Barry Lyndon - Noise reduction AI

The video shows the results of using the program "Topaz Video Enhance AI". The amount of grain that it manages to remove is remarkable, resulting in a very clean image, all without introducing many artifacts.

[@jordanmillraney5481]

I’m a purist when it comes to things like this. You can disagree with my opinion on this. Grain is the important element of film which gives off textures, very high detail and has that organic and nostalgic feel to it. We’re seeing celluloid in action. Tampering with/removing it; going the Cameron route can cause the footage to look unnatural/off. 3 of this year’s James Cameron 4Ks (True Lies, The Abyss and Aliens) were somewhat of a mixed bag upon people reviewing. True Lies being the worse out of the 3. Upon researching, it seemed as if the picture was sourced from an existing 2K scan and gave it the Park Road treatment by upscaling it to 4K using Ai technology; DNR in certain sections and also gave it a limited HDR boost instead of giving it the full 4K remastering treatment. Similar story with Aliens. Not so much on The Abyss. 2 of the 3 movies (True Lies and The Abyss) have long been stuck in the SD realm (True Lies existed on the D-Theater version which is VHS movies in 1080p quality and Spanish Blu-ray bootlegs have existed since) and finally arrive on 4K for the first time. For a character called James Cameron to tamper his 2 films with (Aliens and True Lies) like this on the 4K versions is disappointing for fans of the films. Film is allowed to be film with its grain structure. If color correction, frame by frame cleanup and cropping to their original aspect ratios need to occur to prepare for 4K releases, that’s cool. You can do that as long as it looks like how it looked originally. NEVER tamper with their grain structures.

[@mukankakuna]

First of all, I appreciate reading a comment with as much substance as yours, something that is rare on RUclips, so I will respond accordingly. In general, I agree with what you say. Regarding the 4K remaster of True Lies, while it is still the best version of this film that exists, it has significant room for improvement. Let's hope that a new remasterization will come out sooner rather than later to correct the problems seen in this edition. Focusing on Barry Lyndon, and by extension other films, the comparison is made from what I believe is the best edition of this film that exists, the Criterion edition (note, this is a 1080p version). In this case, the grain of the film, as you can see, is, in my opinion, excessively large and noisy to the point of being distracting. There are many 4K remasters of films from that era whose grain is much smaller, providing extra information to the image but without distracting from it. From what I understand, the size of the grain in Barry Lyndon is due to the type of film used and that is why a 4K remaster (a well-done one) would not significantly improve in this aspect. However, I hope this is not true and that when the aforementioned remasterization is done, the improvement will be clear and evident.