Twister (1996)

[CelestialAgent]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

The fact that Universal and WB have two different transfers is just as telling. This happened before on Citizen Kane and King Kong, where the UK was stuck with two antiquated masters while the US got full restorations.

Having different masters or encodes for different territories happens a lot, like when the UK released Warm Bodies as open matte, The Shawshank Redemption (WB vs. ITV before the UHD), Face Off (Disney vs. Paramount before the UHD), Serpico (Kino/Paramount vs. StudioCanal UHDs), Murder on the Orient Express (Paramount vs. StudioCanal), Network (WB vs. Arrow Academy/MGM), Gallipoli (Paramount vs. Fox), The Quiller Memorandum (Twilight Time/Fox vs. Network/ITV), Sexy Beast (Twilight Time/Fox vs. Film4), My Beautiful Laundrette (Criterion/MGM vs. BFI/Film4), Criterion vs. BFI Kurosawas - the list could go on.

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

That "detail and grain" are both AI-derived. An actual new transfer of the movie would smash them both

Ah so it was one of those jobs?
It did look a little odd and at first I was going to say it seems fake and mention perhaps it had some oversharpening and maybe all the 'detail' from that. But that said the US one had zero grain whatsoever and zero detail so I figured it had to be a new transfer since you couldn't make grain from nothing unless you added in fake grain (and I didn't realize they were doing that for blu-ray only releases of older stuff) and regular sharpening couldn't make up some of the utterly missing detail (and again didn't know they were AI detailing for stuff like this yet). I should've looked it over more carefully.

[SpacemanDoug]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

That "detail and grain" are both AI-derived. An actual new transfer of the movie would smash them both

I knew something looked off about it, I just couldn't figure out what or why

No natural grain pattern that I've seen at least looks like that

[CelestialAgent]

Originally Posted by SpacemanDoug

I knew something looked off about it, I just couldn't figure out what or why

Turbine has done it on other releases like Born on the Fourth of July and No Escape.

[SpacemanDoug]

Originally Posted by CelestialAgent

Turbine has done it on other releases like Born on the Fourth of July and No Escape.

and I bet people on the various Turbine threads still defended the release instantly, it's astonishing to me how toxic Turbine's fans can be

I kept getting harassed because I criticized their release of The Frighteners being poorly encoded (which it is)

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW

The difference is quite extreme, one the larger you'll see. The German one is radically more detailed and has grain.

Lol, "radically more detailed".

[Vixen of the Night]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

That "detail and grain" are both AI-derived. An actual new transfer of the movie would smash them both

How can you tell that from the image alone?

And even if that's the case as people are stating. It still looks better than the Warner release and the tinkering Cameron has been up too.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Vixen of the Night

How can you tell that from the image alone?

And even if that's the case as people are stating. It still looks better than the Warner release and the tinkering Cameron has been up too.

It's literally got the exact same framing/geometry as the existing transfer but all this "grain" and "detail" has suddenly appeared from nowhere. Arrow video also hinted several years ago that a big indie label was doing this to their "remasters", naming no names, but in this case it's safe to put two and two together to get four. And while turbine have never been shy about defending their wares, how their Auro Atmos X blah blah remixes are director approved, I've not once heard them chime in about the provenance of these curious "remasters". I'd have more respect for them if they aktually said "yeah, they're the old transfers and we run them through a thingy to sharpen detail and add grain, deal with it".

I'm happy that you're happy but to me this is more damaging than what Cameron does because it's so insidious, at least his stuff wears its shiny AI trousers in plain view instead of taking a near 20 year old transfer and "remastering" it to look more filmic. If an OG negative or other protection elements were no longer available to use for transfer then fine, it's a tool that has positive uses in those situations, but for modern movies whose negatives are safe and sound, snug in a salt mine somewhere, it's a shameful use of the technology IMO, designed to extract a few more €€€ from unsuspecting punters while we wait for the actual 4K masters to arrive.

Hell, I'll bet cash money that if/when something like Twister does appear on an actual 4K release with an actual 4K transfer people will still prefer the turbine "remaster" for its overtly sharpened, grainy look. Same thing happened with Dragonheart, the Uni remaster is gorgeous but that sharpened turbine BD would appear to offer up more "detail" to the casual viewer.

[Vixen of the Night]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

It's literally got the exact same framing/geometry as the existing transfer but all this "grain" and "detail" has suddenly appeared from nowhere. Arrow video also hinted several years ago that a big indie label was doing this to their "remasters", naming no names, but in this case it's safe to put two and two together to get four. And while turbine have never been shy about defending their wares, how their Auro Atmos X blah blah remixes are director approved, I've not once heard them chime in about the provenance of these curious "remasters". I'd have more respect for them if they aktually said "yeah, they're the old transfers and we run them through a thingy to sharpen detail and add grain, deal with it".

I'm happy that you're happy but to me this is more damaging than what Cameron does because it's so insidious, at least his stuff wears its shiny AI trousers in plain view instead of taking a near 20 year old transfer and "remastering" it to look more filmic. If an OG negative or other protection elements were no longer available to use for transfer then fine, it's a tool that has positive uses in those situations, but for modern movies whose negatives are safe and sound, snug in a salt mine somewhere, it's a shameful use of the technology IMO, designed to extract a few more €€€ from unsuspecting punters while we wait for the actual 4K masters to arrive.

Hell, I'll bet cash money that if/when something like Twister does appear on an actual 4K release with an actual 4K transfer people will still prefer the turbine "remaster" for its overtly sharpened, grainy look. Same thing happened with Dragonheart, the Uni remaster is gorgeous but that sharpened turbine BD would appear to offer up more "detail" to the casual viewer.

I took a screenshot of the table scene from the Universal BD and applied sharpening and can now see what you're saying about the Turbine release. The results were identical in terms of the older woman's hair being a soft blur in the Universal transfer to suddenly being sharp with numerous hairs visible in the tweaked image, and the "grain" became clunky as well, that I didn't even have to add a fake layer of digital grain to get a "grainy" look. It's just digital tinkering that does fool the untrained eye as being "better".


And yes, I agree that using such tools as they are on readily available product is not good. It's one thing if quality prints/negatives don't exist to try to see what they can wean out of what's available. But something like Twister doesn't need that.

I just hope whenever Warner gets around to releasing a 4K edition of the film, they include the remastered blu-ray as well, which they've failed to do lately which is annoying.

[Richard Graham]

They need to remaster "Humans Being" and remove Ed's terrible overdubbed vocals.

Eddie claims Sammy wouldn't come in and do extra takes to "thicken" up the vocal track, so he did them. I think he did them bad on purpose as a dig on Sammy.

How that song has lasted in the state it has is mind blowing.

[The80s]

Originally Posted by MazeRunner

Hopefully a 4k release in July whenever the sequel comes out.

Yeah but don't you think it would have been announced by now?

[By_His_Strypes]

I think Bill Hunt pretty much confirmed Twister will be coming to 4K this year...

[mpls1981]

Originally Posted by The80s

Yeah but don't you think it would have been announced by now?

The sequel doesn't come out until July. May would make more sense to begin hyping up the sequel closer to the release date.

[random123]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

It's literally got the exact same framing/geometry as the existing transfer but all this "grain" and "detail" has suddenly appeared from nowhere. Arrow video also hinted several years ago that a big indie label was doing this to their "remasters", naming no names, but in this case it's safe to put two and two together to get four. And while turbine have never been shy about defending their wares, how their Auro Atmos X blah blah remixes are director approved, I've not once heard them chime in about the provenance of these curious "remasters". I'd have more respect for them if they aktually said "yeah, they're the old transfers and we run them through a thingy to sharpen detail and add grain, deal with it".

I'm happy that you're happy but to me this is more damaging than what Cameron does because it's so insidious, at least his stuff wears its shiny AI trousers in plain view instead of taking a near 20 year old transfer and "remastering" it to look more filmic. If an OG negative or other protection elements were no longer available to use for transfer then fine, it's a tool that has positive uses in those situations, but for modern movies whose negatives are safe and sound, snug in a salt mine somewhere, it's a shameful use of the technology IMO, designed to extract a few more €€€ from unsuspecting punters while we wait for the actual 4K masters to arrive.

Hell, I'll bet cash money that if/when something like Twister does appear on an actual 4K release with an actual 4K transfer people will still prefer the turbine "remaster" for its overtly sharpened, grainy look. Same thing happened with Dragonheart, the Uni remaster is gorgeous but that sharpened turbine BD would appear to offer up more "detail" to the casual viewer.

The reason these labels do this is to gain any sort of "advantage", whether real or not. If they can’t get a proper new master, they will try to artificially boost the new one. That even includes fake HDR.

That said, there are cases and cases. A french blu-ray release of Dragon Ball used deep-learning upscale of the existing DVDs, and did so with lots of care and attention (unlike what the regular official releases by Funimation do, Funimation has no shame in often reusing SD masters and doing the worst and laziest deep-learning upscales you can think of, just the press of a button, and then adding a grain filter to add insult to injury, True Lies and Aliens in UHD might as well be masterpieces compared to Funimation's usual practices for their blu-rays). Short of anyone getting access to the original negatives, those french blu-rays still easily beat any other release, in detail and color.

[random123]

Originally Posted by MazeRunner

Hopefully a 4k release in July whenever the sequel comes out.

Sheri Eisenberg, colorist at Warner (but also does restoration work at other studios), said in an article last year that To Die For, Body Double, His Girl Friday and Twister were her current projects. The former three have already had UHDs be announced.

[random123]

Animation has been so horribly mistreated in physical media and restoration work in history that it makes all complaints about every single live-action release together seem small potatoes by comparison. And let's not even get on the topic of how much world animation isn't available even on VHS...

[The80s]

Originally Posted by random123

Sheri Eisenberg, colorist at Warner (but also does restoration work at other studios), said in an article last year that To Die For, Body Double, His Girl Friday and Twister were her current projects. The former three have already had UHDs be announced.

They must be waiting for the hype to get big on the sequel before announcing Twister 4K

[Kyle15]

The sequel looks atrocious. If it guarantees a release of the original I can live with it.

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

The sequel looks atrocious. If it guarantees a release of the original I can live with it.

That it does.

[Jlouisbarrett]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

The sequel looks atrocious. If it guarantees a release of the original I can live with it.

Eh, I think it looks fun — like a big, dumb, fun and flashy disaster action thriller in the great tradition of Irwin Allen… which is precisely what the original was. It’s not like we’re dealing with high art here. I’ll definitely be checking it out.

But yeah, even with that said, what I want most out of the sequel is for the original to be issued on 4K.