AI utilization in film restorations

[co-villain]

My bad if this has already been discussed before but I have yet to really see a discussion on the topic outside of the Inland Empire Criterion release.

What's everyone's thoughts regarding the potential (inevitable) use of AI in film restorations? We already have one example that I know of with the release of Inland Empire from Criterion but with it becoming more prevalent (to our own demise), how often do you see it being used moving forward?

Additionally, if anyone knows of any examples outside of Inland Empire, I'd be curious to hear what they are.

[sonicyogurt]

I’m not sure on the live action side of things, but Astrores is behind some genuinely impressive animated releases (a fair few from Discotek like Digimon; the German Blu-ray release of Masters of the Universe). Apparently Inland Empire uses Gigapixel AI…?

[Shane Rollins]

I don’t know about Discotek’s releases or the ins and outs of Inland Empire, but my mind went straight to the 2001 restoration of Citizen Kane, better known as the first and so far only time a movie was restored entirely by a computer with no human intervention. In short, it was a disaster. Pick up the 2001 double disc DVD on the cheap if you can. Disc One shows you exactly why you shouldn’t hire a machine to do people’s jobs. Disc Two has a very nice documentary.

[Rayjg]

The only AI that should go anywhere near a Welles's film is The Magnificent Ambersons. I would like to see a full rebuild of that using stills, frame enlargements, deleted scenes from the trailer and Hertmann's score. I think in a few years we could get a very close approximation of what Welles intended.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by co-villain

My bad if this has already been discussed before but I have yet to really see a discussion on the topic outside of the Inland Empire Criterion release.

What's everyone's thoughts regarding the potential (inevitable) use of AI in film restorations? We already have one example that I know of with the release of Inland Empire from Criterion but with it becoming more prevalent (to our own demise), how often do you see it being used moving forward?

Additionally, if anyone knows of any examples outside of Inland Empire, I'd be curious to hear what they are.

I think AI can be useful, if it is able to fix things such as brief jump cuts; a jump cut is already going to look bad, so while interpolation will not be perfect if its only a few frames it needs to interpolate it will probably be less noticable than the jump cut.

Other areas, like aggressive upscaling I find it can cause a lot of artifacts. Case in point:
https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=1&x...&l=0&i=14&go=1

While the AI with upscaling and artificial grain is attempting to make the picture look higher resolution and more filmlike in this scene, to me it appears to do the opposite giving the video a very digital, artifact-laden look. Not as bad as the aggressive blanket EE/DNR days, but certainly not great.

I have a lot of experience using AI software for photos and it can do wonders, but it never looks as good as a native picture that is taken in best conditions. Even with all of the advanced software available, it still needs to be hand tweaked for every shot to get good results, and I think this is gonna be tough/expensive for movies given their length.

[Cranberry Moonwalk]

Now, it sucks.

In the future, once it’s refined, it’ll probably be a lot better.

[FaGiO]

Originally Posted by Cranberry Moonwalk

Now, it sucks.

In the future, once it’s refined, it’ll probably be a lot better.

This.

[Pecker]

In principle, as long as the original is still available, yes.

Another thing for me is, on balance do we think the director would have wanted it.

Loads of old films with errors, distortions, etc., which it's almost certain the director would have avoided if s/he could (matt lines, etc).

There's a scene towards the end of The Manchurian Candidate where Sinatra was brilliant, but when the looked at the dailies, he was out of focus. They tried re-shoots, but he was never as good as the original, so they kept that.

Now if you could use AI to get that back in focus, we know for a fact that's what was wanted at the time. So, as long as the original is still available, why not?

[koberulz]

Given that the takeaway was "it's out of focus but that actually works really well for the scene, so we stumbled onto something great completely by accident", no.

[Dragun]

AI has uses for the various tasks involved in film restoration, but it's not the magic bullet that some people think it is. Extensive human input will still be necessary.

[Pecker]

Originally Posted by koberulz

Given that the takeaway was "it's out of focus but that actually works really well for the scene, so we stumbled onto something great completely by accident", no.

That’s certainly not the story as I remember it on the extras/commentary, but it’s been a while.

EDIT: Apparently you’re ‘hilarious’, but I didn’t say that.

https://whatculture.com/film/10-mist...e-movie?page=3

[milo bloom]

I don't have an issue with it being used to fix damage and such, but I'm afraid too many people would get George Lucas syndrome and start "fixing" things that don't really need fixing. Like adding an actor that they couldn't get at the time but then added them after they die or something morbid like that.

[bigshot]

"It'll never fly, Orville."

I think digital processing of film will be a game changer myself... and not just to clean up damage. I can imagine a time when your player has settings for enhancing movies to various formats automatically... 3D, color, high definition, etc... the same way we have different audio tracks on blu-rays now. You won't have to depend on the choices of the people selling you the movie, you can choose for yourself.

[James Luckard]

I think I read that the absolutely appalling 4K upscale of the first AVATAR movie was done using AI.

It ends up looking like the machines took their revenge on James Cameron for maligning them in the Terminator movies.

I'm sure it'll look good someday, but not today.

[Bates_Motel]

When AI can re-create the missing shots and ending of The Magnificent Ambersons based on the rest of the film and the script/notes, it will be a glorious day. And since AI has already re-created entire episodes of South Park from scratch using Showrunner software, it won't be long.

[nin74]

Are we talking about film restoration or film reimagination?