The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[blackcampaign]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

The screenshotcomparison going around is one of mine, so I figured I'd chime in quickly with a few thoughts.

I'll definitely be interested to hear other peoples opinions if/when other people get the release.

It seems your comparison link is broken, could you update it?

[One-Eye]

Anybody seen the recent UK Rokka release? How does that hold up video and audio wise?

[professorwho]

From the New World (Shinsekai Yori) DVD
(Sentai)

Why DVD? Well, it was on sale at Rightstuf about 2 years ago, I think for $5 per half. The Blu-ray wasn't on sale, and was $40 per half, so I just got the DVDs. That was a killer deal. So, let's see how they look...

Disc 1

Disc size: 5.6GB

Episode 1: 1.17GB (File sizes between 1.14 and 1.20GB)

Video:
480p MPEG-2
6613 kbps AVG (6.63 mbps)
9000 kbps MAX (9 mbps)
1.1GB

Audio:
Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 224 kbps
English Dolby Digital 2.0 224 kbps

It don't look too good. On a standard definition television it would probably look great, because analogue can hide compression artifacts, but in the digital realm, it is easy to see.

But why? Well, Shinsekai Yori, much like Kyousougiga, has great cinematography and intense colour grading. The use of colour is stunning. But, being a darkly lit series for dramatic effect, there's a ton of banding in darker scenes. Surprisingly, while there's more banding than Re:Zero, is is less intense when it appears, so it occasionally looks better than FUNi's own BD. But, it can't change the fact the series visually looks ugly. This is an ugly looking series in terms of character designs, that are always either poorly drawn or off-model. The cinematography and use of colour helps, but more often than not, it looks ugly.

The worst looking element, in terms of clarity, is text. Good lord is it soft. The Low-pass filter is applied here, producing artifacts, but even without it, it is still hard to read the Kanji in the ED.

Audio is Dolby Digital at 224 kbps, and it sounds perfectly fine. I wish it had a higher bitrate so it could be a bit better, but I generally don't have any complaints. It's about the best you can do for a DVD release. (The dub is atrocious in terms of acting, though the sound quality is just as good as the JP track)

I got my money's worth, but don't get the DVDs. If it's $10 like what I paid, then go for it, but Blu-ray it is (obviously).

[SeaFox]

^ Interesting.

I originally watched Shinsekai Yori on Hulu, and it was only available in SD. I remember the picture quality being not the greatest and I always chalked it up to it being streaming quality and the lack of HD video, but being transcoded (hardsubbed) from the DVD release could have also come into play with these source issues.

I've been meaning to do a rewatch of the series and open up my blu-rays to see the improvement of a full-quality presentation. I guess I could do an A/B comparison with HiDive now too, though.

[Yuripa]

Originally Posted by SeaFox

I've been meaning to do a rewatch of the series and open up my blu-rays to see the improvement of a full-quality presentation. I guess I could do an A/B comparison with HiDive now too, though.

I have the Jp Blu-ray (not all the volumes unfortunatly) so you could even make a US/JP comparaison if you have the software/Hardware to do it, as I can provide the JP counterpart.

[professorwho]

Shiki
(FUNimation)

Disc 1 size: 37.54GB

Episodes 1 to 8: 31.4GB (individual file sizes range from 4.2 to 5.1GB; also, removing the subtitle options and core Dolby Digital tracks dropped the file size, i think?)

Video:
1080p MPEG-4 AVC
20.9 mbps AVG
38.0 mbps MAX
27.4GB

Audio:
Japanese Dolby TrueHD 2.0 24-Bit 754 kbps
English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 24-Bit 2207 kbps

The 8 episodes total up to a 187 minute runtime. While slightly over 3 hours, there is still enough space to produce a good looking disc. While my MKV is slightly lower in file size (probably those extra bit things mp3dom explained a while back), the total filesize is 37GB for the episodes. I wish more space could've been used, so bitrates could be higher. Even if it were 43 or 44GB, total, the difference could be noticable.

Now, I mention the site's review, as it's one of the worst. The reviewer mentions NOTHING about encoding, besides, "Line detail is extremely strong and backgrounds often have exceptional detail as well", which is still about aesthetics. He also states that the show is well animated- again, wrong. It is beautifully drawn, but not animated, as in movement. The review tells you nothing about the picture quality. It's a flat out lie to give it a full score just based on the aesthetics, as encoding is nowhere mentioned. Same with audio, again, the reviewers here talk about how well the number of channels are used, but not clarity- to which is more important. Ignore every anime review from this site, 95% of the time, they're completely wrong and are giving good scores because they don't want to face the facts and/or want to keep a good relationship with the distribution studios.

But ignoring the utterly incompetent reviewer, how does it actually look? Pretty good! But, I wouldn't give it full marks. In daytime scenes banding is mostly non-existent. It does pop up in places with the same colour, like carpets or walls or even pieces of clothing. Nor is there any noticeable aliasing nor macroblocking. But, Shiki is a psychological horror series, and there are a lot of darkly lit scenes. Thankfully, the majority of them have little to no banding, but when it gets really dark (in terms of colours), it's too much for the encode and banding appears with ugly results. Fortunately, that's not very often, but when it happens, it's extremely noticeable.

Perhaps what I find most interesting is that the backgrounds, which the reviewer says have "exceptional detail" are quite blurry at points. It's not in every shot, but it's quite often. This perhaps was intentional by the Japanese staff to replicate some filmic techniques, but I doubt FUNimation has anything to do with it. A stylistic choice, perhaps?

Audio is superb. Flawless, even. There's no noticeable compression and it sounds excellent! When played in a stereo setup, the Japanese track is clearly better, and the dub track has inconsistent volume issues, but clarity is never lost- just the volume changes a bit. (The Japanese track is the way to go- the dub isn't bad, per se, but there's nothing amazing either, with the exception of Sunako, who is equally good between Aoi Yuuki and Cherami Leigh. Other than that, the Japanese track is by far the better acted version.)

If I were to give scores, I'd give an 8 for video, and 9 for audio. For $10 currently at Rightstuf it is 100% worth your money.

[professorwho]

Seraph of the End Owari no Seraph
(Universal, UK)

(I have my external Blu-ray drive set to my native region, A, so I'm relying upon Mangaranga's stats for this)

Disc size: 38.82GB

Episode 1: 6.12GB

Video:
1080p MPEG-4 AVC
23.97 mbps AVG

Audio:
Japanese DTS HD-MA 2.0 24-Bit 2129 kbps
English DTS HD-MA 5.1 16-Bit 1999 kbps
French DTS HD-MA 2.0 24-Bit 1658 kbps
German DTS HD-MA 2.0 24-Bit 2127 kbps

Okay, it's an even 6-6 split and it should be easy to see why. Universal loaded up the release with multiple audio and subtitle tracks in various languages. Dutch subtitles are also included, in addition to the aforementioned languages (excluding Japanese, obviously).

Video is amazing. This is the first time I've reviewed an anime encode not done by the usual suspects (FUNimation, Sentai, Aniplex, Pony Canyon, Anime Ltd, and so on), so I was a bit curious. Bitrates are similar to that of FUNimation, and the audio is more in line with Sentai (DTS and way higher bitrates than FUNi). I watched on my normal TV, a 49" display, and it looked great. Line detail is superb, and there is practically no banding. There is some, mind you, but it's hard to find, and very tiny, so unless you look real hard, it's nearly flawless.

I opened up the menu on my player and observed the bitrate fluctuation- it mostly stays around 21 or 22 mbps, but when action pops up, or the background art (more on that in a second) looks real nice, it shoots up to 35 mbps. The credits, of which have a black background in the first episode lower the average, as they go around 6 mbps, which is fine for just text.

My only issue isn't at all with the encode, but with how the series was made. The characters look nice, but pale in comparison to the breathtaking backgrounds by Studio Pablo, who does freelancing work for anime in the backgrounds aspect. The visual aesthetic of the character artwork clashes with the backgrounds, so the series has an odd look to it- good character art juxtaposed with gorgeous backgrounds that are watercolour paintings.

I only checked the Japanese audio track, and it's excellent. The bitrate is 3 times higher than what FUNimation uses for their Japanese stereo mixes, but there really isn't much of a leap in audio quality. It sounds flawless, with zero compression audible. (I don't like English dubs, so I didn't bother with that or the other audio mixes, though I assume they're equally as good.)

If I had to give ratings, I'd give a 9/10 for video and a 10 for audio.

I picked it up for £15, which is a steal. It's a gorgeous collector's edition with a huge booklet full of character art, interviews, and the breathtaking backgrounds.

[FeelsBDMan]

Funimation's Sakura Quest seems to be their standard 9/4 split for 13 episodes. Episodes are all 4.8GB and quality is solid for the most part although some of the darker scenes exhibit minor banding. Compared to what Sentai did with PA Works it's much inferior, even though they crammed 12 episodes onto one disc that disc looks better and has no banding.

So an alright release, not perfect but passable.

[professorwho]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs33S6mp8yk

There was a lot of interest with Black Box (France) saying they used the new 4K restoration of Cardcaptor Sakura, and not the 2007 "restoration" by Q-Tec (ugh) that was used by NIS America in their release.

So, ViCklatereur's review is up, and... it does! It uses the new, improved 4K master! The new master has more detail and better colour correction than the 2007 restoration. So, despite some technical oddities (which I'll mention in a second), it looks better than NIS' release, by far.

That said, it isn't happy days. The set averages 18 mbps, due to being put on 6 discs. That's quite low in general, and for a 35mm transfer with grain, that's even more so. Thankfully, he says it looks good, and the screenshots show.

The audio is Dolby Digital. That's right. In 2018, AC-3 audio. Japanese is 5.1 and 448 kbps and French at 192 kbps. He says there is some noticeable compression in the action scenes when listening to the French track. There is something he notes with the spelling in the subtitles, but as I'm not French, I can't really tell, and as an English speaker, it's not a big deal for me.

He says you won't be disappointed. It's great that it's using the 4K scan, and while I'd prefer LPCM audio, it seems like a great package.

[BlackCondor93]

Regarding the Soul Eater NOT BD from Funimation (whose masters were used for Madman AU's release and Manga UK's release), I've read on a review on myReviewer that the Japanese audio has an audio dropout 1:16:51 into disc 1, cutting off at the start of a sentence. Can anyone else confirm this?

[Yuripa]

I've just checked some of the screenshots I've got from the French version of UBW and it seem's that this time the french authoring studio "Com'On Screen" did not mess up the brightness/gamma.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/117386
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/117387
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/117388

The only downside of this release is the pretty bad banding/compression.

I also compared the screenshots from the "AniméHD" review and... ow god, the software (Leawo Player) he use to take screenshots is so bad, it completly change the colors/brightness.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/117139

[Girls With Guns]

So to paraphrase this entire thread, every anime on physical media sucks to some extent and/or in some manner. Got it!

[klasma]

Thanks for the heads up, I might buy that French CCS edition.

Originally Posted by professorwho

The audio is Dolby Digital. That's right. In 2018, AC-3 audio. Japanese is stereo at 192 kbps and French is 5.1 at 448 kbps. He says there is some noticeable compression in the action scenes when listening to the Japanese track.

I believe you got that backwards. The Japanese is 5.1 at 448 kbps, the French is stereo at 192 kbps, and it's the latter where he comments about this being noticeable in the action scenes.

[professorwho]

Oh. Damn. I hate when I get something wrong... oh well...

[Yuripa]

Originally Posted by professorwho

There is something he notes with the spelling in the subtitles, but as I'm not French, I can't really tell, and as an English speaker, it's not a big deal for me.
.

He said that the subtitles translation for Keroberos is "Kero" while the new translation for the new serie (Clear Card) and the original manga is "Kelo".
Nothing important.

[professorwho]

I think the reason I put it down wrong is because it's rare to find a TV anime in Japanese with 5.1 surround. There are very few that have such a thing- Violet Evergarden's film version of the first 3 episodes is in LPCM 5.1 24-Bit at a whopping 6912 kbps! Full Metal Panic Invisible Victory (Season 4) has a DTS HD-MA 5.1 track. Those are the only 2 recent examples.

Originally Posted by Yuripa

He said that the subtitles translation for Keroberos is "Kero" while the new translation for the new serie (Clear Card) and the original manga is "Kelo".
Nothing important.

Thank you! As someone who doesn't know French and had to rely upon guessing and badly automatic translated subtitles, I was wondering what he said. Thanks!

[NLScavenger]

5.1 JP audio... Excitement deflated. Original audio or bust.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

5.1 JP audio... Excitement deflated. Original audio or bust.

I'm in the same camp. I'm okay with audio remixes, but give the option of the original mix. (Something that most Hollywood studios NEVER do)

Hopefully Anime Limited can release the series with this 4K scan and an LPCM stereo track of the original mix.

[Sylontack]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Hopefully Anime Limited can release the series with this 4K scan and an LPCM stereo track of the original mix.

At least this shows that they're giving out the newer masters to licensors so it's likely that'll be what AL gets if they pick up the full series, assuming they don't just clone the NIS discs

If not I guess I'm hitting up France for imports yet again

[Lum]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

5.1 JP audio... Excitement deflated. Original audio or bust.

Japanese recording studios are that far behind the times?