OK. Here are some examples of DVNR (Digital Video Noise Reduction). DVNR is a real-time video processor that compares frames to look for scratches and dirt. Unfortunately, it interprets ink lines in animation on "ones" as scratches and blots them out, resulting in blurred out frames like this one from the Chuck Jones Tom & Jerry laserdisc collection...



Here is an example of the same frame from Leonard Maltin's Betty Boop Collector's Edition laserdisc, which had no DVNR, and Republic Pictures' mangled laserdisc box set, The Complete Betty Boop.



Another example from those two sets... The classic cartoon Bimbo's Initiation...



And this is the most obvious of all... Here is the same frame from the two sets laid on top of each other and animating back and forth.



Now, here is an example from The Big Snooze, which was included on the second volume of the Looney Tunes DVDs...



Note that although the laserdisc version isn't quite as sharp as the DVD (which is to be expected because DVDs have a slightly higher resolution...) it does have lines in Elmer's face. leg and arm that are missing from the DVNRed DVD. Elmer is shaking his head back and forth in this scene. The DVNR has mistaken the lines in his face for scratches on the film. Also notice that on the laserdisc, Elmer's flesh is exactly the same as Tweety's flesh in the Grusome Twosome frame grab I posted. The telecine artist for the DVD collection has chosen to massively goose the reds in the scenes to make Elmer's flesh pinker. This has altered the subtle gradation in the background and made the clouds which are supposted to be subtle, candy pink.

I can go into more detail about how DVNR screws up animation, and why it's better to use the colors of the cartoons themselves instead of trying to "goose them up" for a kiddie audience... but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves for now. Suffice it to say, the Home Video companies DON'T HAVE TO USE DVNR. They are using it in the mistaken belief that it is improving the picture. But it isn't. All they have to do is tell the video company who is doing the transfer not to use it. When I was supervising post production on animated shows and commercials, the first thing I would say as I walked into the edit bay was "If you are using any digital noise reduction, please turn it off." One engineer told me that he knew how to use DVNR and avoid artifacting. I asked him what animation for home video he had telecined. He said he had worked on the Betty Boop box set. 'nuff said.

Tell your friends... complain... insist that they give you a quality product.

See ya
Steve

Steve,

The effects of DVNR on the lines of the drawings speak for themselves. I have to say, however, that I fail to see how your framegrabs prove the DVD color has been altered. Your explanation is logical, I grant, but only one of at least two possibilities I see.

The other possibility is that the color quality of the source for the laserdisc is faded, while the DVD has been restored to the original brilliance of the film.

I don't have enough info about all these to tell one way or another. Am I missing something here?

Josh

In addition to my work in animation production, I am also an animation
art conservator. I've restored literally hundreds of original production Warner
Bros cels, including quite a few Clampetts from this time period (including
an Elmer from the Big Snooze). Restoration involves precise matching of
colors to replace the chipping and flaking original paint. When I restore a
cel, I remix the same colors used at the studio.

The palette of colors used at Warner Bros was much smaller than at
Disney, and they reused the same colors all over the place. For instance,
they had just one stock flesh color in this time period, with a couple of
lighter and darker variants, probably to correct for the density of cel
levels. It's an orangey flesh, not pink. It was used on Porky, Elmer
and the insides of Bugs Bunny's ears. I've never restored a Clampett
Tweety, but I can look at the video and see that the color used on his
body is the same flesh color I've seen on contemporary Elmer, Porky
and Bugs cels.

I can look at other cartoons and spot stock colors too. There is a
grayed magenta-ey pink color that is often used for blankets and a
grayed steely-blueish green color that is usually used for props as
well. When I've seen these colors in recent DVDs, they have been
electric pink and electric green. There's also a stock bright yellow
orange that is always used for Bugs' carrot. The tongue of Bugs is
always the same as the tip of his nose, and the eye white, gloves
and belly are always the same. The line that defines the belly is the
same as his body color.

The only colors I've found that vary dramatically from director to
director and cartoon to cartoon are the red brown inside the mouth
color, and Bugs's gray (it's brownish, or pure gray or kind of blueish
or even greenish in some CJ cartoons...) These are just things that
I've put together from restoring so many Warner Bros cels.

It's a fact that Technicolor could be manipulated to make any color on
the screen any other color they wanted, but I don't think Warner Bros
had the budgets to be able to do wedges like Disney did.

Another indication to me, which I admit is more of a hunch than anything
else is the way the pink clouds in the sky reproduce. I've known color
stylists who use the theory that contrasts should be just in hue or just
in shade. That bright pink cloud the exact same shade as the bright yellow
sky looks exactly like that color theory. The red shifted darker with the
bubble gum wad cloud isn't nearly as sophisticated. It forms a weird
blob on top of the character's head, distracting from the silhouette. I don't
think that's the way it was supposed to be.

See ya
Steve

Someone emailed me a list of the cartoons that suffered from DVNR artifacting on the first two DVD sets of Looney Tunes...

Vol. 1
WHAT'S UP DOC?
BOOBS IN THE WOODS
THE BUGS BUNNY SHOW opening (same with Vol. 2)

Vol. 2
THE BIG SNOOZE
GORILLA MY DREAMS
HAVE YOU GOT ANY CASTLES?
BOOK REVUE

See ya
Steve

Seems ok with me. I didn't see it.

Thanks for posting the info on DVNR in these LT shorts. I have not noticed it myself, like I noticed the interlacing problems. I guess I will keep a sharper eye out next time I view one of those on the list. Would you agree, though, Steve, that the problem is not nearly as severe as in the Betty Boop examples you posted? I would notice the poor image quality in viewing those, but as I said I have not noticed the problem on the Looney Tunes. Perhaps it is less offensive because the cartoons are in color, and the black line erasure is not as severe?

Am I mistaken, or did people complain about DVNR on the Snow White DVD as well....?

Steve,

DVNR is also present on several of Columbia House's Woody Woodpecker releases. The following got the treatment:

Vol. 7
ARTS AND FLOWERS
SALMON YEGGS
GABBY'S DINER
DOC'S LAST STAND

Vol. 9
SOUTHERN FRIED HOSPITALITY
MACKEREL MOOCHER
BATS IN THE BELFRY
CASE OF THE COLD STORAGE YEGG

Vol. 10
SLEEP HAPPY
FLEA FOR TWO

Vol. 11
PISTOL PACKIN' WOODPECKER
ST. MORITZ BLITZ
FODDER AND SON
FREELOADING FELINE

Vol. 12
HALF EMPTY SADDLES
FOWLED-UP PARTY
ROUND TRIP TO MARS
A CHILLY RECEPTION

Vol. 13
PANHANDLE SCANDAL
EGGNAPPER
FOWLED UP FALCON
OPERATION COLD FEET
WOODPECKER FROM MARS
TRICKY TROUT
EVERGLADE RAID
THREE RING FLING
INTERNATIONAL WOODPECKER
SWISS MISS-FIT
NIAGARA FOOLS

Vol. 14
POOP DECK PIRATE
PESKY PELICAN
A FINE FEATHERED FRENZY
CORNY CONCERTO

Vol. 15
SQUARE SHOOTIN' SQUARE
PLUMBER OF SEVILLE
WITCH CRAFTY
GOOSE IN THE ROUGH

DVNR is also present on a number of Tom & Jerry cartoons, which are the 'restored' ones WB is using for Cartoon Network and DVDs. Check out KITTY FOILED on the Spotlight Collection or Greatest Chases.

Sad, isn't it? :(

-Thad

Bigshot,

Since you really seem to know your Warner colors, it would really be great if a list of these standard colors and their Pantone equivalents could be created (at least for the major characters).

For example, what color is the Bugs Bunny Blue/gray. It seems to change over the years and differ from unit to unit. ...It's the same for Tom in "Tom and Jerry" cartoons. It often seems that the better the print, the more blue he appears.

I'm with you on DVNR. Any scratches or dust speckles are preferred over this. I prefer to see what the animation looks like. I hope this problem will be solved on all future releases.

Best,
Chuck

The user "mmm...donuts" over at Termite Terrace posted these grabs from the DVNR'ed GORILLA MY DREAMS.

http://forums.goldenagecartoons.com/showpo...82&postcount=17

-Thad

The DVNR artifacting varies from cartoon to cartoon on the Betty Boop set. Some cartoons just have a little bit of artifacting, and some are chomped through like a lawnmower. The recent Warner Bros DVDs have a great deal of artifacting, considering that the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdiscs had none, aside from about four cartoons on the last set.

To me, there isn't an acceptable level of digital artifacting because it just isn't necessary. The DVNR isn't doing anything but harming the image. Tex Avery proved that the frames that appear on the screen for a tiny fraction of a second are just as important as the ones that stay up there for second after second. Animation is "drawings that move". When the lines start disappearing, you're losing the drawings that make the magic. It may just be me, but I don't want them messing with that.

Disney is the only studio that has never used DVNR. They have radically altered the colors, painted out cigarettes, cut whole sequences out of movies to eliminate guns, and have rotoscoped the character out of the film to digitally paintbox it... but they have never used DVNR.

See ya
Steve

I'm afraid the pantone scale doesn't come close to matching the colors used on the cels. The studios used a combination of dozens of pigments to create the colors for their paint. Some of them can only be color matched using the exact same pigment combination. Animation art collectors who have seen a lot of cels over the years develop an eye for spotting the correct colors. Limited edition cels and poorly color matched restorations stand out like a sore thumb to them

Chuck Jones changed Bugs's gray the most often, especially in the late 50s, early 60s. During the Clampett years, his gray was pretty much a neutral pearl gray.

See ya
Steve

You forgot that they digitally remove teenage girls' breasts. Of course, they're at least rectifying their past mistakes with Disney Treasures (even though I don't think there's a soul on earth who's watch all of the Complete Pluto yet...)

-Thad

Steve,

I didn't mean to imply that there was an "acceptible" level of DVNR. I suppose that is a bit like an "acceptible" amount of neighborhood graffitti. What I meant was that it seems to be less noticable on the color cartoons from warner on average than the Betty Book B&W examples you showed. Would you agree or disagree with that?

Josh

It's probably about the same as Chess Nuts, the top example. But not quite as bad as Bimbo's Initiation and Boop-Oop-A-Doop... There were even worse examples on the Betty Boop laserdisc (Ha, Ha, Ha for example) but I didn't have a clean copy of those cartoons to do a side by side comparison.

DVNR artifacting is most noticeable in animation that's on ones, so it is more likely to show up more in a Fleischer cartoon with fast action where they have inbetweened down to ones, or a Scribner or Gould scene with wild poses moving all over the screen. Of course Scribner scenes are *exactly* the ones you are going to want to still frame through to look at the incredible drawings, so they are the most worst ones to have messed up.

Not all of the cartoons on the Looney Tunes DVDs appear to have DVNR artifacting. But some of my personal favorites do. It's frustrating because they did such a good job with the laserdisc boxes. If they are going to do even more work to restore the films further, I would hope that they would just flick that one switch off when they telecine to make sure they aren't adding DVNR artifacts. It isn't a lot to ask.

I believe that the people over at Warners who are supervising the telecine just aren't aware of the problem. I'm not calling for boycotts or asking people to be rude to them. I'm just suggesting that those of us who care about this should write them and point out that they should be careful not to let this mar future DVD sets. It's an easy fix if they are aware of it.

See ya
Steve

Does it really have to be a big deal? I think you should thank everybody instead. Instead of complaining about DVNR. Warner's did a great job of putting the cartoons together and putting them on this DVD. You should be thankful that they gave you this. I didn't notice the DVNR mistakes until you guys mentioned it.