frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

The 'Toy Story' You Remember

https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/the-toy-story-you-remember
225•ani_obsessive•2h ago

Comments

voltaireodactyl•1h ago
Excellent article really enjoyed it.
cjohnson318•1h ago
Yeah, this is the kind of thing that makes me really enjoy the internet.
yCombLinks•1h ago
The texture of the film grain makes Mulan and Aladdin really look better. The large simple filled sections look like they have so much more to them.
kemayo•1h ago
The one frame they showed from the Lion King really stood out. The difference in how the background animals were washed out by the sunlight makes the film version look significantly better.
saghm•39m ago
I'm not sure if I'm just young enough to be on the other side of this despite seeing all three of those Disney movies as a millennial kid (Lion King and Aladdin were VHS mainstays in my house, and I remember seeing Mulan in theaters), but I honestly don't find the film grain to look better at all and think all three of those bottom images are much more appealing. For the Toy Story ones, I think I'm mostly indifferent; I can see why some people might prefer the upper film images but don't really think I'd notice which one I was watching. I'd definitely think I'd notice the difference in the 2D animation though and would find the film grain extremely distracting.
charcircuit•16m ago
To me it's much worse. You can't see all of the detail the artists drew, and there is noise everywhere, even specs of dust.catches. Whenever I watch a film based movie my immersion always gets broken by all the little specs that show up. Digital is a much more immersive experience for me.
dabluecaboose•1h ago
Those comparisons were strangely jarring. It's odd to see (on the internet awash with "Mandela Effect" joke conspiracies) direct photo/video evidence that things we remember from our childhood have indeed been changed; sometimes for the worse!
hekkle•1h ago
I'm surprised they can't just put a filter on the digital versions to achieve a similar look and feel to the 35mm version.

It is clear that the animators factored in the colour changes from the original media to 35mm, so it seems a disservice to them to re-release their works without honouring how they intended the films to be seen.

etempleton•1h ago
They could, but it would require some work to get it right. This is very similar to conversations that happen regularly in the retro game scene regarding CRT monitors vs modern monitors for games of a certain era. The analog process was absolutely factored in when the art was being made, so if you want a similar visuals on a modern screen you will need some level of thoughtful post processing.
philistine•1h ago
And ultimately, what you need to achieve acceptable CRT effects is resolution. Only now, with 4K and above, can we start to portray the complex interactions between the electron beam and the produced image by your console. But the colour banding that caused the hearts of The Legend of Zelda to show a golden sheen is still unreachable.
temp0826•1h ago
Reminded me of this article about some retro games on crt vs lcd-

https://wackoid.com/game/10-pictures-that-show-why-crt-tvs-a...

Torn•59m ago
Disney 100% has access to colorists and best in class colour grading software. It must have been a business (cost cutting) decision?
etempleton•49m ago
The vast majority of people will not care nor even notice. Some people will notice and say, hey, why is it "blurry." So do you spend a good chunk of time and money to make it look accurate or do you just dump the file onto the server and call it a day?
cyode•37m ago
To speak nothing of the global audience for these films. I'm guessing most people's first experience seeing these movies was off a VHS or DVD, so the nostalgia factor is only relevant to small percentage of viewers, and only a small percentage of that percentage notices.
aidenn0•40m ago
Just dialing down the red and blue channels a bit makes it much closer for several of the early '90s releases (look at that Aladdin example from TFA)
afavour•31m ago
I’m reminded of the beginning of the movie Elf, where the book publisher is informed that a printing error means their latest book is missing the final two pages. Should they pulp and reprint? He says,

> You think a kid is going to notice two pages? All they do is look at the pictures.

I’m quite sure bean counters look at Disney kids movies the exact same way, despite them being Disney’s bread and butter.

With Star Wars you have a dedicated adult fan base that’ll buy up remasters and reworkings. Aladdin? Not so much. Especially in the streaming era, no one is even buying any individual movie any more.

belZaah•5m ago
It is doable and you can get presets designed to mimic the look of legendary photography film stock like Velvia. But what they did back then was very much an analog process and thus also inherently unstable. Small details start to matter in terms of exposure times, projectors used etc. There’s so many frames and it took so much time, that it’s almost guaranteed there’d be noticeable differences due to process fluctuations.
sja•1h ago
Neat! The Youtube channel Noodle recently did a related deep dive into the differences in the releases of The Matrix [0]. The back half of the video also touches on the art of transferring from film/video to digital.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPU-kXEhSgk

larusso•52m ago
I always felt the old matrix had a more colder blue. And it changed drastically when the second and third hit cinemas. At least that was my memory because I watched a double feature when the second one hit the theatre's and complained then that the Matrix somehow looked weird. But it could also be my memory since I also own the blue ray release.

Another movie with the same / similar problem is the DVD release of the Lord of the Rings Extended editions. Both Blu-ray and 4K version. As far as I remember is that they fixed it for the theatrical version in 4K but not extended.

timenotwasted•1h ago
This makes so much more sense now. After having kids I've been watching my fair share of Pixar and I just never recalled how flat and bland everything looked but I would always chalk it up to my brain not recalling how it looked at the time. Good to know I guess that it wasn't just entirely nostalgia but sad that we continue to lose some of this history and so soon.
behringer•1h ago
Things like this are being preserved, you just have to sail the high seas.
squigz•53m ago
What sort of terms might one search for?
behringer•50m ago
"toy story film scan" on Kagi led me to a reddit page that may or may not contain links that might help you, but don't dawdle those links may not work forever.

Another one that's been hard to find is the 4k matrix original color grading release. Ping me if you have it! (Not the 1080p release)

dmonitor•50m ago
Would be annoying, but I suppose you could also recalibrate your display to turn down the greens?
behringer•49m ago
VLC has a lot of image manipulation options.
qingcharles•18m ago
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. What you're hinting at is that a lot of original 35mms are now getting scanned and uploaded privately, especially where all the commercial releases on Blu-ray and streaming are based on modified versions of the original movies, or over-restored versions.

These can be especially hard to find as the files are typically enormous, with low compression to keep things like grain. I see them mostly traded on short-lived gdrives and Telegram.

spott•1h ago
Man, this makes me want to watch original 35mm releases of all these films. It is unfortunate that they are so hard to get your hands on these days.
esperent•47m ago
This thread has a download link for toy story 35mm. Not sure if it works but maybe worth trying.

https://www.reddit.com/r/toystory/comments/1hhfuiq/does_anyo...

BolexNOLA•1h ago
It’s fascinating to me how many of these discussions boil down to dialing in dynamic range for the medium in question.

As the Aladdin still shows with its wildly altered colors clearly other aspects matter/are at play. But the analog/digital discussions always seem, at least to me, to hinge heavily on DR. It’s just so interesting to me.

Many of us remember the leap from SD->HD. Many of us also can point out how 4K is nice and even noticeably better than FHD, but man…getting a 4K OLED TV with (and this is the important part) nice DR was borderline another SD->HD jump to me. Especially with video games and older films shot and displayed on film stock from start to finish. The difference is incredibly striking.

jtolmar•1h ago
Is it possible to replicate the digital->film transition with tone mapping? (I assume the answer is yes, but what is the actual mapping?)
shrinks99•52m ago
Generally yes, but we're still working on it all these years later! This article by Chris Brejon offers a very in-depth look into the differences brought about by different display transforms: https://chrisbrejon.com/articles/ocio-display-transforms-and...

The "best" right now, in my opinion, is AgX, which at this point has various "flavours" that operate slightly differently. You can find a nice comparison of OCIO configs here: https://liamcollod.xyz/picture-lab-lxm/CAlc-D8T-dragon

wilg•59m ago
If you're interested in these 35mm film scans, I recommend watching this excellent YouTube video "SE7EN & How 35mm Scans Lie to You" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQwQRFLFDd8 for some more background on how this works, and especially how these comparisons can sometimes be misleading and prey on your nostalgia a bit.

If you're interested in making digital footage look exactly like film in every possible way, I'll shill our product Filmbox: https://videovillage.com/filmbox/

squigz•54m ago
Wow. Based on those comparisons they really do feel completely different. Really remarkable how such relatively simple changes in lighting and whatnot can drastically change the mood.

And here I was thinking of re-watching some old Disney/Pixar movies soon :(

vinhnx•45m ago
What an excellent piece! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, brought my childhood memories flooding back. I have so many fond recollections of that 90s era, including "A Bug's Life." I remember gathering with my cousins at my grandmother's house to watch these films on VHS. Time flies.
aidenn0•44m ago
Beauty and the Beast on Bluray looks completely different from what I remember; I had assumed that they had just regraded it, but given that it was developed with CAPS, maybe this is part of the effect?
bee_rider•32m ago
How well does 35mm hold up over time? Could these movies be said to “no longer exist” in some sense, if the scans have decayed noticeably?
bpiroman•29m ago
wtf happened to Simpsons on Disney+? looks like it's zoomed in.
MangoToupe•25m ago
The simpsons was originally made in 4:3. Many people don't like watching with large black bars to the right and left, so they show a cropped 16:9 version. People complained because this is occasionally a problem and ruins a joke, so I believe you can opt into either.
charcircuit•20m ago
>Computer chips were not fast enough, nor disks large enough, nor compression sophisticated enough to display even 30 minutes of standard-definition motion pictures.

This is not true at all. Being compatible with outdated, film based projectors was much more important for being able to show it in as many theaters as possible. If they wanted to do a digital screening it would have been technologically possible.

The 'Toy Story' You Remember

https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/the-toy-story-you-remember
232•ani_obsessive•2h ago•41 comments

AI documentation you can talk to, for every repo

https://deepwiki.com/
13•jicea•1h ago•6 comments

When Soviet-made cars roamed Singapore roads

https://remembersingapore.org/2025/10/30/soviet-made-cars-singapore-70s-to-90s/
32•sohkamyung•6d ago•4 comments

High-performance 2D graphics rendering on the CPU using sparse strips [pdf]

https://github.com/LaurenzV/master-thesis/blob/main/main.pdf
188•PaulHoule•7h ago•23 comments

Unexpected things that are people

https://bengoldhaber.substack.com/p/unexpected-things-that-are-people
517•lindowe•13h ago•253 comments

Unix v4 Tape Found

https://discuss.systems/@ricci/115504720054699983
285•greatquux•4d ago•38 comments

Real VT102 Emulation with MAME

https://zork.net/~st/jottings/Real-VT102-emulation-with-MAME.html
15•gurjeet•1w ago•2 comments

The lazy Git UI you didn't know you need

https://www.bwplotka.dev/2025/lazygit/
285•linhns•12h ago•115 comments

Time to start de-Appling

https://heatherburns.tech/2025/11/10/time-to-start-de-appling/
373•msangi•14h ago•255 comments

Writing your own BEAM

https://martin.janiczek.cz/2025/11/09/writing-your-own-beam.html
182•cbzbc•1d ago•50 comments

Spatial intelligence is AI’s next frontier

https://drfeifei.substack.com/p/from-words-to-worlds-spatial-intelligence
161•mkirchner•8h ago•76 comments

Automating our home video imports

https://pierce.dev/notes/automating-our-home-video-imports
9•icyfox•5d ago•0 comments

Dependent types and how to get rid of them

https://chadnauseam.com/coding/pltd/are-dependent-types-actually-erased
77•pie_flavor•1w ago•41 comments

Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

https://www.ballardgames.com/tales/hiring-dev-2025/
18•jordigh•1h ago•3 comments

Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

https://berkshirehathaway.com/news/nov1025.pdf
192•philip1209•5h ago•60 comments

Using Generative AI in Content Production

https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/43393929218323-Using-Generative-AI-in-Co...
112•CaRDiaK•10h ago•80 comments

The physics of news, rumors, and opinions

https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15053
44•Anon84•6d ago•18 comments

Launch HN: Hypercubic (YC F25) – AI for COBOL and Mainframes

81•sai18•13h ago•51 comments

Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)

367•david927•1d ago•1109 comments

Omnilingual ASR: Advancing automatic speech recognition for 1600 languages

https://ai.meta.com/blog/omnilingual-asr-advancing-automatic-speech-recognition/?_fb_noscript=1
99•jean-•11h ago•23 comments

I hate screenshots of text

https://parkscomputing.com/page/i-hate-screenshots-of-text
209•paulmooreparks•4h ago•143 comments

Building a high-performance ticketing system with TigerBeetle

https://renerocks.ai/blog/2025-11-02--tigerfans/
111•jorangreef•3d ago•19 comments

The Linux Kernel Looks to “Bite the Bullet” in Enabling Microsoft C Extensions

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.19-Patch-Would-MS-Ext
90•keyle•21h ago•61 comments

How to create accessible PDFs from the start

https://typst.app/blog/2025/accessible-pdf/
35•leephillips•1w ago•0 comments

Head in the Zed Cloud

https://maxdeviant.com/posts/2025/head-in-the-zed-cloud/
83•todsacerdoti•15h ago•18 comments

Memory Safety for Skeptics

https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3773095
66•steveklabnik•11h ago•85 comments

Linux in a Pixel Shader – A RISC-V Emulator for VRChat

https://blog.pimaker.at/texts/rvc1/
49•rbanffy•8h ago•14 comments

DEC Mini – computer inspired by one of the loveliest retro computers of the 80s

https://decmini.tin.cat/
18•pabs3•2h ago•10 comments

The Paranoid Guide to Running Copilot CLI in a Secure Docker Sandbox

https://gordonbeeming.com/blog/2025-10-03/taming-the-ai-my-paranoid-guide-to-running-copilot-cli-...
22•pploug•6d ago•6 comments

Zeroing in on Zero-Point Motion Inside a Crystal

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/178
40•lc0_stein•8h ago•7 comments