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YouTuber makes 4K 60fps version of Lumière Brothers' ‘Arrival of a Train’


Edmilson

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This video is going viral with movie fans. Some guy on YouTube restored history's first movie ever, Arrival of a Train on the Station, from 1895, in 4K, 60fps.

 

Here's the video:

 

 

The original Arrival of a Train:

 

 

And a report about his feat:

 

Quote

Auguste and Louis Lumière were two of the pioneers of filmmaking, but you’ve never seen a Lumière brother film like this before. YouTube user Denis Shiryaev is going viral after uploading a fan-made restoration of the Lumière brothers’ 1985 short film “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat,” presented in 4K and at 60 frames per second. The restoration brings one of the most historic short films of the 19th Century firmly into the 21st. The image is so clear it almost makes it appear as if the Lumière brothers shot “Arrival of a Train” on digital. The fan-made restoration was uploaded to YouTube on February 2 and has already amassed over 1.1 million views and counting in less than a week.

 

“Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” was shot in 1895 but did not publicly screen for the first time until January 1896. The silent short film runs 50 seconds and depicts a train pulling into a train station in the French coastal town of La Ciotat. Like the majority of early Lumière film projects, the film is a single, stationary shot capturing movement in everyday life. The legend goes that the first audiences to see “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” would scream and run to the back of theater because the image of a moving train heading directly toward the audience had never been seen on the big screen before.

 

The early Lumière brother movies became referred to as “actualités,” or actuality films, and are regarded as the earliest form of documentary filmmaking. Some of the filmmaking duo’s well-known first short films include “Horse Trick Riders,” “The Gardener,” “Blacksmiths,” “Baby’s Breakfast,” and “Jumping Onto the Blanket.” The titles got their names from the actions and/or subjects depicted in their respective films. All of these films ran between 40 and 50 seconds. It wasn’t until 1903 that narrative cinema was introduced with the debut of Edwin S. Porter’s “The Great Train Robbery.”

 

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/02/lumiere-brothers-arrival-of-a-train-4k-update-1202208955/

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2 minutes ago, Quintus said:

 

Really? Like, actual mild nausea? 

No, like my eyes were being gouged out by tiny parasites and then dissolving in my stomach. Motion smoothing should be illegal.

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Oh so you were just exaggerating then. Thought so. 

 

I was wondering though, whether actual genuine nausea might have been symptomatic of a negative effect which some people seem to experience in relation to smooth media. I was wondering if the same people who become nauseous during their use of VR technology were perhaps the same people who felt "sick" when watching interpolated video. 

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I think for cinema this shouldn’t be done (although upscaling film to 4K can and should be done but not the artificial 60fps)

 

But real world footage/documentary footage? Absolutely. Basically more “They Shall Not Grow Old” please, 

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26 minutes ago, Bilbo said:

But real world footage/documentary footage? Absolutely. Basically more “They Shall Not Grow Old” please, 

 

The post processing work definitely improves the quality of the moving image in this train scene. 

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The AI interpolated motion smothing and upscaling applied to already stretchy and unstable footage just makes this smeary, we lose texture like the platform, it's a lot less pleasant to look at than the proper restoration. No wonder the comparison is so halfassed.

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2 hours ago, Quintus said:

Oh so you were just exaggerating then. Thought so. 

 

I was wondering though, whether actual genuine nausea might have been symptomatic of a negative effect which some people seem to experience in relation to smooth media. I was wondering if the same people who become nauseous during their use of VR technology were perhaps the same people who felt "sick" when watching interpolated video. 

Yes, I seem to remember some people felt similar when 3D was on the rise, but although I was being facetious, I do think there is something innately disturbing about seeing motion smoothing, as if we've become accustomed to the blur for over a century now that seeing things move in near-real time is unnatural.

 

 

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41 minutes ago, Arpy said:

I do think there is something innately disturbing about seeing motion smoothing, as if we've become accustomed to the blur for over a century now that seeing things move in near-real time is unnatural.

 

Yeah that's how it is but I don't suffer from it personally. I don't have any of these motion smoothing technologies enabled on my own TV, but that's not to say I don't find their functions and effects fascinating, because I do. 

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Depending on the quality of the TV, the effects are either really "uncannily" realistic or terrible; with images suffering from artifacting and clipping. But I've flicked on a couple of settings occasionally on my Sony, just out of curiosity. Raiders of the Lost Ark suddenly looked absolutely brand new, almost as if I was watching it being filmed live. It was so pristine. It's weird as fuck too, but fascinating nonetheless. One's muscle memory for moving pictures really does kick in with these things. 

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My parents have the motion smoothing on on their TV, and we visited one of my spouse's aunts/uncles recently and they did as well.  Hate that goofy crap!  The Super Bowl actually looked fine in it - I think it works well enough for live sports that already have that unpolished realtime video look, although I'm 0% a sports guy, so maybe sports people grumble about that one too.  Once it went to the commercials, movie trailers, etc - it looked awful. 

 

My new 4K TV, as far as I can tell, doesn't even have the option.  Maybe the TV people are getting cool.

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20 minutes ago, mstrox said:

My parents have the motion smoothing on on their TV, and we visited one of my spouse's aunts/uncles recently and they did as well.  Hate that goofy crap!  The Super Bowl actually looked fine in it - I think it works well enough for live sports that already have that unpolished realtime video look, although I'm 0% a sports guy, so maybe sports people grumble about that one too.  Once it went to the commercials, movie trailers, etc - it looked awful. 

 

My new 4K TV, as far as I can tell, doesn't even have the option.  Maybe the TV people are getting cool.

 

Sports is filmed at a higher frame rate these days anyway, isn't it?

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50 minutes ago, mstrox said:

My parents have the motion smoothing on on their TV, and we visited one of my spouse's aunts/uncles recently and they did as well.  

 

Whenever I visit a relative who has all that stuff enabled (by default), I'll wait for them to leave the room for a little while and then jump on the remote and quickly disable all that shit while they're not looking. They don't even notice it when they come back in. 

 

Last did this at my aunt and uncles house, over Christmas. 

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4 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

The film is in greater need of a score.

 

It DID have musical accompaniment, originally, played live in the restaurant that they used for their first screenings.

 

I thought it was a great restoration; I'm very pro this type of work. Although my favourite restoration is still in the excellent Thierry Frémaux documentary LUMIÉRE: L'AVENTURE COMENCE (2017), which should be obligatory viewing for all people interested in films. Not only for "The Train Arrives at the Station", but also for "The Factory Workers Leave" and all the other iconic shorts that the brothers did. And not only for the films either, but in the way they are assembled. Beautiful poetry.

 

Peter Jackson's THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD (previously mentioned) was one of my top 10 movies last year, not only because of the restoration work and the way they brought the footage back to life through colour, tempo and clarity, but also because of the brilliant sound design. My only beef is that there was too much voiceover. I dream of a voiceover-free version that just lets the reconstructed footage speak for itself.

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4 minutes ago, Thor said:

Although my favourite restoration is still in the excellent Thierry Frémaux documentary LUMIÉRE: L'AVENTURE COMENCE (2017), which should be obligatory viewing for all people interested in films. Not only for "The Train Arrives at the Station", but also for "The Factory Workers Leave" and all the other iconic shorts that the brothers did. And not only for the films either, but in the way they are assembled. Beautiful poetry.

Hear hear! A wonderful work, infinitely better than some rando pushing 2 buttons and chopping off bits of the picture.

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41 minutes ago, Thor said:

"The Factory Workers Leave"

 

A classic!

 

41 minutes ago, Thor said:

Peter Jackson's THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD (previously mentioned) was one of my top 10 movies last year, not only because of the restoration work and the way they brought the footage back to life through colour, tempo and clarity, but also because of the brilliant sound design.

 

Not to mention the brilliant work of Andy Serkis!

 

41 minutes ago, Thor said:

It DID have musical accompaniment, originally, played live in the restaurant that they used for their first screenings.

 

But I guess it wasn't especially composed for the film.

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

Do they provide a lot of vegetarian options?

 

Yes, there are a few items that have meat in them, but mainly meatless - soups, various dips n chips, cheese fries, mozzarella sticks, crudité, brownies, etc etc.  It's pretty easy for me to eat pretty much anywhere at any occasion, as long as people use oil to cook instead of, like, duck fat.  My family was never a traditional meat-at-every-meal kind of crew as it was.

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1 hour ago, Quintus said:

 

Whenever I visit a relative who has all that stuff enabled (by default), I'll wait for them to leave the room for a little while and then jump on the remote and quickly disable all that shit while they're not looking. They don't even notice it when they come back in. 

 

Last did this at my aunt and uncles house, over Christmas. 

 

I did that for my parents when I assembled and set up their new TV, but my dad probably went into the settings and changed it back - I considered changing it again at first, but at this point, I'm considering it an active choice and it's not my TV so I'm just gonna leave it.

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41 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

But I guess it wasn't especially composed for the film.

 

No. Historians are still trying to find any original scores prior to Saint-Saën's L'ASSASINAT DU DUC DE GUISE (1908), but I don't believe any has been found. Then again, I haven't checked into the status of this field in recent years.

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