This scene is from Harman-Ising’s The Pups’ Picnic (1936) featuring two sickeningly cute little dogs. I guess some of these Happy Harmonies shorts were coupled with MGM features on DVD. It’s nice that they were released but they’re loaded with DVNR, which is a killer for scenes with lots of movement animated on ones, like this scene was. The best frames are really unviewable.
One amusing "side effect" of digital noise reduction was demonstrated in Warner Home Video's short documentary on its restoration of "The Wizard of Oz." The DNR was reading Dorothy's sparkly ruby slippers as video noise and kept trying to erase them.
ReplyDeleteI hate DNR and wish it would go away, but I know it won't. It's too firmly entrenched. Everything shot on film gets the DNR treatment whether it needs it or not. But really, would kids run screaming from their television if they saw an occasional scratch or bit of debris in a cartoon? Would they?
"The Wizard of Oz" wound up getting a frame-by-frame, hands-on cleaning, which would be ideal where animation is concerned. It'll never happen, though, because "Oz" is "Oz" and still makes a kajillion dollars for Warner, while the company's classic animation holdings fall into the "stop complaining and be glad you're getting anything at all" category.