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Can Artificial Intelligence Restore 85-Year-Old Popeye Cartoons? (youtube.com) 61

Posted by EditorDavid from the strong-to-the-finish dept.
A Slashdot reader shared an anonymous tip about "new consumer-grade artificial intelligence employed to restore 85 year-old Popeye cartoons, using only the available digital copies as sources for the remastering."

It's eerie to see vintage cartoons like Popeye the Sailor meets Sindbad the Sailor upgraded to high resolution. It's apparently the work of Cartoon Renewal Studios, a group "Dedicated to the loving and careful preservation of classic off-copyright animation" (according to its web site).

There's not much information, but Jim Ames of Cartoon Renewal Studios turned up in an online forum promising "we're restoring ALL the classic cartoons to brilliant 1080 HD so they can be enjoyed forever." I've been dreaming of this project for some time... We will be posting THOUSANDS of off-copyright cartoons digitally remastered and upscaled to 1080 HD. We can process about 50 cartoons a month, at this time... Hoping to scale up to 100 cartoons a month processing capability next month.

We could finish 1000 cartoons in 2021... stay tuned...
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Can Artificial Intelligence Restore 85-Year-Old Popeye Cartoons? More

Can Artificial Intelligence Restore 85-Year-Old Popeye Cartoons?

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  • why not fix the glitches? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by davecotter ( 1297617 ) <me@daveco t t e r . c om> on Sunday February 07, 2021 @12:39PM (#61037534)

    while you're at it? occasionally you get frames that are: a: misaligned, b: out of focus, c: have dust / scratches, d: are mis-colored. seems like something that could / should also be done?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nagora ( 177841 )

      while you're at it? occasionally you get frames that are: a: misaligned, b: out of focus, c: have dust / scratches, d: are mis-colored. seems like something that could / should also be done?

      Yeah, it seems to me that the single easiest thing to fix is a frame drop in the opening credits while it's a static image.

    • Exactly! Frankly it looks like shit.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        They did it the hard way.

        The smart way, separate the fixed background from the variable foreground, pretty fucking easy, the foreground cartoon as black lines around it all.

        Correct the back ground imagine, once and then use it over and over. Then correct the black lines to make sure they animate properly. The add the selected original colour between the black lines.

        You do not fix the original too hard, you use it as a template to create a new version. Much easier and faster. The hard word for the compute

    • Not only should have been done, but most of these things are easy to solve for flat shaded cartoons specifically, without any machine learning getting involved.

      The only area where this is valid research is with regards to the efficiency of the process, and I doubt these guys are anywhere close to the efficiency of the anime upscaling guys that arent bothering to use machine learning techniques because thats stupid in this case.
    • All the old Fleischer Popeye cartoons from the 30s were restored over a decade ago and released on DVD, they haven't been released on Blu-Ray but the three sets still look very good. This copy of Popeye Meets Sinbad on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] is ripped from the first set. Also the Warner Archive is currently releasing blu-rays of the post Fleischer, Famous Studios Popeye cartoons. There are three volumes of those so far.

    • Re:why not fix the glitches? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by noodler ( 724788 ) on Monday February 08, 2021 @04:48AM (#61039458)

      Why not fix the glitches? Because they don't really care. They just want to capitalize on the upscaling tech, either financially or socially.

  • Subjectivity is important here (Score:5, Interesting)

    by psperl ( 1704658 ) on Sunday February 07, 2021 @12:42PM (#61037544) Homepage
    Having just watched both the original Library of Congress [loc.gov] and this remastered version, I must say I prefer the originals. I'm not saying that the AI tools aren't impressive, they are, but they are mixed with the subjective preferences of the person performing the remastering. In this case, I think the colors are over-saturated, the picture is over-sharpened, and the noise is exaggerated. The type of AI upscaling nvidia is capable of is better to my tastes.

    • Yeah the originals look far better. This is one big waste of time.

    • Re:Subjectivity is important here (Score:5, Interesting)

      by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Sunday February 07, 2021 @12:55PM (#61037582)
      I like the originals. Colors are better. The AI-processed versions seem to emphasize the defects in the originals and turn up the colors way too much. Plus there seem to be some frames that revert briefly to the original resolution. This is an OK first pass, and I view it as just that. A first-pass test of the concept. But I would say that much work needs to be done on the process. Unfortunately, these processed versions likely will become the versions merely because they are pseudo-HD.
      • I've played with some of these algorithms. The result is highly dependent on the training. If the training material doesn't have the same defects, it will emphasize them instead of eliminate them. I've played with some old AVI files from the 90s. The ANN I was using hadn't seen those types of compression artifacts before, and the result was worse than the original.

        For AI to enhance an old cartoon like this, a modern cartoon would have to be transferred to film, and then subjected to some sort of accel
      • So... Sinbad shot first?

    • Re:Subjectivity is important here (Score:5, Informative)

      by nagora ( 177841 ) on Sunday February 07, 2021 @12:59PM (#61037588)

      Having just watched both the original Library of Congress [loc.gov] and this remastered version, I must say I prefer the originals. I'm not saying that the AI tools aren't impressive, they are, but they are mixed with the subjective preferences of the person performing the remastering. In this case, I think the colors are over-saturated, the picture is over-sharpened, and the noise is exaggerated. The type of AI upscaling nvidia is capable of is better to my tastes.

      A lot of detail is lost too. If you look at the static image of the ship at the start, the original has a patch in the sail which looks like a patch whereas the AI version just makes it look like a discoloured area. The planks of the ship's hull are all gone too.

      Pretty disappointing if you are the sort of person who thinks "AI" is actually "AI".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

        Pretty disappointing if you are the sort of person who thinks "AI" is actually "AI".

        No one thinks that AI is actually artificial intelligence. Everyone knows it's the industry standard term for machine-learning systems trained on huge amounts of data.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nagora ( 177841 )

          Pretty disappointing if you are the sort of person who thinks "AI" is actually "AI".

          No one thinks that AI is actually artificial intelligence. Everyone knows it's the industry standard term for machine-learning systems trained on huge amounts of data.

          Everybody here, maybe. I watched some members of the general public talking about computers recently and as far as they were concerned living thinking computers are a well-established technology.

    • I was about to come in and make a comment about how preferring the Library of Congress’ “originals” is like preferring a painting that has had its varnish yellow over the course of decades: they were digitally scanned after the film had already begun to deteriorate from decades of laying on a shelf, so they aren’t an accurate representation of what the true original animation looked like nor should look like. A restoration is in order, and yes, it will change some of the colors and w

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by wwphx ( 225607 )
      I remember seeing, probably 13 years ago or so, the movie Soylent Green on a monster 60" or bigger flat-screen TV, it might have been off of one of those Ultra-DVDs or something. It was so over-sharpened by the TV that I couldn't stand it! I imagine it's a similar effect, I haven't watched these remastered cartoons yet.

    • There was a similar discussion years ago, when they started colorizing old black and white films.

      I recently watched some Edgar Wallace black and white films from the early 60's. The director and cinematographer did an excellent job of playing with the light and shadows, which really made some scenes sinister and creepy.

      I thought that, if this had been colorized, it just wouldn't have made the same effect that the director and cinematographer intended.

      In other words, it would have looked like crap.

    • That's exactly my thought, the original looks much more natural. Also there isn't any restoration at all, still full of specks and lines and scratches. A real restoration would have removed those.. This is just a very amateuristic attempt at a restoration which IMHO failed misserably.

    • Me too. On spotting the article I watched a remastered version. It lacks consistency. As much as itâ(TM)s a noble goal, I felt distracted. And in particular, the additional detail calls for attention but does not offer any additional information to enjoy or understand the cartoon.

      This reminded me of Super resolution algorithms to improve old adventure games, or more widely all games powered by Mame. While different in nature, I resorted back to not using them: made them harder to play.

      If someone has be

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JackAxe ( 689361 )
      Same here. The remastered version really exenterated the artifacts and jacked up some of the lettering. I prefer the softer look of the original.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      but they are mixed with the subjective preferences of the person performing the remastering.

      I feel this is a point that ought to be made in a lot of AI stories, which treat AI like magic, but how do you know an artificially intelligent decision is actually intelligent? You compare the decision to some kind of benchmark decision maker. If an expert in the field, that's fine, but it seems like where a lot of these AI projects are heading is not systematizing expertise, but mediocrity.

  • hopefully not sanitized (Score:4, Insightful)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Sunday February 07, 2021 @12:47PM (#61037558)

    I want to see all the non-PC stuff of the era, the drinking, the smoking, the racism, the gender stererotypes.etc. Not the current snowflake fad version of reality.

    e.g. "Scrap the Japs" a 1942 wartime popeye, lolz.

    • I want to see all the non-PC stuff of the era, the drinking, the smoking, the racism, the gender stererotypes.etc. Not the current snowflake fad version of reality.

      e.g. "Scrap the Japs" a 1942 wartime popeye, lolz.

      You could have picked Seein Red, White 'N' Blue where Blutto and Popeye end up fighting both Hirohito and Hitler.

      You could also have used Spinach Fer Britain where Popeye smokes a pipe from a U-boat captain after stuffing the guy back into the sub.

      Or do we need to be PC about Hitler?

      • hey there is all kind of hilarious stuff that give insight into an era, U.S. culture and those trying to shape it, was just giving one example.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 )

        Pretty much all of them are disavowed by their publishers. Try to find Der Fuehrer's Face on Disney+, that one won an academy award and painted naz*sm in a very bad light, and is in every respect a classic that should be remembered.

        Alas, we're living in an age where the new worst thing you can be is either a racist or a pedophile. The words fuck, shit, and damn aren't as taboo as they once were, but words like cunt and n*gger are the new words that you just don't say, and it is frowned upon for men to be el

      • Last weekend, they ran a three stooges short on one of the channels where they encounter a spy plot being run by a German guy , a Japanese guy and an Italian Guy, all in uniform.
        Moe actually ends up dressed as Hitler, shouting in crazy mock German that is both completely unintelligible and frighteningly similar to an actual Hitler speech.
        The entire episode was very Un-PC, I was surprised it was actually run.
        It was also hilarious.

    • So don't hold your breath.

      For perhaps the bets example of collective disremembrance in recent US history I offer the G.I. resistance movement during the Viet Nam war. It's fascinating history which deserves to be remembered but does not serve any current Right or Left social agenda and has some awkward moments both with forgotten.

  • Once you translate analogue pictures to digital you have lost.

    • Photography forum:

      "Show me your darkroom prints"
    • The distinction between analog and digital is not correct.

      Both old Film and Video are analog:

      Old Film: remarkable for how much information there is stored per frame.
      Old Video: remarkable for how little information there is stored per frame.

      The fact that our digital formats also follow video is due to our motivations. There are no spare digits like there are spare molecules.

  • Not even remotely an improvement (Score:4, Informative)

    by LostOne ( 51301 ) on Sunday February 07, 2021 @02:07PM (#61037740) Homepage

    It looks like the Library of Congress either ended up with a really bad copy in their archives originally or their digital transfer was not competently done. It seems unlikely that all of the shakiness and blurring is due to film degradation and I doubt it was in the original production. Before attempting to "restore" anything, you absolutely need a *clean* transfer. That means carefully cleaning the source film to the extent possible and getting a high resolution scan of it. Ideally, you want to find other film prints of the same film and do the same with them on the hope that particularly bad bits in one print aren't bad in another print (notably damaged frames, dirt specs, and scratches). Only once you have the best possible source material that you can find from extant sources can you do a proper restoration job.

    With all that said, the film in this example could still be improved a lot better than what was done here. Image stabilization and missing frame (or parts of frames) interpolation would have a much bigger impact on perceived quality than trying to make the result high definition or doing colour "enhancement".

  • My VHS tapes I bought right after the copyright expired seem fine.

    They're also cartoons so screen resolution seems like a moot issue. They are VHS SP mode so they're pretty good looking.

  • I'm really wondering about the color. One way to approach that would have been to talk with people in the industry a few decades ago and get them to adjust the color when we had tools to do so, and also had some old-timers from the industry who could provide expert input. I think all of those people are gone now. The best we could do with that is talk to people who were kids when this came out and ask them about it.

    Perhaps a better approach is to recreate the Technicolor process and run tests to see how

    • Memory is a fuzzy thing. If I were born in 1928, I wouldn't be able to say what shade of green Popeye's spinach was in Sinbad the Sailor (1936). It would be like waiting until 2070 and asking a kid born in 1979 what shade of green the Ninja Turtles were in the original animated series. Heck, after that amount of time I wouldn't even trust my eyes to see colors the same way. Thickening of the lens in the eye is well known for altering color perception.

      On your last point, yeah, people prefer how they original

    • Alas, Technicolor was not a single process, it changed over time. The best known and most widely used Technicolor process separated the colors into three greyscale silver images ("black and white"), so that if the original negatives are still available there is no differential fading of colors. If all that is available is a print, differential fading due to the different dyes in each color is possible and would have to be dealt with.

      I do not know the degree to which the color chemistry was a secret; recreat

  • That distinct wobbliness pervasive in AI-generated videos is truly the equivalent of yesteryear's JPEG artifacts.

  • The question isn't can it, it is should it? Having watched some very old Popeye episodes recently I am happy to leave them in the past, and to leave them in that state to remind viewers that these are opinions of the past.

  • Jim Ames is the most remarkable extraordinary fellow.

  • Are you sure? I don't think that the Social Justice Bullies would let them do it for some reason or other.
  • I hope this email finds you well. Spinach is writing to throw our full support behind this and hops to see some payment for our likeness being manipulated.
  • If this was REALLY a restoration, the film (either print, camera original negative, or YCM separations) would get re-scanned at higher resolution, there would be dirt and scratch removal, registration correction and final color timing. This seems to be a resolution scale with AI, and just adding saturation. The scaling with AI is well known and some VFX and post houses are already using it for NTSC/PAL TV shows that the owners want upscaled to 4k.
  • Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves 1937 Max Fleischer 1080 HD Cartoon Renewal Studios World Premiere https://youtu.be/NFswtawPsHI [youtu.be]
  • I am recently working on AI and Machine learning to generate faces of people in animated forms. The challenge is to use data science and ML to differentiate faces of people from that of animals. From this experiment I can definitely say that AI in near future will come up with algorithms that can make cartoons of their own including the famous Popeye. Recently I was working on a data science project from Udacity( https://onlinecourseing.com/ud... [onlinecourseing.com] ). The project names dog-breed classifier. It aimed at making

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