The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[psychopuppet]

It’s sad out of the 14 SDBD they have done only 2 are ok-ish .

[kevers7290]

With the Asterisk War going for peanuts on MVM right now, I will ask: how does it compare with the Aniplex release? Clone?

[Logan Jones]

About Cobra's DNR...

Do you guys ever think Justin will do a re-authoring of Cobra someday in the future with a pseudo grain filter to rectify the DNR'd image?

Or would a grain filter be redundant?

[Dailyan]

Originally Posted by Logan Jones

Or would a grain filter be redundant?

It'd be better to get access to raw scans.

[SpaceBlackKnight]

Originally Posted by Dailyan

It'd be better to get access to raw scans.

Zero to none. Japanese companies rarely ever allow 3rd parties and labels access to their film elements, nonetheless ship them overseas to have scanning done in the US. There are a few exceptions such as Godzilla 1954 (Before Toho got persuaded with a 7 figure offer, they initially refused Criterion access to their elements AND have them shipped to the US to create their own remaster) and Belladonna of Sadness (Cinelicious and another US company bankrolled everything, while Nippon Herald and New Mushi Productions only paid for shipping the OCN overseas).

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by SpaceBlackKnight

Japanese companies rarely ever allow 3rd parties and labels access to their film elements, nonetheless ship them overseas to have scanning done in the US.

Except you realise Sunrise has done most of their big title HD remasters in the US, right? They scanned Bebop, Escaflowne, Outlaw Star and a few other titles in California as the scanning technology is better here than there.

Also, Discotek funded the remaster of Robot Carnival, though all the work was carried out in Japan by Imagica, including scanning and restoration.

Plus, Dailyan isn't an idiot. He was just suggesting that raw scans would be better than adding a grain filter over a DNR'd master.

[SpaceBlackKnight]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Except you realise Sunrise has done most of their big title HD remasters in the US, right? They scanned Bebop, Escaflowne, Outlaw Star and a few other titles in California as the scanning technology is better here than there.

Also, Discotek funded the remaster of Robot Carnival, though all the work was carried out in Japan by Imagica, including scanning and restoration.

I knew Sunrise subs out HD mastering/transferring of it's popular titles to a company in the US, but they're a exception as not only Sunrise diligently ships their elements back & forth and can afford such feats, but trust the US companies with mastering and taking care of their elements.

Justin Sevakis told me Robot Carnival was sourced from a 35mm negative with English credits that the Japanese rights holder had (I imagine this may have been an internegative as the JP OCN was ether lost or unusable). Discotek funded the scanning and mastering but as you said, all the work was done in Japan by Imagica as the rights holder probably didn't want to ship their only film element outside of the country for obvious reasons.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by kevers7290

With the Asterisk War going for peanuts on MVM right now, I will ask: how does it compare with the Aniplex release? Clone?

Someone needs to answer this question

I'd love to know if MVM's Kizumonogatari discs are clones, as suspected. I can wait for the standard releases.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Naiera

Someone needs to answer this question

I'd love to know if MVM's Kizumonogatari discs are clones, as suspected. I can wait for the standard releases.

They are apparently clones of the AoA BDs (and region free too), but we won't know for certain until someone does a BDinfo scan or something.

[kevers7290]

^Well I went ahead and took a punt on it, so I can post info when I get it. It might be a while though, as I'm in the states.

[slerch666]

Originally Posted by professorwho

I did contact them... over 6 months ago on that very topic.

I also contacted them about VOTOMS, Human Crossing, and Xabungle if memory serves.

After providing more information, it seemed they understood the issue but no idea if they actually implemented any fixes for it.

I think Those Who Hunt Elves was "OK" in that it was exactly what they had on DVD but slapped on BD. Warts included.

[Naiera]

I know you’re into warts.

[HyugaKojiro]

Originally Posted by slerch666

I also contacted them about VOTOMS, Human Crossing, and Xabungle if memory serves.

After providing more information, it seemed they understood the issue but no idea if they actually implemented any fixes for it.

I think Those Who Hunt Elves was "OK" in that it was exactly what they had on DVD but slapped on BD. Warts included.

Is Those Who Hunt Elves the only known Sentai SDBD release that isn't incorrectly encoded or suffers from issues that weren't on the DVD release?

[slerch666]

Originally Posted by HyugaKojiro

Is Those Who Hunt Elves the only known Sentai SDBD release that isn't incorrectly encoded or suffers from issues that weren't on the DVD release?

The only one I am personally aware of

[professorwho]

Maybe it's one of their last AVC encoded ones. After a while, they went back to the DVD days with MPEG-2 compression. Bad choice, as MPEG-2 I believe had automatic edge enhancement built in to some degree, and it isn't as efficient as AVC. If they did good MPEG-2 stuff, it wouldn't be a problem, but stuff like Sakura Taisen is MPEG-2, so...

In other words, if Those Who Hunt Elves was AVC encoded, they figured out how to do AVC but then switched to MPEG-2 and started increasing episode count per disc, as before they put stuff on multiple discs when it really didn't need to, even with lossless audio, still could've fit on one or two instead of 3 plus in some cases.

[BigOnAnime]

It doesn't help that Sakura Wars doesn't that look that good on DVD to begin with, it's badly in need of an HD remaster.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by cfx

TL;DR version: I'm not a tech expert on the BD disc formats and possilble issues between 60Hz SD video and 24Hz HD video I'm pretty clueless on, but I'm puzzled why MPEG-2 SD on a BD would look worse than MPEG-2 SD on DVD. Logically it seems like it would at worst look the same, and maybe better if it was less compressed.

There is no reason for these discs to look so bad, other than incompetence or negligence.

Originally Posted by professorwho

Maybe it's one of their last AVC encoded ones. After a while, they went back to the DVD days with MPEG-2 compression. Bad choice, as MPEG-2 I believe had automatic edge enhancement built in to some degree, and it isn't as efficient as AVC.

MPEG-2 has mandatory edge enhancement, yes.

[professorwho]

Skimmed through the SDBD of Votoms TV I got for $7 and to be honest, I really didn't notice the frame rate issue unless going frame by frame. As most people, including myself, watch stuff in motion, it's not a HUGE deal, but still annoying they didn't encode it at the right frame rate.

Image quality is pretty good for an older master in SD. Better than any DVD I'd imagine. Audio is in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 at roughly 1.6 mbps, and it sounds great. I have zero complaints in regards to the audio, it's as good as it gets.

The video bitrate of Episode 1 is 4.986 mbps, but really averages in the 5-8 mbps range, with a spike over 10 mbps. That's fine, but if you did your math, you'll realise something...

THEY DIDN'T OPTIMIZE THE DISCS.

Disc 1 is 34.7 GB and holds Episodes 1 to 27. Now, the bitrates are good as-is, so really it's a waste. Each episode is about 1.2 GB, so really Sentai/Maiden Japan could've put 36 episodes on Disc 1 with no problem and put the rest of the series on Disc 2 and possibly have room for the compilation films on it. This is almost as stupid as when they put just TWO episodes on a single disc of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, I believe it was Episodes 25 and 26- the final 2 episodes of Season 1. What a waste. In that case, they only used like 9 GB of a 25 GB disc, but here it's just laziness.

Hell, if they REALLY wanted to push it to the max, they could have had 40 episodes on Disc 1, using up 48 GB, and easily putting everything else on Disc 2 (the remaining 12 episodes and compilation films).

In general, pretty solid release, but I'd rather take an un-optimized release over pure sh*t like the Sakura Taisen release.

[professorwho]

Another thing to consider- this has lossless audio. If this used lossy Dolby Digital, all 52 episodes could've fit on a single disc. I got Discotek's release of the Tokusatsu classic Juspion and all 46 episodes fit in pretty nicely on a BD-50. There, Justin utilized 41 GB and delivered an average of 4.5 mbps, which is close to what Sentai has done, but used lossy DD 2.0 at 384 kbps. Now, assuming they used similar settings, all 52 episodes would fit fine.

I am not an audiophile, as it's never been my specialty and my hearing isn't perfect, but in many cases, lossy audio sounds just fine to me. So I'd have no issue with lossy audio used if they want to keep disc counts down.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Hell, if they REALLY wanted to push it to the max, they could have had 40 episodes on Disc 1, using up 48 GB, and easily putting everything else on Disc 2 (the remaining 12 episodes and compilation films).

No, that would put the discs well over 45 GB, which is usually the absolute max.

SDBD episodes getting more than 1GB per is a good thing.