1966 Sports Illustrated article on Jim Jacobs

You can pause the video I posted above of a side by side comparison, and clearly see that the upscaled version has clearer and better output. If it was some tchotchke bloat job, it wouldn't be an industry practice.

You know why this surprises me? I cannot see Corbetts face in the real time portion that plays at the beginning of your clip. I can only see his face and his grin in the slow motion zoomed in portion.

Perhaps because there is less quality loss when you zoomed in with your editing software?

What I said was that better versions may exist somewhere out there, in someones basement.
But in terms of what's accessible to millions of people instantly, I believe it is my video.
I didn't upscale your clip, the Setanta footage was already upscaled.

I think you're overthinking it. I sourced the best Corbett footage I could find online. All of it, including yours, saw benefits when stabilized. If you're telling me that the footage you uploaded of Fitz-Corbett benefits zero from stabilizing, you're wrong. And youtube doesn't add camera shake when you upload. I can show you if you want.

No.

I didn't do any enhancements to this. And that wasn't the best version I could find.
Your version looks awesome. You will lose a good portion of that quality when Youtube and the editing software compresses it.
Also you're comparing a screen grab of an uncompressed original file to an uploaded youtube video.

I'm interested in what is accessible, and turning that into something better.
There's nothing I can do about footage locked away in someones basement.
At least not unless I entered that world.

I did nothing novel with the Tunney footage.
My goal is to showcase the abilities of these boxers as best as possible to as many people as possible.
My goal isn't to make sure that the clips I use are from the best sources on planet Earth. If that were the case, I wouldn't be able to churn anything out.

Isn't black and white already an "incorrect" perspective into real life events?
One could argue that inaccurate color is more realistic than black and white.

The only reason the footage is in black and white is because of technological limitations, not because it captures the moment better or more realistically. Your Mendoza example is extremely far-fetched. You realize how hard it would be to invent bruises on a fighter? You have to rotoscope actual things on the screen. And bruises would be a level of detail to small for any colorization project.

I would argue that colorizing a fictional movie is worse, because they turned black and white from a limitation into design choices. Sets were created with black and white output in mind. Scenes were shot with black and white output in mind. Etc

Colorizing non fiction is getting the work closer to the goal. The goal being to document history. Not to document history in some artistically niche style imposed by tech limitations.

We have something to compare it again. The greatest and most vast media data pool of all time.
With trillions upon of inputs of human movement, it will be able to predict movement from photos pretty accurately. The complexity of the movements of a human being is not that impressive to figure out for a computer with trillions upon trillions of data points.
And as long as the producer is transparent, it will be great.

I'm certain this will happen in less than 100 years. I would say fairly accurate movies from photos will happen in 20-30 years. But I look forward to the conversation either way!

 

Go read any review of a bluray release of an older film and you will see quickly that upscaling does not pass as improving the picture. If you want a true HD representation of a film then the only way to do that is to have an HD transfer done of an actual print of the film and for best results you need an HD transfer of an actual master. Period. You can argue all day long about what looks "better" to you but the fact is that taking an SD source and converting it to HD does nothing to improve the quality. Period. I do it every single day. Literally. I could give you example after example after example. Go find me any SD source that you think you have remastered and upscaled to HD and I can point several reasons why you are wrong and if I have the actual film I can do a side by side comparison for you so you can see.

No, its because, as I said when I originally posted that video (and you know this because we had a discussion about it) that for some reason youtube would not let me upload an actual HD version of that film and even the version they let me upload had been significantly downgraded when it was actually up on the site. Its likely that the you are simply seeing the file as I uploaded it originally and given your greater experience with youtube were able to upload it without the degredation that was apparent in mine. Regardless, the bottom line is you didnt do anything to improve that over the original. Im not trying to insult your efforts Im just clarifying.

Even the Setanta version that you think is HD is pixelated. You dont get pixelation from an actual film if its in HD. You get film grain. You couldnt see the film grain on that Setanta clip if you literally doubled the quality of it. I think you are confusing true HD quality with simply what you consider "better" quality than what you might have seen in the past. The problem is that there is actually a standard for HD quality. Take the best frame of your Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight upscaled by either you or Setanta and send it to a reviewer at bluray.com, for example, and they would laugh at the notion that its HD. Its simply not. They would also likely give you a long and very technical explanation as to why upscaling an SD file to HD is not really considered HD quality.

Again, based on our previous discussion when I actually posted that clip you know that I had already stabilized that footage. Just as with the speed, if you take a short section of film, which is exactly what you did here, and run it through a stabilizing filter, or change the speed, you are going to get a different result than I did because I was working with an entire round, not a short clip. In an old film such as that one, hand cranked, you are going to see changes minute to minute it. So yes, for your purposes, taking a ten second clip and cleaning it up likely would have more accurate results. The problem you would run into is that that if you had the entire 25 minutes or so that exist of that fight you arent going to be chopping it up in 10 second intervals to editing each one of those intervals and a very simple reason for that is when you reedit those ten second intervals back together you would see that the camera and speeds would still jump, jarringly so, at each of one of those ten second seams because now the speed and positioning of the aperture by the stabilization program have been de-contextualized. The dont fit into the flow of the previous ten seconds or to the flow of the next ten seconds, so every ten seconds you would see a noticeable jump in the aperture and a slight but noticeable increase or decrease in speed (and the speed itself would never be able to be normalized as I illustrated earlier). So no, you didnt improve it, you simply took a short clip out of context and piggy backed on what I had already done. Does it present better? Maybe, Im not even convinced of that because my original was pretty damn stable as it was and in regards to the speed the changes you made were made to an incomplete round of the fight so the speed might "look" right to you but considering I got that complete round as near as three minutes as you could with getting the majority of the round to operate at as close to the correct speed as possible its not out of the realm of possibility that you made your speed too fast or too slow simply to suit your own eyeball test. You have to be very careful about this because what looks right to your eye, in terms of speed, is not always correct.

You are the one arguing that your videos are HD and that screen grab is from your HD optimized video. It was played at 1080p and the only way for Youtube to play a 1080p video is for the original uploader to upload what they think is HD. Your original source was clearly SD and you clearly upscaled it. So lets not be disingenuous here and try to walk back our argument. That was a perfect example of exactly what you are talking about and exactly why its wrong. You saying "I didnt do any enhancements on this" is pretty key. What enhancements? Because the speed and stabilization were fine. The bottom line is that you said that upscaling improves quality. It doesnt and this is a perfect example. I can pick out several clips from your videos that you have upscaled which show no quality improvement. Same thing. It just is what it is. You arent going to rip a vhs recording to a file and the upscale it and get HD quality picture and thats what you are arguing. It just wont happen. Source is everything. Period.

 

"Better" is in the eye of the beholder. I dont think arbitrarily adding color is better. I dont think bloating a file so that it is "HD" just for the purpose of calling it HD means anything. Frankly I dont even think doing this to short clips for the purpose of making highlight videos adds anything. Why not apply this to complete films and try to preserve the actual history if you really think this is an improvement?

Again, what do you mean "novel"? You shouldnt have to do anything "novel" to footage. It stands on its own.

Do you think showing short highlight reals of their best moments does that? Or do you think the fighters and the fans would be better suited being able to see more complete representations of these guys showing their strengths AND weaknesses? I just always have a problem when someone takes, for example, Jim Corbett and shows him throwing the one halfway modern combination that was every captured of him throwing on film and uses that to show how "modern" he was while totally ignoring that he looks entirely amateurish in pretty much all of the other footage of him. Does that really show what they could do? Highlight reels are nice but they tend to distort the actual capabilities and accomplishments of these guys. Jim Jacobs of all people understood this as well as anyone and thats exactly how he got Tyson on TV, he sent highlight reels of his knockouts to everyone to hype him up.

But thats not what we were talking about. You stated that somehow you and others were "improving" the old footage and that likely its better than what Jacobs was watching when he was watching the original films. This isnt true.

Not if the color you are imagining is incorrect and imagining is exactly what you would have to do in order to colorize these films. b/w is the absence of color so yes we are missing something but adding something imagined is not, in my opinion, a suitable replacement for the real thing.

So are you saying you cant see bruises on a black man? Not in black and white certainly but you can in color and this can be altered by the person adding color. Of course its an extreme example but its a fact. I can give you a better example and its a real one. There was a guy who used to colorize the old boxing photos. He colorized a photo of Jeanette-McVey in which he imagined that the wet canvas, stained darker from the water poured over the fighters head was actually stained with blood. It was ridiculous. It looked like someone had been murdered in that corner. So no, the imagination is no replacement for what we have, even if what we have is only black and white.

You arent documenting history if you are making it up as you go along. It may not seem like a big deal to you but I can give the same example above where the guy who used to love colorizing these photos would post them and sometimes I would see one I was familiar with the circumstances of or the venue, etc and suddenly things start popping out that were wrong with the colors and those photos went from being fun and, in your mind, better representations of the truth to being distracting in their incorrectness. Because when you add color you suddenly make the color a character in the proceedings. If youve seen a fight 100 times and have no interest in it but only watch it because its suddenly been colorized then your really watching it for the color, not the fight, and as such if the color is wrong then youve been lied to. Its no different than reading a newspaper article that gets several minor inconsequential facts wrong. They dont alter the story but they leave you wondering who the hell oversaw the quality of the article. Same thing with adding color an exactly why its a bad idea.

Thats nonsense. Any neuroscientist will tell you that the human brain, all of the quarks etc that go along with it, and how we move, our emotions, our temperament, every tick, every nuance, everything that goes into making each individual totally different than the billions of human beings before and since is far more complex than any computer that the human mind could possibly conceive. You will never, ever, ever, ever be able to put together any computer or program that could look at a photo or even 100 photos of a boxing match and reproduce how it plays out. Not even close. Thats completely nonsensical science fiction. In fact I would wager with absolute certainty that mankind will destroy himself before we could even get 1/10th of the way to that kind of technology.

 

I already posted a side by side comparison done by credible people.
Perhaps old school boxing footage is such where the difference is harder to see?
At any rate, it's entirely possible that Setanta didn't upscale, and used a proper transfer. You would probably know better than I.
All I know, is that the Corbett-Fitz footage in the HD version of the documentary aired by Setanta has FAR better quality clips of the fight than I have seen anywhere else.

I think something is lost in communication here.
I was talking about how your clip shows two instances of Corbett ducking Fitz left hook.
The "real time" version. And the zoomed in slowed down version.
The zoomed in slowed down version looks much clearer, and you can see the details on Corbetts face.
What I did, was used THAT portion, but sped it up to make it look real time, to show that part of the fight.
And it ends up looking much better. It's a quirk that only a boxing editor would immediately spot, because we have a habit of looking for real time possibilities from slow motion clips.

I know that upscaled HD is not real HD.
But from everything I've gathered, personal experience and reading about it, upscaled SD does look slightly improved. Again, maybe I'm not giving Setanta enough credit by simply calling their version upscaled.

I hear you. It sounds like you did all the work restoring that footage. For that I am grateful.
Again, I didn't "fix" your speed corrections.
I simply took your slow motion clip, and sped it into real time to get a better end result.

Where did I argue that all my videos are in HD?
Most of them are, but not all.
Some of my videos contain HD portions.

That Tunney screen grab is not the best quality version I have.
I used that particular one for production and design purposes for various reasons.
My Tunney video isn't even titled as HD.
There are functional reasons for uploading videos in HD, when the entire video isn't in actual HD.
For one, titles render far better. Effects render better. And if there are any HD clips in the video, they will render properly.
Im not being disingenuous. You might just be a bit paranoid and developed some negative thoughts about me.

I have never properly upscaled any of the footage I used.
I have used footage from other sources that were most likely upscaled.
I've done upscaling with old equipment I don't have anymore when doing screen captures.
Proper upscaling isn't just scaling an SD clip to fit an HD resolution with software.
Hardware solutions for upscaling are far better.
For instance the best solution is probably using a $2,000 Kona capture card.

I'm just trying to make great videos.
I feel like if anything my work helps you, because I am drumming up interest for largely forgotten fighters. And it feels like you're watching me struggle with this task, laughing, while carrying the means to help my in your hand.

 

Sure, better is the eye of the beholder.
Mona Lisa might look like crap to someone.
Apple has bad design according to few.
But I've gotten an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the boxing community in regards to my ability to make great videos.

A pattern I noticed in my life, is that when people degrade the merits of a better end product, in favor for the methods used to create said product, they usually end up with crappy results. They get lost in some rational path and they lose sight of the actual goal. I used to work with programmers, and many of them had this problem.

I'm not arbitrarily adding color. There is a reasonable amount of thought and research that goes into it.
The cost to add color to a complete film would be staggering given the methods used today.

I would absolutely love to do enhancements like color on an entire fight film. But it's not really feasible.
A 3 minute highlight clip is far more doable, and even that is a huge project.
Most colorization projects involve very little movement on the screen.
Doing it for boxing where gloves are flying between body parts is ****ing hard.
Preserving the history is not my number one goal.
My goal is to showcase the talents and greatness of boxers by making great videos with a modern touch.

As in new, and unique. Which I didn't.

Hell yeah it does that. If people want to see full fights, they have that freedom.
Why does HBO's Greatest Hits only show highlights? Because thats what the audience expects, highlights.
I'm not caught on some rational loop. You focus too much on one strand of logic, and you miss out on the big picture.
I love watching videos on boxers. I started having video ideas that I really wanted to see, so I made them myself. And people liked my work.

Would I rather see a full Joe Louis or Marciano fight in color?
Sure! Want to chip in with me and pay a studio to do it?
Want to help me colorize it? Because I can't do it myself.
But the good news is that I am colorizing a Joe Louis highlight.
You can enjoy that, or you can skip it.

Neither B&W nor nor inaccurate color are replacements for the real thing.
But saying B&W is closer to the real thing is arbitrary and imo completely wrong.
Being colorblind is better then not seeing color at all.
And color, even if slightly inaccurate, more closely matches with the actual experience of looking at things in the real world than black and white.

Yeah a photo is way easier. To rotoscope a bruise that isn't there would be terrifyingly difficult and pointless.
I understand. That is a legitimate example where colorization could go wrong.
I have no intention to add blood that isn't there or anything of that nature.
I invite you to review the video before I release it to check for this kind of thing.

Who said I was?
I'm simply enhancing the documents.

 

There used to be some really good footage of corbett Fitzsimmons floating around (i think it was just Fitzsimmons or Corbett taking off his gown from memory) memory and i think it might have come from the espn website, but i cant find it on any of the old threads here. Does anyone know if a link to that footage?

My memory is that it was even clearer than the footage that Reznik and Klompton are talking about and by quite a bit (although possible my memory is playing tricks). I would be interested to know what was done to this footage to clean it up and generally just to get Reznick's opinion on it.

My memory is that Klompton said that it did look a little clearer than the footage had (i think this was before any cleaning up had been done by him) but he may have said something out. If anyone knows what i am talking about (and/or has a link that still exists) could they repost it.

 

Okay, it seems that my discussions on this topic must have taken place in a different dimension.

http://boxrec.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=152463&hilit=corbett+fitzsimmons+espn&start=25

There is a link to the footage i wanted but it looks like ESPN has taken it down and replaced it with a still photos I think. Anyway, i left the link to the thread in because it shows some still clips of some of Klompton's stuff and i have to say there seems some pretty awesome stuff there and the quality in stills at least looks pretty unbelievable in some.

It would be certainly great to see what Reznick could/would (if anything) do with some of Klomptons material. Maybe nothing, but Reznick is right about one thing. The advancements in this field (as with all fields) are astonishing. I mean cars are driving themselves nowadays. i dont think we really have that much of an idea of some of the possibilities that will happen in the foreseeable future. Not necessarilly strict recordings of history as klompton points out, but we really dont know how luck we are with looking at some of these things.

 

That's an awesome collection he has.
Marciano vs. Matthews and Moore in color? Holy smokes.
I wonder if it shows the Matthews KO!

The images on the ESPN site are really nice. Many I haven't seen before. I wish that clip you are referring to was still there!!

 

I'm glad, otherwise I'd have never even Seen Tyson /Holyfield

 

I disagree a bit when it comes to time/speed and video capture.

Fitz vs Corbett runs slow. I timed one round of full action and was something like 3 minutes and 30 seconds. So old films can and do run slow. Other films runs fast. An example would be Burns vs O'brien.

Remember the speed of the film varies by the camera operator movement of the crank handle, which is not a metronome. Another issue of the frame rate. The older 14-26 frames er second provide a sense of motion, but can be jumpy/ jerky and miss things. On the flip side, you can pause them for some nice photo's, at least I have!