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All Hulu content comes from shareholders, and is generally popular content that has been digitally converted. Therefore, Hulu does not need a dedicated film conversion team, but Netflix is ​​different.

Netflix's content sources are very limited, and it is difficult to cooperate with Hollywood. Therefore, there is a lot of subpar content on Netflix. The suppliers of this content are very poor, so they need to digitally convert them themselves.

So in this area, people at Netflix know better.

It’s not just a conversion, it’s a restoration.

There are three main types of restoration, physical restoration, digital restoration and artistic restoration.

Among them, digital restoration is the most labor intensive and costly.

The director of Netflix's digital conversion team is a Russian immigrant named Alexey Bilan. When he speaks, his tongue seems to be curled up, which sounds very laborious. Fortunately, Zhou Buqi interacts with foreigners every day, and his understanding of English is getting better and better, and he can understand them.

Alexey once worked at Paramount for eight years, mainly responsible for the conversion of film and television versions, so when talking about this matter, he is more professional.

Theoretically, there is no upper limit to the pixels of film, but the content of the film is subject to the optical and chemical technologies of the shooting equipment. What kind of content can be captured by the shooting equipment can be recorded on the film. If the shooting equipment cannot capture a high resolution, the film cannot be recorded.

As far as current technical conditions are concerned, ordinary 35mm film can reach a resolution of up to 6K. But this is only at the laboratory level. For ordinary movies, 35mm film means 2K resolution, which is the norm.

Back then, the resolution was even smaller.

1K resolution is considered excellent, 0.8K resolution is the passing line, and most old Hollywood movies have resolutions less than 0.8K.

This is the trouble with digital restoration during film transfer.

Now, the standard resolution of cinema movies is 2K, and the minimum resolution of a Blu-ray DVD disc is 1K standard. Therefore, during the film transfer process, the resolution of the old film needs to be upgraded.

Convert film content with less than 0.8K resolution into digital content with 1K or 2K resolution.

Zhou Buqi was still in a daze at first, but when he heard this, he cheered up.

This statement sounds so familiar!

Ziweixing and the Chinese University of Hong Kong have a project on artificial intelligence, which is to intelligently process low-resolution, blurry pictures to make them clearer!

This is almost the same thing as upgrading the resolution of old movies!

No wonder Shen Xiangyang persisted in hoping that he could come over today. It turned out to be this.

After resigning from the position of CTO of Ziweixing, Shen Xiangyang's current position has not been reduced but has been increased.

He is currently the chairman of the Ziweixing Technical Committee and the dean of the research institute, the senior vice president and director of the research institute of Ziweixing International, the director and technical consultant of Ziweixing Global, and the director and chairman of the technical committee of Ziweixing Digital Media.

There are many titles.

In fact, his job is to link the technical businesses of the entire "Ziwei Galaxy" group of companies to achieve the effect of complementing and complementing each other.

Purple Star Digital Media is headquartered in London, mainly focusing on the football industry. It can be called a technological desert. Without the help of foreign technology, it is difficult to develop;

Purple Star Global is headquartered in Hollywood and mainly focuses on the film industry. It is incompatible with Silicon Valley and has a natural rejection of Silicon Valley technology. It also needs a lubricant.

There is also the coordination between the domestic and overseas technical teams of Ziweixing and Ziweixing International.

This is a very difficult task.

So far, Shen Xiangyang is perfectly qualified for this job!

At least the linkage between Ziweixing Global, Ziweixing and Asda has achieved very good results. A few days ago, it was about Lucasfilm's 3D structured light to 3D movies, and now it's linked from film conversion to artificial intelligence.

Alexey is just a technical director who came from Hollywood. His understanding of new-age technology, let alone compared to Shen Xiangyang, may not be as good as Zhou Buqi's.

He could only explain the film transfer at a more basic level - "The digital information transfer in the past twenty years is actually very simple. Because the resolution of video tapes and DVDs is not high, generally only about 0.7K. There is no resolution. It’s easy to avoid the trouble of rate escalation.”

Eric Feng has not officially joined the company yet, but he is already a member of the Zhou Buqi team. He seconded: "Resolution downgrading is easy, but resolution upgrading is difficult."

Alexey said: "Yes, upgrading is the most complicated. With the existence of Blu-ray format and Super Blu-ray format, the current conversion market has already seen the demand for 2K. Upgrading from 0.8K to 2K is a very complicated task. ."

Zhou Buqi asked, "How did you do it?"

Alexey said: "Technicians modify it frame by frame, manually completing problems such as color distortion, over-brightness, over-darkness, color gamut conversion, and color cast correction for special objects such as faces and subtitles, including color cast correction on the screen. Removal of mottled noise, etc.”

Zhou Buqi twitched his lips, "That's a lot of work!"

Alexey sighed, "Yes, if it is some complex lens repair, our best restorer can only repair 24 frames a day."

"this……"

Zhou Buqi looked at several people in the team and felt terrible.

Are you kidding me? !

24 frames, when the movie is shown, is actually 1 second of content.

In 1 second, it takes a day to repair?

What a joke!

You've wasted your money on this.

What age is this? This kind of repetitive, large-volume work should not be done manually, especially not in the United States where labor costs are extremely high.

And that's just 2K resolution.

As technology levels improve, the resolution of film and television content will inevitably become higher and higher. The current trend is 2K, and it will be 4K in a few years.

If it is all repaired manually, it will be a nightmare with no future.

From 2K to 4K, the workload has not increased by 2 times, but by 4 times. This does not include the increase in the number of frames. If it increases from 24 frames to 36 frames, 48 ​​frames, or 72 frames, the workload will increase exponentially.

Only artificial intelligence can save this industry!

Sure enough, Alexey then talked about the topic of frame number, "In the past, it was generally 24 frames, but now higher frame numbers are popular, such as smoothing from 24 frames to 36 frames, which requires solving the continuity between frames. The problem will be more complicated. However, this part of the work is not needed for streaming media for the time being. The basis of streaming video is 12 frames. The expansion of frame number is more the work of Hollywood."

Zhou Buqi understands this fairly well.

With the technological upgrade of movie theaters, various versions of newly released movies have appeared, including 2D versions, 3D versions, and IMAX copyrights. There are also 2K versions, 4K versions, 24-frame versions, 36-frame versions, 48-frame versions, etc.

However, as Alexey said, this super image version has little to do with the streaming media industry. It is more oriented to movie theaters, and a distribution company from a Hollywood giant is required to undertake the relevant conversion tasks.

However, Netflix can put aside the relationship, but MSI Global cannot. The "Iron Man 2" released in May this year will have 8 versions released globally at the same time, the "2D+24 frame+2K" version, and the "3D+24" version. Frame+2K" version, "3D+36 frame+4K" version, "2D+IMAX+36 frame+4K" version, "3D+IMAX+36 frame+4K" version, "3D+IMAX+48 frame+4K" Edition and so on.

So many versions are all converted at a later stage.

If this is all done manually, how much post-production cost will it cost? A Hollywood blockbuster costs US$200 million, and probably US$10 million is spent on it.

Hollywood has no choice but to resort to clumsy methods and find transducers to manually process it frame by frame. For example, "Avatar" was filmed as early as 2007, but the release date was repeatedly delayed because the post-production was too complicated and various copyrights had to be released. The post-production alone took a year and a half.

For an ordinary movie, one and a half years would be enough to complete the entire process of "project establishment, start-up, filming, finalization, distribution, promotion, screening, and collection of funds."

For Alexei, he only cares about Netflix’s streaming media, and these more complex post-production conversion tasks have nothing to do with him. But Zhou Buqi has more industries, and he needs to consider the business collaboration of each company more comprehensively.

Alexei knew that Boss Zhou was the largest shareholder of Netflix, and did not want to dissuade him, so he smiled and said: "It's okay here at Netflix. The more complicated transformation work is borne by the distribution company. Netflix's For the conversion work, the focus is still on the 1K resolution Blu-ray format. It is not too difficult to convert the 0.6K and 0.8K resolution of some old movies into 1K resolution."

Zhou Buqi asked: "Have you never thought about artificial intelligence?"

Alexey was silent for a moment, and then said slowly: "There have been discussions, but there is no technical application in this area in the market."

"What about researching on your own?"

Zhou Buqi continued to ask.

Netflix is ​​a technology company in Silicon Valley. It shouldn’t be difficult to start an artificial intelligence project on its own and do some post-transformation research independently.

"This..." Alexey hesitated, "Actually, it's not necessary. We have statistics. The investment in research and development funds is far greater than the investment in manual repair."

"Um?"

Zhou Buqi raised his eyebrows.

Eric Feng quickly explained and said with a smile: "It's because there are too few film sources!"

This is related to the marginal cost of transformation work.

If there are 10,000 film sources, the scale is too large, and it will be repaired manually, which is too expensive. We must first study artificial intelligence technology, and then rely on new technologies to repair it. If there are too few film sources, there is no need to research new technologies and just rely on manual repair.

Zhou Buqi doesn't like this short-sighted arrangement.

Purple Star Global's next streaming media plan is to reach a strategic cooperation with Netflix. It will license most of its film and television content to Netflix, which will include a huge workload of post-production conversion.

In the past, DVD digital versions were generally 0.7K. Now is the world of Blu-ray. Users like to watch ultra-high-definition versions, so a large part of the content in MSI Global’s inventory needs to be upgraded in resolution.

The future is the era of streaming media.

There will be dozens or hundreds of streaming media platforms on the market.

How does Purple Star Global ensure that its streaming media platform is absolutely competitive? In addition to more attractive content, you can also start from the technical level!

On other platforms, many old movies are in 360P and 720P resolution.

If almost all content on MSI’s platforms has 1K or 2K resolution, this competitiveness will be reflected.

For example, Warner licensed the copyright of the old 1980s film "Terminator" to both Hulu and Netflix. On the surface, users can choose either Hulu or Netflix.

However, the "Terminator" provided by the publisher Warner only has a 1K version, and Hulu can only provide a maximum resolution of 1K. However, Netflix can use its own technical means to launch a 2K restored version with exclusive copyright and more viewing value.

In order to pursue a better movie-watching experience, users will choose Netflix.

This time, Zhou Buqi has a clearer understanding of the streaming media industry.

The streaming media industry is "Internet + movies" and "technology + content".

Not only is content king, science and technology can also play a very important role.