Nineteen years of love and never forgetting, Leslie Cheung’s ＂Love＂ concert ultra-clear restoration version premieres globally

At 18:41 PM on April 1, 2003, the legendary Leslie Cheung passed away quietly at the age of 46.

The "Passion" concert showcased Leslie Cheung’s enthusiasm for the Chinese music scene and has become a classic in the hearts of many audiences. Some media have given the concert a high evaluation that "from the performance form, artistic concept, costume props, and audience response, it represents the highest level of Chinese concerts, and no one has surpassed it so far."

He used a concert to fully perform his tortuous and legendary life, and also brought an avant-garde, gorgeous and elegant audio-visual feast to all the audience.

In order to reproduce Leslie Cheung’s classic work, on April 1 this year, the top algorithm team of Tencent Cloud Multimedia Lab repaired, Tencent Music Entertainment Group joined hands with Universal Music’s record label Polygold, and jointly presented the "Leslie Cheung 2000" Hot Love "Concert Ultra HD Repair Edition" for the first time in the world in conjunction with Tencent Cloud, WeChat Channels, Tencent Video and other teams.

This is also the first time that the master tape of "Hot Love" concert has been restored by ultra-high definition, which has been treasured by Polygram Records before. Thanks to the blessing of digital restoration technology, this "era symbol" that has been in the dust for more than 21 years has been unlocked for the first time, and it has been broadcast live through WeChat Channels, Tencent Video, Tencent Music Entertainment Group and other platforms, reliving the peerless style on the stage of Leslie Cheung.

The dust-covered master tape has been restored for the first time in 21 years

When it comes to the "Hot Love" concert, no amount of praise can be overstated. Every year on April 1, many Rong fans will express their nostalgia and pay tribute to the classics by sharing Zhang Guorong’s works and other forms.

Now 21 years of spring and autumn, limited by the storage medium of shooting equipment and video materials at that time, now Polygold treasures 21 years of master tape and the concert version of "Heat · Love" circulated on the Internet, the video image quality is generally poor.

In view of this, Tencent Music Entertainment Group contacted Universal Music at the beginning of this year, and the two sides immediately decided to start the restoration of the "Hot Love" concert master tape through multimedia laboratory restoration technology.

After months of preparation, the master tape of Leslie Cheung’s "Passion" concert was restored for the first time, and it was presented as scheduled at 8 pm on April 1 in the form of a global live broadcast, which aroused countless fans’ resonance.

"Keep the warmest side of the world, the vast sea of people to warm up and spend the coldest day…" In the live stream of the concert that night, many fans played Leslie Cheung’s classic lyrics on the public screen to express their nostalgia for Leslie Cheung and his classic works.

Some users also left messages saying that in the ultra-clear restored version, Leslie Cheung’s face, stage and other details are clearly visible, giving him a feeling of dreaming back to the year 2000.

Leslie Cheung is no longer a simple name, but a cultural mark of an era. With the rise of Cantonese pop music, Polygram witnessed the golden age of Hong Kong’s recording industry, and Leslie Cheung is one of the most influential singers under Polygram.

"Leslie Cheung, as a king-level singer, can achieve self-breakthrough and face himself sincerely in concerts, which is one of the reasons why he cannot be replaced in the Chinese music scene," said Ding Huifeng, a music critic. "A lot of the content shown in the’Heat · Love ‘concert is very advanced, and even in 2022, looking back, you will still think that this concert is very remarkable."

Music brings warmth, and the WeChat Channels "Music Yueyue Club" ecosystem is thriving. Last December, Westlife’s world’s first live online concert appeared on WeChat Channels, attracting over 27 million people to watch and break the circle. At the beginning of 2022, WeChat Channels and the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League jointly held a large-scale live broadcast of "Chasing Light", and the "Chasing Light" concert also brought strength and warmth to many audiences at the beginning of the new year.

In addition, musicians such as Chen Hongyuhua have also launched "online concerts" on the WeChat Channels platform one after another. Coupled with the continuous release of short video works and live broadcasts by many medium and long-tail music creators, high-quality music content is constantly being presented to the majority of WeChat Channels users. In the context of the epidemic, even if you haven’t seen a concert for a long time, "opening WeChat Channels to listen to live and watch concerts" is becoming a daily routine for more and more people.

The technical challenges behind "immersion" fixes

"With the help of the laboratory’s repair engine and other technologies, the clarity of the concert video can be restored to the greatest extent. However, for the fast color and picture switching in the concert video, plus the problem of low definition of the video material, how to repair the old as the old, to bring the audience an immersive experience, is a big challenge for the team."

Restoring historical video works and even damaged images is not a problem for experienced multimedia labs, but upon receiving this demand, Tencent Cloud Multimedia Lab expert researcher Xia Zhen and his team were still rather perturbed.

After many studies and technical verification, Xia Zhen and his team set a hard standard for this restoration work, that is, the restored image can bring a "sense of presence" to Rong fans. And the technical password to unlock this "key of time" is the "Ultra-Clear Immersion Repair Engine" of the Multimedia Lab.

Tencent Cloud Multimedia Lab is one of the world’s leading multimedia communication and processing R & D teams. It has accumulated complete solutions and leading technical levels in the fields of multimedia data transmission and compression, intelligent fusion media, and interactive immersive media. It also has deep technical accumulation in the field of image restoration. It has a number of industry-leading self-developed old film restoration technologies such as "Ultra Clear Immersion Repair Engine".

The repair engine has many highlights, such as "face repair", which is based on the face repair model developed by Tencent Cloud Multimedia Lab, using face detection, face repair and fusion modules to transfer image repair to the video process, adding inter-frame stability processing, solving face detection stability, optimizing multi-angle face effects, and solving complex scene problems encountered by dynamic faces in videos.

In order to create a "face-to-face" effect, the lab team also made special algorithm adjustments to the eye details of Leslie Cheung’s concert. A still frame of Leslie Cheung in the center of the stage was taken from the restored video, and after zooming in, it seemed that the image outline of the stage could be seen through his eyes.

"As a glory fan, during the restoration process, my brother’s smile gradually appeared in front of my eyes, which also touched me deeply. I am also very happy to be able to contribute to the inheritance of classic images through technology!" After watching the live broadcast of the restored version of the concert that night, and the positive interaction and feedback from the audience on the public screen, Xia Zhen finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Technology has great potential to help the inheritance of classic culture

In fact, behind the wide attention caused by the live broadcast of the ultra-high definition restoration version of Leslie Cheung’s "Heat · Love" concert, it reflects that there are a large number of classic film and television works and cultural images in China that need to be restored urgently. At present, digital technology is becoming an important driving force for driving cultural inheritance and promoting the development of the ultra-high-resolution video industry.

MIIT, the State Administration of Radio and Television, Central Radio and Television jointly issued the "ultra-high-resolution video industry development action plan" clearly stated that by 2022, the total scale of the ultra-high-resolution video industry will exceed 4 trillion yuan, and the production of ultra-high definition content will exceed 30,000 hours per year. However, in the production of ultra-high definition content, there are pain points such as high cost and low efficiency of ultra-high definition content production, classic old films and video to high definition, which have become key factors restricting the development of the industry.

At present, Tencent Cloud Multimedia Lab has formed a relatively complete matrix of intelligent old film restoration technology. In addition to Leslie Cheung’s "Love" concert, he has also been deeply involved in the high definition restoration of classic films and television dramas and precious historical images such as "Kangxi Dynasty" and "The World’s Family".

"We can see the value of digital technology in helping classic video works and traditional culture through the restoration project of Polygram’s" Passion "concert. Our team is also actively cooperating with some cultural institutions to explore the restoration of more classic film and television works."

Dr. Liu Shan, an outstanding scientist at Tencent and general manager of Tencent Cloud Multimedia Lab, said that Tencent Cloud Multimedia Lab will continue to explore the social value of digital technology in the future, promote the application of multimedia technology in multiple industrial fields, and practice Tencent’s sustainable social value innovation to help the inheritance of classic culture.