The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

I took all captures with mpv, with the default settings except the chroma upscaling, as recommended by Scavenger.

In which case, it may be a disc/encode issue.

[Dailyan]

The horizontal line pattern is probably down to mediocre encoding. I've seen a similar issue with shadows/darker areas on some discs that I own that are definitely noticeable in-motion.

[SpaceDandy]

The thing is; the episodes looks fantastic and matches the japanese BD. So the fact that just the ending looks bad is very odd if you consider the episode master as a single file.
It's either what Scavenger suggested (whatever that originated from Japan or France - I don't see why they would make an intermediate ProRes encode unless the files were provided in pieces or by HDCAM-SR tape) or something else.

Anyway, if someone wants to add a comparison with the MVM/Hanabee and-or Sentai BD for completion...

[SpazeBlue]

On top of the Gundam Wing Collector's Edition (and its separate parts), the site finally reviewed the two FMA:B Aniplex box sets (or I guess "reviewed", since there wasn't much to them).

[Tylerfan]

Here's a surprise; the Aniplex sets for FMA Brotherhood got reviews:
Part 1: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Fullm...167625/#Review
Part 2: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Fullm...217588/#Review

There are some screenshots, but mostly it's package shots, courtesy of Neil

edit: HOLY SHIT THERE ARE SO MANY SOLO EDWARD ELRIC PHOTOS FOR SET 1

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

There's a catch though, the ending, and only it, shows some horizontal line pattern in a specific set of colors (dark blues) on the french version. On some scene of the ending, the pattern is very apparent, on other, invisible. Some colors are slightly different too (either due to or at the origin of this artifact). I wonder how that happened. Maybe degraded material ?

This isn't a new thing by any means. I've noted it with quite a few BD releases from different labels. (e.g. Megalobox and One Punch Man 2 from Viz, Madman's Promised Neverland). The conclusion I came to is that it's baked into the source, but eliminated on Japanese BDs due to their incredibly frequent use of post processing like debanding.

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

EDIT: and while you mention Vick, he reviewed Shirobako as well and it also has ringing. So that is yet another degraded international master and not Sentai fault. Bitrate is also higher than JP BD apparently.

That's also not a one off thing. All of Sentai's BDs from when Joel McCray took over (2015/16ish) have this issue to some extent. It's most obvious around text, but in higher quality productions like KyoAni's Tsurune, it's also visible around lineart. It's down to whatever filtering they use.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

This isn't a new thing by any means. I've noted it with quite a few BD releases from different labels. (e.g. Megalobox and One Punch Man 2 from Viz, Madman's Promised Neverland). The conclusion I came to is that it's baked into the source, but eliminated on Japanese BDs due to their incredibly frequent use of post processing like debanding.

I also thought it was a master issue, but I'm not so sure about that now after comparing Madman's Demon Slayer BD with a screenshot from the Selecta Vision BD: https://slow.pics/c/HThcxGRb (also includes Dynit and Aniplex BD screenshot. Dynit/Selecta screenshot made by fabrebatalla18)

The Selecta Vision BD is garbage, but I don't see the faint lines there.

[NLScavenger]

Regarding the Japanese Toho BD of Kimagure Orange Road https://twitter.com/Inter_Kun/status...69974867746820

A couple TV shots, USA vs JPN vs Filtered
https://slow.pics/c/mFfxXhHx

Yes, 5 BD50@4.4GB/ep are outperforming 8 BD50@5.4GB/ep. Crazy quality from Discotek.

JP BD has worse picture quality. Authored by QTEC (there are FORS logos present on the discs).

[SpaceDandy]

I love how Demon Slayer Selecta BD literally exposes to the watchers all the problems backed in the source. I feel bad for the spanish.

Regarding KOR, what's supposed to be "BD USA Fixed" in the comparison? Looks like it was just chroma-denoised?

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

That's also not a one off thing. All of Sentai's BDs from when Joel McCray took over (2015/16ish) have this issue to some extent. It's most obvious around text, but in higher quality productions like KyoAni's Tsurune, it's also visible around lineart. It's down to whatever filtering they use.

I would agree if there were other instances of BD made by IDP with ringing in the past 5 years, but AFAIK there is none. I don't think you can compare with Sentai as many releases were plagued with this issues around the same time. But good point with Promised Neverland & others.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

Regarding KOR, what's supposed to be "BD USA Fixed" in the comparison? Looks like it was just chroma-denoised?

That's from a chroma-denoised rip.

[KaizerChef]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

I love how Demon Slayer Selecta BD literally exposes to the watchers all the problems backed in the source. I feel bad for the spanish.

I used to buy their releases as a way to support local anime distributors (they are basically the only ones in Spain), but I feel like I cannot support them in good faith anymore after years of consistently subpar, overly bright, overly expensive, bit starved releases.

Speaking of which, I recently got hold of their release of Roujin Z as it's the only one that is not OOP, will probably upload screenshots some time. But I can say now that the encode is different to the Kazé release since the average bitrate is a bit higher. Also the info on the website is wrong, it only has Japanese, Spanish and Catalan audio, and Spanish subtitles only.

Edit - as promised:

Roujin Z - Selecta Visión BD



Bitrate


MediaInfo (Spanish and Catalan dubs removed)

General
Unique ID                      : 325133894092444315157478621244794053073 (0xF49A82A03053508D8A02DBB7311BA1D1)
Format                         : Matroska
Format version                 : Version 2
File size                      : 13.6 GiB
Duration                       : 1 h 19 min
Overall bit rate mode          : Variable
Overall bit rate               : 24.3 Mb/s
Encoded date                   : UTC 2021-11-08 18:17:01
Writing application            : MakeMKV v1.16.5 win(x64-release)
Writing library                : libmakemkv v1.16.5 (1.3.10/1.5.2) win(x64-release)

Video
ID                             : 1
ID in the original source medi : 4113 (0x1011)
Format                         : AVC
Format/Info                    : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                 : High@L4.1
Format settings                : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC         : Yes
Format settings, Reference fra : 4 frames
Codec ID                       : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                       : 1 h 19 min
Bit rate mode                  : Variable
Bit rate                       : 22.0 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate               : 35.0 Mb/s
Width                          : 1 920 pixels
Height                         : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio           : 16:9
Frame rate mode                : Constant
Frame rate                     : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Standard                       : NTSC
Color space                    : YUV
Chroma subsampling             : 4:2:0
Bit depth                      : 8 bits
Scan type                      : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)             : 0.442
Stream size                    : 12.3 GiB (91%)
Language                       : English
Default                        : No
Forced                         : No
Color range                    : Limited
Color primaries                : BT.709
Transfer characteristics       : BT.709
Matrix coefficients            : BT.709
Original source medium         : Blu-ray

Audio
ID                             : 2
ID in the original source medi : 4354 (0x1102)
Format                         : DTS XLL
Format/Info                    : Digital Theater Systems
Commercial name                : DTS-HD Master Audio
Codec ID                       : A_DTS
Duration                       : 1 h 19 min
Bit rate mode                  : Variable / Constant
Bit rate                       : 2 240 kb/s / 1 509 kb/s
Channel(s)                     : 6 channels
Channel layout                 : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate                  : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                     : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth                      : 16 bits
Compression mode               : Lossless / Lossy
Delay relative to video        : 5 s 839 ms
Stream size                    : 1.25 GiB (9%)
Title                          : Surround 5.1
Language                       : Japanese
Default                        : Yes
Forced                         : No
Original source medium         : Blu-ray

Text #1
ID                             : 3
ID in the original source medi : 4608 (0x1200)
Format                         : PGS
Codec ID                       : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                  : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                       : 39 min 25 s
Bit rate                       : 255 b/s
Count of elements              : 6
Stream size                    : 73.6 KiB (0%)
Language                       : Spanish
Default                        : No
Forced                         : No
Original source medium         : Blu-ray

Text #2
ID                             : 5
ID in the original source medi : 4609 (0x1201)
Format                         : PGS
Codec ID                       : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                  : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                       : 39 min 25 s
Bit rate                       : 304 b/s
Count of elements              : 8
Stream size                    : 87.8 KiB (0%)
Language                       : Catalan
Default                        : No
Forced                         : No
Original source medium         : Blu-ray

Text #3
ID                             : 7
ID in the original source medi : 4610 (0x1202)
Format                         : PGS
Codec ID                       : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                  : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                       : 1 h 14 min
Bit rate                       : 42.5 kb/s
Count of elements              : 1962
Stream size                    : 22.6 MiB (0%)
Language                       : Spanish
Default                        : No
Forced                         : No
Original source medium         : Blu-ray

Menu
00:00:00.000                   : en:Chapter 01
00:05:35.043                   : en:Chapter 02
00:13:38.526                   : en:Chapter 03
00:22:02.279                   : en:Chapter 04
00:26:55.739                   : en:Chapter 05
00:33:20.707                   : en:Chapter 06
00:38:25.052                   : en:Chapter 07
00:44:46.433                   : en:Chapter 08
00:50:49.463                   : en:Chapter 09
00:57:51.259                   : en:Chapter 10
01:04:19.605                   : en:Chapter 11
01:12:57.748                   : en:Chapter 12

[Tylerfan]

https://twitter.com/worldofcrap/stat...35885666377728

(link to the thread: https://twitter.com/Inter_Kun/status...69974867746820)

[Naiera]

https://youtu.be/4k-Dd71CqnM

[SpazeBlue]

Reviews for the FUNimation Outlaw Star Blu-rays are up.

Standard: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Outla...120899/#Review
Collector's Edition: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Outla...175903/#Review

[SpazeBlue]

Reviews for Sentai's Moribito Blu-ray and Squid Girl Blu-ray are up.

[blindrezo]

Originally Posted by svenge

Does anyone own the SD-BD of "Battle Athletes OVA + Victory" who could comment on its picture quality?

Sorry for the late response, but I rarely come to this site. (I should seriously start coming here more often)

Back in March, I made a comparison between the JP LD, JP DVD and the US BD:

https://slow.pics/c/iz7fHBIs

Overall, I prefer the LD.

Also, the BD suffers from random artifacting, likely due to whatever filtering they were using to try to clean up the image:

https://twitter.com/blindrezo/status...245789697?s=20

[AnimeCollectorSoap]

Originally Posted by KaizerChef

I used to buy their releases as a way to support local anime distributors (they are basically the only ones in Spain), but I feel like I cannot support them in good faith anymore after years of consistently subpar, overly bright, overly expensive, bit starved releases.

Speaking of which, I recently got hold of their release of Roujin Z as it's the only one that is not OOP, will probably upload screenshots some time. But I can say now that the encode is different to the Kazé release since the average bitrate is a bit higher. Also the info on the website is wrong, it only has Japanese, Spanish and Catalan audio, and Spanish subtitles only.

[/code]

Would you happen to know anything about their Psycho Pass Sinners of the System Movies BDs? Are they any good?
Didn't know Roujin Z had a release by them, going to look into buying it, such a good film.

[omarchafa]

Originally Posted by SpazeBlue

Reviews for the FUNimation Outlaw Star Blu-rays are up.

Standard: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Outla...120899/#Review
Collector's Edition: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Outla...175903/#Review

Wow, I didn't know the Funimation version had DNR. I thought it was just a lower bitrate version compared to the UK version which used the bit to bit JP encode.

Well makes me glad I went out of the way to get the UK release.

[NLScavenger]

There is a fair amount of grain on the UK/JP BD, but the grain texture is not very conspicuous mainly because the original camera negative got scanned. Most remasters of Sunrise productions are from grainier interpositives.

It would not be surprising if Funimation's compression smooshed out some of the grain.

[KaizerChef]

Originally Posted by AnimeCollectorSoap

Would you happen to know anything about their Psycho Pass Sinners of the System Movies BDs? Are they any good?
Didn't know Roujin Z had a release by them, going to look into buying it, such a good film.

Sorry, I don't have it and I couldn't find any info on the MundoDVD forums, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Selecta usually increases the brightness of their BDs for some reason (I don't know if Roujin Z suffers from this since I haven't seen any caps from the Kazé release, which should be pretty bad anyway given their track record. I didn't notice any glaring encoding issues while watching it, but I'm not as well trained to notice them as other members).