The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[professorwho]

It's not the exact same files, but it is nearly identical visually 90% of the time. (Lower bitrates, though) So, that's why I said "basically" the same.

Maybe you'd prefer the colour timing/grading on their DVD releases? Those are based on the Italian masters by Dynit and mp3dom, so they're of exceptional quality.

[professorwho]

I just took a s**t load of captures of the Dynit/Madman release. (It's from a fan-release with untouched Dynit video and audio muxed from the AU BDs)

They're from VLC, so there may be some inaccuracies in terms of colour, but it should give a good example of what it looks like.

Here

[klasma]

Those Dynit screenshots also have a red tint. This can be seen on the sailor uniforms, white gloves, aprons, teeth, eyes, all-white buildings in the backgrounds, white sparkles, even Uminos glasses. It seems to me that none of the releases have the originally intended color.

[professorwho]

Yeah, they do. The Dynit release has the most detail, but the tinting is different than what you want. It's a trade off, I guess.

I like the look of the Dynit release, personally, but I didn't watch the series until the last couple of years, and don't have a nostalgia for certain colours.

[klasma]

I don't think it's nostalgia, it's just visually obvious to me that there's like a reddish veil over the image. I generally seem to have highly color-sensitive vision, so that kind of experience is nothing new for me.

(Maybe I should take off those rose-colored glasses — I wish I could.)

[mikezilla2]

Originally Posted by Robbl

Source? Afaik publishers only upscale when there are no HD masters available. In case of Higurashi we even got a nnedi3 upscale which is currently the best release you can get for Higurashi in terms of picture quality.

Talking mostly About anime blu ray relaseses that for the Most part exist only in Germany ie think green Vs red has a BD only in germany and a few other titles

[NLScavenger]

I know that I have been giving VLC a lot of crap, but it turns out it does have one good use: it has somewhat decent Blu-ray menu and pop-up menu functionality for a totally free player. Leawo Player also supports menus, but it's a PITA to use. Music doesn't always work though: Macross DYRL doesn't play the music, but Urusei Yatsura 2 Beautiful Dreamer does.

I can finally take BD menu screenshots:

-Macross DYRL 2016 BD main menu-


-Pop-up menu-



The problem is that VLC doesn't use the correct color matrix for its internal snapshot functionality, but after doing some tests I found a cumbrous way
of taking somewhat decent VLC screenshots. It's far from perfect though because of some weird geometry(?) problems that rear up sometimes, but it's good enough for menu screenshots.

Output via OpenGL with primaries: BT.709 + gamma: BT.1886, print screen, paste in MS Paint, save. On some setups, other output settings may work better.

mpc-hc + madvr vs VLC
Suspiria
Macross DYRL - notice the weird geometry(?) issues on comparison #2 (shoulder) and #4 (hair)

EDIT: Looking again at the comparison #2 and #4, I think there's some kind of filtering going on with VLC, which makes the shoulder and hair look slightly shifted towards one direction.

[Naiera]

Here's the MediaInfo for the first episode of Gundam 00. It's a 7/6/6/6 split and it looked real nice to me.

[Show spoiler]Video
ID : 1
ID in the original source medium : 4113 (0x1011)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings : CABAC / 3 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 3 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 23mn 50s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 27.0 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 35.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.543
Stream size : 4.48 GiB (90%)
Writing library : x264 core 148 r2638 7599210
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=4 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=10 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / slices=4 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=1 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=1 / weightp=1 / keyint=23 / keyint_min=1 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=23 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=26999 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.50 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=34999 / vbv_bufsize=27999 / nal_hrd=vbr / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
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 #1
ID : 2
ID in the original source medium : 4352 (0x1100)
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration : 23mn 50s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Frame rate : 30.000 fps (1600 SPF)
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 262 MiB (5%)
Title : Stereo
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Original source medium : Blu-ray

Audio #2
ID : 3
ID in the original source medium : 4353 (0x1101)
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration : 23mn 50s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Frame rate : 30.000 fps (1600 SPF)
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 262 MiB (5%)
Title : Stereo
Language : Japanese
Default : No
Forced : No
Original source medium : Blu-ray

Text #1
ID : 4
ID in the original source medium : 4608 (0x1200)
Format : PGS
Codec ID : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration : 23mn 45s
Bit rate : 8 867 bps
Count of elements : 85
Stream size : 1.51 MiB (0%)
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
Original source medium : Blu-ray

Text #2
ID : 6
ID in the original source medium : 4609 (0x1201)
Format : PGS
Codec ID : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration : 23mn 45s
Bit rate : 57.6 Kbps
Count of elements : 657
Stream size : 9.79 MiB (0%)
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
Original source medium : Blu-ray

Menu
00:00:00.000 : en:Chapter 01
00:02:02.956 : en:Chapter 02
00:03:36.674 : en:Chapter 03
00:11:33.693 : en:Chapter 04
00:22:03.947 : en:Chapter 05
00:23:33.995 : en:Chapter 06

[FeelsBDMan]

How'd you get VLC working with Bluray?

There is some sort of plug-in? I've never found a software that's worked well at playing Blu-ray through my Bluray PC drive.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by FeelsBDMan

How'd you get VLC working with Bluray?

There is some sort of plug-in? I've never found a software that's worked well at playing Blu-ray through my Bluray PC drive.

You need to install libbluray for unencrypted Blu-ray playback on VLC. Full unencrypted backups from MakeMKV work, but I think a decrypter such as DVDFab Passkey should also work.

VLC can also read select encrypted Blu-ray discs via libaacs in conjunction with the key database (keydb.cfg). Some titles in the database had their aacs keys revoked and hence don't work anymore, such as the US BDs of Wreck-it-Ralph, Frozen, The Terminator (remastered) and The Raid: Redemption.

[SeaFox]

Originally Posted by FeelsBDMan

I've never found a software that's worked well at playing Blu-ray through my Bluray PC drive.

LeaWo blu-ray player is free. I suspect it is built off a modified VLC. I also have a copy of WinDVD Ultra I bought for practically nothing. Both of them let me play back commercial blu-ray video discs fine.

[Yuripa]

Leawo destroy the Colors/brightness of what it play I strongly advise to not use that player with the standard setup.
It's only good to record/take screenshots of the BD menu.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/117139 > FR = Leawo player screenshot.

[SeaFox]

Originally Posted by Yuripa

Leawo destroy the Colors/brightness of what it play

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/117139 > FR = Leawo player screenshot.

So it makes the colors brighter and increases contrast... The sounds suspiciously like the same issues VLC has when you leave it on the default settings on Windows.

[professorwho]

What would be the "correct" settings for VLC (that reduce said issues)?

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by professorwho

What would be the "correct" settings for VLC (that reduce said issues)?

OpenGL video output

[professorwho]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyDx3WeK9Dw&feature=youtu.be

Excuse the poor quality, but after recording the JoJo variable bitrates, I decided to do FMA Brotherhood next. And WOW.

Like, the whole first scene is like 4 to 5 mbps. Regardless of compressionist, there is NO reason it should be that low.

I get it's a dialogue scene with little besides moving mouths, but even Sentai encoded similar shows at 5 times that bitrate in similar scenes!

[professorwho]

Gundam 00 USA (Nozomi) vs Japan (Bandai Visual)
Episode 1 (I'm assuming Naiera's rip is of EP1)

Video:
1080p MPEG-4 AVC
27 (Nozomi)/38.39 (Bandai) mbps AVG

Audio:
Japanese LPCM 2.0 1536 kbps 16-Bit (exact same between both)

Episode 1 was placed on its own BD-25 in Japan, and the other volumes have 2 or 3 episodes on a BD-25 also at high bitrates around 38 mbps, so they're maxed out.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Episode 1 (I'm assuming Naiera's rip is of EP1)

Well, I did mention that it was

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Naiera

Well, I did mention that it was

Looks like I can't read.

[Naiera]