03-01-2023, 11:33 PM
Most of these "remasters to HD" are just SD videos upscaled... and often cropped and/or stretched as well and at the wrong frame rate, often done horribly badly
Even when shot on film, most music videos were only edited on SD video, so to make a proper HD version means going back to the original film (if it even still exists, and is in usuable condition) and rescanning and re-editing from scratch, including redoing any effects, not the easiest or cheapest thing to do. And even in the mentioned case of the Wham video, where they have done this, there's still a couple of shots that are clearly upscaled and cropped from the old 4:3 SD master, probably because they couldn't find all of the original film.
There is some AI based upscaling that's done some times that supposedly creates extra resolution, but it's often quite poor.
I remember watching a video on the subject and it was pointed out the fan-made remasters of Bohemian Rhapsody were better than the official one, keeping the proper aspect ratio, and uploading at 50fps rather than 25.
And I have on occasion seen music videos on music channels that have quite obviously been downloaded from YouTube, sometimes even with another channel's DOG on them- I've certainly seen MuchMusic and the Dutch TMF DOG before. Mostly on the Now channels, and Vintage TV when it existed, rather than the MTV and Bauer channels though. I also remember one channel (I can't remember which) showing Diana Ross's Upside Down with old Music Box song titles, and The Vault used to show Wham's I'm Your Man with the old MTV Europe captions (albeit in both cases full broadcast quality rather than off air VHS or YouTube downloads). Quite common to see 80s videos that have clearly been taken from masters made for VHS compilations too, with the captions or parts of the linking material appearing.
Even when shot on film, most music videos were only edited on SD video, so to make a proper HD version means going back to the original film (if it even still exists, and is in usuable condition) and rescanning and re-editing from scratch, including redoing any effects, not the easiest or cheapest thing to do. And even in the mentioned case of the Wham video, where they have done this, there's still a couple of shots that are clearly upscaled and cropped from the old 4:3 SD master, probably because they couldn't find all of the original film.
There is some AI based upscaling that's done some times that supposedly creates extra resolution, but it's often quite poor.
I remember watching a video on the subject and it was pointed out the fan-made remasters of Bohemian Rhapsody were better than the official one, keeping the proper aspect ratio, and uploading at 50fps rather than 25.
And I have on occasion seen music videos on music channels that have quite obviously been downloaded from YouTube, sometimes even with another channel's DOG on them- I've certainly seen MuchMusic and the Dutch TMF DOG before. Mostly on the Now channels, and Vintage TV when it existed, rather than the MTV and Bauer channels though. I also remember one channel (I can't remember which) showing Diana Ross's Upside Down with old Music Box song titles, and The Vault used to show Wham's I'm Your Man with the old MTV Europe captions (albeit in both cases full broadcast quality rather than off air VHS or YouTube downloads). Quite common to see 80s videos that have clearly been taken from masters made for VHS compilations too, with the captions or parts of the linking material appearing.