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Will Smith's concert crowds are real, but AI is blurring the lines

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363 points jay_kyburz | 5 comments | 26 Aug 25 04:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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ulrikrasmussen ◴[26 Aug 25 06:15 UTC] No.45022875[source]▶
I think AI-"upscaled" videos are as jarring to look at as a newly bought TV before frame smoothing has been disabled. Who seriously thinks this looks better, even if the original is a slightly grainy recording from the 90's?

I was recently sent a link to this recording of a David Bowie & Nine Inch Nails concert, and I got a serious uneasy feeling as if I was on a psychedelic and couldn't quite trust my perception, especially at the 2:00 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yyx31HPgfs&list=RD7Yyx31HPg...

It turned out that the video was "AI-upscaled" from an original which is really blurry and sometimes has a low frame rate. These are artistic choices, and I think the original, despite being low resolution, captures the intended atmosphere much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X6KF1IkkIc&list=RD1X6KF1Ikk...

We have pretty good cameras and lenses now. We don't need AI to "improve" the quality.

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brap ◴[26 Aug 25 07:14 UTC] No.45023284[source]▶
I remember watching an episode of one of my favorite shows on my parents’ brand new TV, and thought to myself something about this episode is off, like the production is cheap, the acting feels worse, even the dialog is bad.

Over time I noticed everything looks cheaper on their TV.

It was the auto-smoothing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera_effect

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ulrikrasmussen ◴[26 Aug 25 08:08 UTC] No.45023660[source]▶
It is especially bad for animated shows that have made an explicit artistic choice to let (parts of) the animation progress at a lower frame rate. My kids watched "spider-man: across the spider-verse" at a friends place where smoothing was not turned off, and it completely ruined the artistic feel and made the movie feel like a stuttering video game.
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1. jay_kyburz ◴[26 Aug 25 08:24 UTC] No.45023794{3}[source]▶
I found those spiderverse movies really hard to watch because of the low frame rate. I don't think it was artistic, it was cheap.
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2. ulrikrasmussen ◴[26 Aug 25 08:38 UTC] No.45023894[source]▶
I think that's a matter of taste, but it definitely doesn't make it easier to watch them when the frame rate randomly switches between low and high all the time :).
3. pja ◴[26 Aug 25 08:49 UTC] No.45023980[source]▶
> I found those spiderverse movies really hard to watch because of the low frame rate. I don't think it was artistic, it was cheap.

It was absolutely an artistic choice - Sony spent more per frame on those movies than any previous animated film & the directors knew exactly what they were doing when they chose to animate some parts on every second (or even third) frame.

4. nathan_compton ◴[26 Aug 25 09:59 UTC] No.45024430[source]▶
This is an artistic choice with a variety of film precedents. Its not exactly the same thing, but if you watch this GDC talk about the way that Arc System Works uses 3d to simulate 2d animation, it gets some of the ideas across:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhGjCzxJV3E

Artists might want to produce a lower framerate just to make something look filmic (eg, 25 frames per second) or hand animated, but it can also be a deliberate stylistic choice for other reasons. Eg, the recentish Mad Max films used subtle undercranking to make action scenes feel more intense, and part of that effect is a more noticeable frames and I think there is a bit of that in the Spiderverse films too.

5. HelloMcFly ◴[26 Aug 25 12:52 UTC] No.45025863[source]▶
I mean, it was an artistic choice, and it wasn't cheap at $90m budget. That doesn't mean you're obligated to enjoy the end product by any means, but they were really doing some interesting things! https://medium.com/everythingcg/spider-man-into-the-spider-v...