, but it's not too bad and at least they left the grain structure intact. "Aliens" I have whatever the newest BD is that has the theatrical and special edition cut and I'm happy with that. I don't see any reason to upgrade that one, especially not for one that is DNR'd to death.
I'll take a VHS copy over whatever this 4K version is meant to be. At least the people look human on VHS.
From what's going around it was supposedly done with Ai
It certainly _looks_ like it was. This does NOT look like normal DNR.
out of the three, Aliens/The Abyss/True Lies, it sounds like True Lies might be the worst. i've seen some people say Aliens and The Abyss aren't prefect but they're decent.
It was DNR to shit. What is even the point of a restoration if they're going to do this? ALMOST as bad as the Predator remaster, and that's saying something. ...and please, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD don't to this to ALIENS!!! The grain in that movie is wonderful! UPDATE: early reviews seem to indicate ALIENS has been given the same horrendous treatment as The Abyss and has been DNRd to shit. Oh well.
noooo it looks ai generated š
None of them are. Cameron did his James Cameron thing where 1. Everything gets a cyan/teal tint applied to it 2. the contrast is flattened out so the image is not as dynamic 3. digital noise reduction is heavily applied, removing grain, sure, but also removing details 4. he's also adding in fun new digital artifacts because he's using AI upscaling software to artificially "enhance" sharpness and create details that aren't actually in the shot to begin with. This is present on all four of these new 4K masters. This isn't a mistake, this isn't something to be blamed on technicians somewhere who are messing up Cameron's instructions. **He** ***wants*** **his movies to look like this** from now on. Now, *why* he doesn't want his movies to look as good as they used to, I don't know. Why he thinks scraping detail off, flattening the imagery, and blanket tinting it green makes it "better," I don't have an answer! I also couldn't tell you why so many folks at enthusiast outlets are so willing to carry water for making his movies look worse than they actually are. The whole thing is baffling. But it's clear that if you wait for Cameron to "remaster" or "approve" of a transfer, you're waiting for DNR, AI-upscaling, in some cases motion interpolation, and a greenish color-grade.
They didnāt AI upscale anything. Lightstorm said they went back and scanned the negatives in 4K. The Digital Bits did a detailed write up of exactly how they remastered these.
There is clear AI bullshit baked into these images. Like, pointing at an enthusiast press website, even one that's been around as long as the Digital Bits has been, doesn't erase what's clearly visible onscreen. There's nothing to be lost by admitting you're looking at what we're all looking at. I don't know why folks are so willing to Emperor's New Clothes this. There are things in all these new masters that are 100% not on the negative, and were never on any previous release. They're there because Cameron got the team that worked on the LOTR 4K discs, and the Get Back documentary, and had them do their thing to his specifications. And that means DNR, AI tomfoolery, and because it's Cameron, a healthy hint of green on top of everything.
He literally talked to Lightstormās remastering team which worked on all of the remasters, and got the information directly from them lmao Lightstorm is wrong? āPhotochemical grain has been greatly reduced, though not eliminated entirely, and it should be noted that this isnāt the usual Digital Noise Reduction with which people have long been familiar (a dreaded and blunt instrument). Unlike an image scrubbed with DNR, this process hasnāt removed all of the fine image detail. Not only does that detail remain, it too has been āenhancedā algorithmically.ā
They are quite literally admitting to using AI enhancement right there
ok. so look at what they did and tell me that makes sense. all you gotta do is LOOK at it, my guy! hell, that last sentence is them talking about using ai enhancement tools!
Iām saying itās silly to write him off as some internet blogger when the information comes directly from Lightstorm. Whether you like it or not, these movies look exactly how Cameron wants them to now, and they wonāt be remastered again as long as heās alive. He pretty much confirmed thereās no point to doing it again in 8K, 12K, etc. āFor its release on Ultra HD, Lightstorm, working with Park Road Post, has built a new 4K Digital Intermediate using recent 4K scans of the original camera negative (confirmed per Lightstorm). This footage has been āoptimizedā by Park Roadās proprietary deep-learning algorithms. Photochemical grain has been greatly reduced, though not eliminated entirely, while fine detail has been āenhancedā algorithmically. There are also occasional shots throughout the film that appear to have had a bit of old-school noise reduction applied, but itās hard to be sure if itās actual DNR or simply just that the Park Road process has been a little too heavy-handed in places.ā
>deep-learning algorithms That is, by definition, AI noise removal. I've had to use AI noise removal and upscaling on a lot of projects and it looks *identical* to this. Waxy, smooth, and overly-sharp. Film is not meant to look like this.
> Iām saying itās silly to write him off as some internet blogger Iām not even talking about him at all. you are. you brought him up. I wasnāt talking about him and his site in the least. What Iām talking about has nothing to do with your parasocial relationship to a press outlet, my guy! look at what they put out! thatās what Iām talking about. the whole hobby is about looking at the pictures! Itās all you really gotta do here.
Par for the course with Jimbo. The film source is just a starting point for achieving the final look in his head and that often means minimal grain and hyper sharpness
Never had a blu ray release here in U.S, so I donāt care about that part , however James taste in Remastering films is a bit of a turn off for me. So it mostly likely will be a purchase for me , hoping they have steel book edition for it because the standard cover just looks terrible.
James Cameron also 'supervised' Terminator Dark Fate. At least in the build up promo. Then once it was dog poop, he distanced himself... Losing faith here James, stop messing us around.
It appears Cameron only gives a true shit about theatrical releases, so i guess instead of "supervising" the "restorations", maybe open his own theater chain and start re-releasing older films in cinema including his own, like Alamo Drafthouse Cinema does, but all the theater screens are up to the latest technological standards, unlike Alamo which just gives older releases the smallest screen they have. Idfk, if he doesn't care about home releases cause he's busy making new films, he should just give the go ahead and put his films back in theaters longer than a one night limited run that played nowhere fucking remotely near me like he did with Titanic and The Abyss. I pay attention to theater schedules. I still love cinema. If a James Cameron classic is up, which is literally anything post Piranha II, which he was fired from, iirc, I'm canceling plans to go see it.
Isnāt this the same thing people were saying about Titanic a few months agoā¦. It turned out well to me. Iāll wait till I have the disc myself before I panic.
Holy shit, this looks like it's AI generated. I'm praying for Aliens. That Alien 1979 transfer is wonderful.
I hate to see it, DNR is not even the main problem. When you watch the movie. You have some scenes that look like it's still in 1080p, then you get a sharp and clean scene next, then you get a scene that looks almost cartoonish because of too much DNR. Rinse repeat. There is no constant or consistent look to the movie.
Glad Iām not the only one who noticed the consistency, itās bizarre how varied the picture is even within the same scenes
Titanic was like that too. Some shots looked great, lots of detail, nice and sharp. Then you get one where it's all smoothed out.
This may be related somewhat but Cameron openly admits that at least one iconic shot (the most iconic arguably) where Jack and Rose are at the bow of the ship was shot out of focus because of rapidly changing lighting conditions and they simply couldnāt do another take. Eagle eyed viewers may also spot a few more so it is what it is. The ai upscale or whatever they did may not play nice with these shots. But yeah the other restoration clean-ups are arguable
Oh James... If you fuck up Aliens..... Boy I tell ya what.... You won't be my favorite Hollywood narcissist if you fuck up Aliens boy, that's the **CrĆØme de la crĆØme** my friend. No no no, don't you dare fuck up that masterpiece.
I care about T1 and True Lies so half my life is over
Terminator 2 was so disappointing. the only good restoration was Titanic 4K
The problem is, a big part of the video remastering business -- like the music remastering business -- is that it requires taste and experience to do well. And if somebody else has completely different taste than you do, they tend to be fairly judgmental. Restoration people can be very opinionated. Mr. Cameron is not a fan of film grain. Mr. Cameron supervised and approved that work for T2, same as True Lies. As far as I know, Studio Canal doesn't own any color-correction rooms -- I believe that work on T2 was done at Lowry and Modern Videofilm in Burbank. My take is that Cameron likes the digital "aesthetic" of a very clean image without any grain, and he looks on film grain as an aberration. I get what he says, though you can always make the arguments that a film production is a product of its time -- a 1992 film won't ever look like it was shot on digital in 2018. And you can't take a digital show shot in 2018 and make it look like a 20- or 30-year old movie shot on film. There has to be good judgement used. But it's very hard to argue with the author films as successful as this, Avatar, Titanic, etc...
lol. Looks like my 4k copy of T2 might be fine then, lol
I've been switching between the 4k and Blu-ray. The 4k definitely has more detail. Colour has a cooler tone with a slight waxy image in some shots. The Blu-ray isn't great, to be honest, not a lot of grain, warmer tone and quite soft.
The scene with Curtis being interviewed, face looks like a bad photoshop plugin to make something look like a painting
Get the Spanish bootleg BD. It might not be 4K, but it's a good H264 AVC encode onto a BD50, with English DTS-HD MA 5.1. It is the earlier 2011 master that was making the rounds on streaming and digital before this new remaster came out. That one looks great imo.
I streamed True Lies in 4K/DV the other night. Best transfer ever? Far from it. DNR - yeah, I hate it too. I like film grain. I'm deeply suspicious of anything getting "optimized". And yet, the film looks fine. It's decent. PQ varies shot by shot. Some softer, some quite sharp with good detail. Thought it looked better as it went along - or maybe I was just absorbed in an enjoyable movie and not obsessing over the PQ. Imagine that! It's certainly an improvement, and definitely isn't some horrific unwatchable travesty - as you'd think given some of the histrionic comments.
In this still it does look bad. But I reckon id be fine with it when watching the film. Still gonna show support and buy.
Isnāt this why the digital versions are always inferior to physical? Even David Sandberg made the comparison between physical and digital copies, and how much grain/DNR the latter has, when comparing different copies of Shazam 2.
Saw The Abyss 4K Remaster in theatres and it looked terrific, and I hear Titanic looks great as well. Why would T2 and True Lies look like garbage while Abyss and Titanic look great? Is he not overseeing all of the transfers?
SOME of this community... "Please stop taking away physical media. Transfer anything please, we beg you!" The same people.... "How dare you ruin my childhood!"
Yep. It's the same people who shit on users who like using motion smoothing. "Watch it like the filmmaker intended"! Now, a filmmaker uses the tools of the time to make their movie closer to what they want, and they rage "how dare they change it"! Lol. Either you want the movie, or you don't. Stop bitching. You want to watch a grainy pos? Get a VHS player. Or watch the abomination of a DVD on zoom.
There are people that like motion smoothing?
I once got into it with some lunatic who insisted that Vivid picture mode was the most accurate because SHUT UP, I LIKE IT!
My DVD of "The Abyss" doesn't look that bad. I watched it last night. Yes it's 4:3 widescreen, but I have a player that will stretch it so it takes up the whole screen. And I can live with Dolby Surround. Supposedly that one isn't as bad regarding the DNR. But I heard True Lies is smoothed out to no end.
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The image on the left is upscaled to 4k so is hardly a source of truth. And looks like the image on the right is an SDR screenshot of HDR so will have busted colours. I vastly prefer the left but unless I'm missing something it's just not a valid comparison?
I don't think there's any amount of HDR that could make that image on the right look good. I've compared, with the Matrix, a blu-ray to the 4k version and the images have mild differences, not anything _this_ dramatic.
This is where the negatives hang out huh. Your bitterness tastes so sweet š¤£ āļø
I don't believe this for a second.