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Apparently an *official* 4K (upscale) of Billie Jean exists

adamschoales

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So I was trying to dig up information on the Prince and the Revolution Blu-ray that came out a couple years back which lead me to this site: https://digitalfilmtree.com/restoration/

I noticed they featured an image from the Billie Jean short film. Watching the reel seemed to indicate that this company did a 4K AI upscale/restoration of the Billie Jean short film; however it's yet to actually be released anywhere. YouTube still has the potato quality SD version.

The upscale is... fine. Not great; it has all the hallmarks of an SD > 4K upscale but certainly *does* look nicer than the crappy version we currently have online. It looks better than fan efforts but likely because they had slightly better source material to work from. Still, an upscale is an upscale.

It would be nice if they'd go back to the original elements to make an HD version though it's still a little unclear to me if the short was shot on film (people have told me 16mm) or videotape. Certainly it was finished on video tape and all the effects would need to be re-created if a film-scan did happen.
 
adamschoales said:
So I was trying to dig up information on the Prince and the Revolution Blu-ray that came out a couple years back which lead me to this site: https://digitalfilmtree.com/restoration/

I noticed they featured an image from the Billie Jean short film. Watching the reel seemed to indicate that this company did a 4K AI upscale/restoration of the Billie Jean short film; however it's yet to actually be released anywhere. YouTube still has the potato quality SD version.

The upscale is... fine. Not great; it has all the hallmarks of an SD > 4K upscale but certainly *does* look nicer than the crappy version we currently have online. It looks better than fan efforts but likely because they had slightly better source material to work from. Still, an upscale is an upscale.

It would be nice if they'd go back to the original elements to make an HD version though it's still a little unclear to me if the short was shot on film (people have told me 16mm) or videotape. Certainly it was finished on video tape and all the effects would need to be re-created if a film-scan did happen.
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It's the same tech they used on sycrause 1984 for Prince, it looks horrible. I think the estate didn't use it because of that reason.
 
adamschoales said:
It would be nice if they'd go back to the original elements to make an HD version though
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I don't think that can be done. I thought the director said the original footage was thrown away. So that means only the edited footage on videotape exists.
 
DuranDuran said:
I don't think that can be done. I thought the director said the original footage was thrown away. So that means only the edited footage on videotape exists.
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Yes, the original 16mm reels were discarded as per standards of the day, but the 1" tape master survives.

Queen's A Kind Of Magic music video has been restored from its 1" master and it looks pretty good. It's on YT if you'd like to see it for yourselves.
 
‘billie jean’ is my favourite video overall. I think it’s perfect just the way it is 💜it’s also michael’s most viewed, and the first to reach a billion views.

according to director steve barron, it was always intended to have an old look to it. just like ‘beat it’ was supposed to look gritty. none of the visuals from ‘thriller’ were meant to be glossy.

I’m not opposed to upscaled 4k videos, but I am against using ai distort michael’s original vision.
 
doesn't look good and people like META can do better...
 
Well, it's not a 4K


restoration-mj-dec2023.jpg
 
All these fanmade AI remasters look like mush on anything larger than a mobile display. Even then they do not look that great. It can be useful for still images if the image is already high enough definition, but definitely doesn't work well on video.
 
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I waited in vain for billie jean 4k for thriller 40 then the stupid wanna be startin somethin video
 
dam2040 said:
If this is anything to go by, absolutely not lol


I appreciate MJ had aura but he's literally glowing in this.. not good at all
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Idk if its my eyes but some of Meta's video's are hit or miss. I honestly thought (imo) that the Black or White Munich "upscale" looked great. Although the actual HD camera's they used would be better than the fan made remasters.

On the other hand this one looks awful, I don't know how to edit videos, but this looks like if vaseline was on the camera lens. No hate towards the creator.
 
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83magic said:
‘billie jean’ is my favourite video overall. I think it’s perfect just the way it is 💜it’s also michael’s most viewed, and the first to reach a billion views.

according to director steve barron, it was always intended to have an old look to it. just like ‘beat it’ was supposed to look gritty. none of the visuals from ‘thriller’ were meant to be glossy.

I’m not opposed to upscaled 4k videos, but I am against using ai distort michael’s original vision.
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Videos scanned in 4K from the original film elements can look gritty too. They just need to not remove the film grain.
 
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