The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Lum

Japanese recording studios are that far behind the times?

Most surround rejigs just aren't worth listening to because of numerous changes that are for the worse. These changes can range from new inappropriate sounding Foley effects, different music, to a completely re-recorded track. Akira and Code Geass are examples of the first two, the Patlabor movies and Gundam Movie Trilogy of the last one.

There is only one anime surround rejig that I think offers a marked improvement over the original mix and that is the LaserDisc Dolby Surround remix of Macross DYRL.

[Lum]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Most surround rejigs just aren't worth listening to because of numerous changes that are for the worse. These changes can range from new inappropriate sounding Foley effects, different music, to a completely re-recorded track. Akira and Code Geass are examples of the first two, the Patlabor movies and Gundam Movie Trilogy of the last one.

There is only one anime surround rejig that I think offers a marked improvement over the original mix and that is the LaserDisc Dolby Surround remix of Macross DYRL.

I just figured by now they'd do the original work in surround by default.

[professorwho]

I won't ever shut up about how bad Re:Zero looks. I found a lossless clip of the FUNimation Blu-ray. No additional compression whatsoever, just converted to MP4.

Here

It looks terrible!

[Naiera]

Turrible!

[SeaFox]

Terribad!

[chronoclast]

I really don't understand how anyone who does video production and encoding professionally could ever think that looks acceptable. These are the same people though who thought there was nothing wrong with their Lain BDs too .

[professorwho]

Even somebody who isn't a top-tier compressionist could notice. A 2nd or 3rd rate guy could notice and fix it.

Lain always had banding, but FUNimation made it way worse. The JP BD has mild banding, but the FUNi turned it up to 11! (In a bad way)

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by professorwho

I won't ever shut up about how bad Re:Zero looks. I found a lossless clip of the FUNimation Blu-ray. No additional compression whatsoever, just converted to MP4.

Here

It looks terrible!

[hvgill]

Originally Posted by professorwho

I won't ever shut up about how bad Re:Zero looks. I found a lossless clip of the FUNimation Blu-ray. No additional compression whatsoever, just converted to MP4.

Here

It looks terrible!

I have to admit that you're 100% right. When it was first reported, I was skeptical that it was just a few people being overly picky, but I was dead wrong. If It wasn't one of my favorite shows I would have already sold it.

Kudos to you and all the people who pay attention to stuff like this. I see that part 2 has been delayed, and it makes me wonder if they're taking their time to fix the same issues. Will make me think twice about ever pre-ordering anything from Funimation, again.

[pikagreg]

That is the thing that sucks about Re:Zero. They cannot say that it was the JP's fault for giving them bad masters though at the same time should have definitely seen how bad it was beforehand. It does make me worry about other big shows too like CCS: Clear Card and Steins;Gate 0.

[PissedOffPeoN]

Also, they had like 3 quality checkers on the credits on the disc, who somehow missed it all.

[Kyle15]

That doesn't even look like it should be sold period. Holy good god.

[SeaFox]

Originally Posted by pikagreg

It does make me worry about other big shows too like CCS: Clear Card and Steins;Gate 0.

Steins;Gate 0 has banding in the streaming broadcasts of it right now. I should probably check some alternate groups to see how theirs looks, but so far I can see S;G 0 being as bad or worse than the first season if the banding is in the master Funimation receives.

[Sylontack]

Sorry for the delay on these, I uploaded them all to imgur then made a post but thought the pictures looked way too compressed (because imgur obviously does compress them and changes the format to .jpg) so waited until I could go back and double check and nope, it really just looks like that (I mean it is still slightly lower quality but I checked it out and it's more or less the same). Apologies that the images uploaded into the folder in reverse order but that's not really a major issue.

Negima!? (Season 2) JP BD Screencaps

As I said before, she's a mess. Looks about as good as the season was accurate to the source material.

I 100% attribute this to the source. The Season 1 BD upscale actually looked alright in my humble opinion, and this season's DVDs were pretty freaking terrible to begin with (I didn't upload any comparisons because my DVDs are PAL which would affect the results imo but anyone else is welcome to give it a shot. This is all just from the first 5 or 6 episodes). The show is very versatile visually speaking, so some shots look way better than others but it's still never really very good. It's a shame because the SHAFT season's style is one of the few saving graces of a hackjob adaptation (that I truly believe botched any further chances of a good and proper adaptation).

What a doozy.

[Show spoiler]

Aren't we glad I went and bought the JP BD boxes on release at full price for upscales of terrible adaptations because I thought it would never hit the west and a year later we're getting them with the exact same new artwork designed for the releases? (I can't help it I love the franchise I stand by my decision)

[Dailyan]

Originally Posted by professorwho

I won't ever shut up about how bad Re:Zero looks. I found a lossless clip of the FUNimation Blu-ray. No additional compression whatsoever, just converted to MP4.

Here

It looks terrible!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNtZa8EZ02M

I've seen 25GB discs with better compression than that; seeing that banding makes me want to ban-die.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Dailyan

I've seen 25GB discs with better compression than that; seeing that banding makes me want to ban-die.

I'll raise you one better: I'm watching the German Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles re-release DVDs* with 16(!!) episodes on a disc (8 uncut English, 8 cut German dub) and even that is a lot more pleasant to look at than Re:Zero: https://imgbox.com/g/NAqyxFtZBm

*Original release had nearly double the bitrate and less compression artifacts. Bitrate was reduced for the re-release to cut down the disc count.

[klasma]

Originally Posted by Sylontack

What a doozy.

Somehow I'm glad my TV was still a CRT when I watched that show on DVD.

[SeaFox]

Originally Posted by Sylontack

Sorry for the delay on these, I uploaded them all to imgur then made a post but thought the pictures looked way too compressed (because imgur obviously does compress them and changes the format to .jpg).

There is a setting on imgur for uploading high-quality pics that is off by default. You want to turn it on. It increases the maximum resolution and filesize of pictures hosted. I have no issues uploading pngs to my account.

[NLScavenger]

Anything non-animated over 5MB gets resized on imgur, even with the high quality option enabled I think.

Best is to drag and drop the PNGs onto optipng or any other lossless PNG optimizer.

[SeaFox]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Anything non-animated over 5MB gets resized on imgur, even with the high quality option enabled I think.

The official rules are contradictory.

The maximum file size for non-animated images (think JPG, PNG, etc) is 20MB. PNG files over 5MB will be converted to JPEGs. The maximum file size for animated images (like GIFs) and video is 200MB. Video uploads cannot be longer than 30 seconds. GIF and video files over 2MB will be converted to GIFVs, where the sound is removed.

The maximum file size including for PNGs, is listed as 20MB, but then they say they will resave the PNGS over 5 MB as JPEGs. I guess they mean the maximum file you can upload is 20 MB, but why is it they would allow a 19 MB JPEG image to stay on server but not a 19 MB PNG?