Why some "remastered" music videos look awful
Tom Scott・2 minutes read
Engineers remastered early music videos like Wham!'s Last Christmas to 4K, maintaining the original aspect ratio and enhancing visual appeal, while some remasters like Smash Mouth's All Star were poorly executed, resulting in worsened quality. Remastering involved rescanning original film reels at 4K, recreating edits frame by frame, and sometimes upscaling TV edits for HD quality, maintaining the authenticity of the standard definition experience.
Insights
- Remastering of early music videos on YouTube in 2019 involved meticulous processes like rescanning original film reels at 4K, recreating edits frame by frame, and maintaining the original aspect ratio for enhanced visual appeal.
- Despite efforts to upgrade videos to HD quality, some remasters like Smash Mouth's All Star suffered from poor execution, leading to over-sharpened, artifact-filled visuals that actually worsened the original quality, highlighting the challenges and risks associated with remastering.
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How were early music videos on YouTube remastered?
By rescanning original film reels at 4K.
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Summary
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Remastered Music Videos Upgrade to HD
- In 2019, many early music videos on YouTube were remastered, retaining their original video IDs, views, and comments, resulting in some videos being upgraded to HD quality.
- Music videos like Wham!'s Last Christmas, shot on film, were remastered to 4K, maintaining the original aspect ratio of '80s television, enhancing their visual appeal.
- The process of remastering involved using a telecine to transfer film quality onto standard definition TV tape, limiting the quality to 480 or 576 horizontal lines.
- For remasters like Last Christmas, engineers located original film reels, rescanned them at 4K, and meticulously recreated every edit frame by frame.
- An alternative remastering method involves upscaling the final TV edit to HD, as seen in Bohemian Rhapsody, which was originally recorded on TV cameras in standard definition.
- Bohemian Rhapsody's authentic experience is at standard definition, 50 interlaced frames per second, but YouTube displays a deinterlaced, 25 frame per second version for HD quality.
- While remastering changes the historical record, some remasters like Smash Mouth's All Star were poorly executed, resulting in over-sharpened, artifact-filled visuals that worsened the original quality.
