Produced | Pie Finance
Wen | Wang Feishu edited | the prince of the sect
Do the post-80s generation remember the classic animation "Tianshu Qitan"?
Egg Sheng, Yuan Gong, three foxes... This classic anime is about to return to the big screen in November after a 4K fix. 38 years ago, Shanghai Film Studio and the main creative team created this magnificent and wonderful story of stealing the heavenly book and descending the fox demon, whether from the plot or artistic level, it can be called the ceiling of Chinese animation, and the Douban score is as high as 9.2 points.
With the same treatment as "Tianshu Qitan", there are also six works such as "The Legend of Nezha", "Hulu Brothers" and "Black Cat Sheriff" that were launched on watermelon video. On October 20th, Watermelon Video and Volcano Engine held a "Rebuild the Old" classic Video 4K Restoration Conference in Beijing.
An important factor in the fact that these classic animations can be re-released after many years is the advancement and application of 4K restoration technology, so that they can be "repaired as old" decades after their birth and reproduce the classic charm.
4K restoration keeps the classic alive
Video restoration is not a technology that only exists today, as early as 2007, after China launched the "Film Archives Film Digital Repair Project", domestic film archives and other institutions and enterprises gradually set up their own restoration teams.
With the rapid development and popularization of digital restoration technology, and the gradual maturity of AI repair technology, a series of repair costs such as denoising, blurring, and scratching have been reduced, and many classic domestic film and television works such as "Tunnel Warfare" and "Immortal Radio Wave" have been revitalized.
Generally speaking, digital restoration requires three processes: rough repair, finishing and color grading. In the basic restoration stage, the technician first organizes the original negative of the cartoon, cleans it by ultrasonic washing, and then enters it into the computer hard disk by scanning; then performs color correction, frame-by-frame repair, sound scanning, etc.; and finally performs sound and picture synthesis. In the 4K restoration stage, the relevant teams also de-denoising, de-scratching, color enhancement and other processing of the film, and constantly tested and repeatedly tuned in the process, while improving the clarity of the film, while retaining the brushstrokes and graininess of the original animation of the film to the greatest extent.
Of course, such high standards and strict requirements also mean that the film restoration work needs to invest extremely high manpower, material and financial resources. A 90-minute film, about 120,000-140,000 frames, each frame needs to be repaired one by one. Usually, each person can repair 6000-8000 frames per day, and the length of the film is about 4-5 minutes; when it comes to difficult to repair films, each person can only repair hundreds of frames per day, and the length of the film is about 20-30 seconds.
However, such an investment is still worth the money compared to the significance of the classic old film restoration itself. In the restoration process, not only the image quality and sound quality of the film are repaired, but some regrets caused by the limited shooting conditions in the past can also be compensated to a certain extent through restoration, thereby improving and perfecting the artistic quality of the film. In the restored version of the movie "Horse Thief", the restoration team used a high frame rate technology of 4K and 48 frames to make the picture smoother, and the director of the film, Tian Zhuangzhuang, once said that "the picture repair is too amazing."
It's not just old movies that can come back to life, 4K restoration is also happening in the field of animation. Old animations such as "Little Tadpole Finds Mother" and "Nine Colored Deer" can be said to be the top video works of the last era, and the charm of traditional Chinese culture has been shown in many international competitions, and the international influence cannot be underestimated. At the same time, these works are of great significance in the enlightenment and cultural inheritance of young children, and also carry the common memory of generations.
In order not to let these classic works pass over time, the domestic video team began to use digital restoration technology so that they can be passed down in a way that meets the modern people's perception, so as to relive the classics and make up for regrets. Taking the watermelon video as an example, through technical means, in the next year, it will carry out 4K restoration of more than 100 classic animations such as "The Adventures of little carp (2007)", "Three Monks", "Little Tadpole Finds Mother", "Nine Colored Deer" and so on.
In this process, CCTV Animation and Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio cooperated with Volcano Video, provided by Volcano Engine to provide technical support, on the basis of improving the picture quality, try to retain their own taste, so that "repair the old as old", and jointly restore the content, users can watch it on watermelon video for free, to achieve the goal of spreading classics.
Medium video occupies the high ground of value
Why are domestic video teams obsessed with the restoration of classic animation? In addition to the artistic value of classic animation, these classic film and television works almost all have one thing in common - no more than 30 minutes in length. According to the survey, such a video length is the most acceptable to the audience, but also the most wide audience of the past video form, just like "Animal World", "I Love My Home", "Today's Statement" and other classic programs, both have enough fun, there is enough to make full use of the audience's fragmented entertainment time.
In fact, this form of video is the concept of medium video from the perspective of duration. In this regard, Ren Lifeng, president of Watermelon Video, had such a definition in 2020 - "medium video" is real-time long in 1 minute to 30 minutes of video content.
It can be seen that although the concept of medium video has not been around for a long time, this form has long existed and is extremely valuable. Generally speaking, short videos have the characteristics of "fast" and "live", but also because of their "light" and "short", they lack the richness and rigor required by key logical expressions, so they lack corresponding depth; long videos are mostly large-scale weekly variety shows, documentaries and film and television drama works, and the audience often needs enough time and patience to complete the viewing, which is not completely matched with the current fast-paced life.
Medium video takes into account the advantages of short videos and long videos, bridges the contradictions between the two, so that the content can not only ensure the integrity of the narrative, but also allow users to have the patience to watch the video content. Taking the video "Everything About New Crown Pneumonia" released by the pan-science video self-media "Paper Clip" in February 2020 as an example, the video duration is more than 10 minutes, and the number of plays on the whole network exceeds 100 million, and such a popular science and depth effect is completely unattainable by short videos. More importantly, such a single video is more sticky, and there are more users precipitated.
Therefore, it is obviously not accurate to define "medium video" in terms of length of time, strictly speaking, medium video is not in the gap between short and long videos, but a most common form of content, but also a form of high audience acceptance. Because of this, after the concept of "medium video" was proposed by Watermelon Video in 2020, domestic Internet manufacturers also seemed to see the "blue ocean" and followed up.
It should be pointed out that in addition to the depth and duration of the content, the medium video is mostly horizontal screen, the picture is wider, and the visual information is richer, which is also one of the reasons for its popularity. For example, after a comparative analysis of the number of videos played by Teacher Li Yongle on the watermelon video platform on different channels, it can be found that the proportion of Teacher Li Yongle's TV side exceeds that of the mobile phone side, and it has exceeded 50% of the total playback.
So, what will the future hold for Video?
From the current point of view, the growth trend of China Video will be strengthened. According to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC), in the first quarter of 2021, China's tablet pc consumer market increased by 71.3% year-on-year, and the number of monthly active users (households) of smart TVs and IPTV continued to increase, and it is expected that by 2022, the monthly active users (households) of smart TVs will reach 320 million.
Such a growth momentum is also reflected in the video audience and creation end, or take watermelon video as an example, of which the consumption of video content on the TV side shows a very obvious growth trend, accounting for 35% from 21% in the fourth quarter of 2020; in the past month, in the watermelon video smart TV product fresh time, there are 1539 creators with more than 10 million content playback, and 8925 with more than 1 million.
In fact, not only in China, YouTube is also undergoing similar changes, in addition to mobile phones, a large new space has grown on the TV side, and Video plays an important role in it.
With the rise of China Video, the video track is likely to undergo some changes, and Professor Yu Guoming, a journalist communication scholar, believes that "in the future, short videos will play the role of guide and window, as a leading contact point, forming a popular bombardment of information, and then screening a part of the interested audience for in-depth contact with deep content." ”
It can be said that the counterattack of China Video is not the rise of some new video form, but the vitality recovery brought about by its own unique content value and scene advantages, which is vividly displayed in the classic old animation of 4K restoration. As Ren Lifeng said at the press conference: "What we want to repair is the memory behind these contents, showing the resonance and spark that generations have generated because of these memories." ”
This may be the biggest charm of the 4K repair of the medium video represented by the old animation.