The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[professorwho]

You were probably thinking about Ranma 1/2. Same mangaka, Takahashi Rumiko.

[Raye]

I have a DVD quality question so this may be a shot in the dark, but would anyone happen to know if the X Re-Mix set with the 5 discs is better than the original 8 discs released? Supposedly the picture quality was "enhanced," but I never saw any comparisons even with a title like Trigun that received the same "remix" treatment by Pioneer/Geneon. Honestly don't care about the sound upgrade since I think it only applied to the English track.

I sold my box set of the original release, slips and all, the other year and always wanted to get the upgrade. Now that it seems the series will never get a Blu-ray release in Japan, I figure this be my best bet in getting the best possible release.

[Girls With Guns]

I had researched that exact question just before I purchased the 5-Disc set of X on eBay a few years ago, but I don't remember what I had found out about it. But then, it's fuzzy DVD quality we're talking about to begin with, so to what extent would "enhanced" even be of any useful improvement? Probably cutting hairs, there...

[Raye]

Originally Posted by Girls With Guns

I had researched that exact question just before I purchased the 5-Disc set of X on eBay a few years ago, but I don't remember what I had found out about it. But then, it's fuzzy DVD quality we're talking about to begin with, so to what extent would "enhanced" even be of any useful improvement? Probably cutting hairs, there...

Haha, very true. No matter what HDTV you watch 480p on, it won't come close to even subpar 720p quality. If I'm not mistaken from what I read over a decade ago, the "remix" treatment was mostly for 5.1 audio. The improvement to the PQ was marginal, but my memory is hazy at this point so just figured I ask in case someone happens to own both releases. Guess I'll just cross my fingers and wait for the franchise to potentially resurrect itself one of these years.

[chronoclast]

Originally Posted by Raye

I have a DVD quality question so this may be a shot in the dark, but would anyone happen to know if the X Re-Mix set with the 5 discs is better than the original 8 discs released? Supposedly the picture quality was "enhanced," but I never saw any comparisons even with a title like Trigun that received the same "remix" treatment by Pioneer/Geneon. Honestly don't care about the sound upgrade since I think it only applied to the English track.

I sold my box set of the original release, slips and all, the other year and always wanted to get the upgrade. Now that it seems the series will never get a Blu-ray release in Japan, I figure this be my best bet in getting the best possible release.

IIRC every release of X from Geneon and Funi have been sourced from the same composite masters. From what I remember, the Remix upgrade was mainly for 5.1 audio. For the single volumes compared to the Remix discs, compression would likely be the main difference if there is one.

I have one of the Funi sets which used the Remix materials and it doesn't look good at all because of the composite artifacts. The Geneon Remix set is probably better compressed than Funi's discs at least though.

[NLScavenger]

Land of the Lustrous - Sentai BD

Originally Posted by Sensuifu

screencaps

[Gouki]

I have both the original LE box and the remix. Picture is basically the same, the main draw is the 5.1 Japanese audio and the fake bovine book like case. Like others have said, DVD is DVD is DVD.

[professorwho]

Castlevania
(Viz Media, USA)

Video:
1080p MPEG-4 AVC
1.78:1 Aspect Ratio
23.976 fps

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Audio:
English DTS-HD MA 5.1 48kHz 24-Bit 2302 kbps
English DTS-HD MA 2.0 48kHz 24-Bit 1638 kbps
Spanish DTS-HD MA 5.1 48kHz 24-Bit 3921 kbps
Spanish DTS-HD MA 2.0 48kHz 24-Bit 2122 kbps

Okay, so it's not technically an anime, but I'm posting this write-up on the Anime BD PQ thread and on its own thread.

Being a Netflix original, it was made for streaming. The streams are really poor. Colour banding up the wazoo, macroblocking and aliasing are also present and in insane quantities. So, with it being on BD, is it better than the stream? Yes. While it should be obvious, remember that some BDs come out looking worse than their official streams. That being Re:Zero from FUNimation. The worst looking Blu-ray I've ever seen.

The real question is- how much better? And honestly, it ain't a huge improvement. Aliasing is gone, thankfully, and there's less macroblocking, but the banding? Well, when banding is "baked into the source" it typically means that some was accidentally not corrected in the compositing phase of production. Castlevania defies that.

In fact, Castlevania is... and I hate to say it... nearly Re:Zero levels of bad.

First, the good- what little there is... The action scenes, which it is famous for having well animated and choreographed fights, have no macroblocking that was present in the stream. In fact, zero macroblocking and/or pixelation was present- which were the biggest issues on the Netflix stream. Lines are generally well defined with mostly no aliasing, and the CG is razor sharp with no aliasing and looks better than the 2D elements in terms of encoding. The English audio (which it was obviously produced with natively) is rather good with no audible compression, and has some heavy bass at points. And... that's about it...

Onto the bad... there's some minor aliasing, specifically in the Tervor/Alucard fight in the finale, but it's minor and not that bad. Otherwise, the main issue is so, so much worse.

Banding, banding, BANDING. This is unwatchable. The scene in Episode 1 where Dracula's wife is burnt at the stake is arguably the worst looking bit. Being a scene with fire, and haze across characters' faces, there is banding in nearly every frame. It's on characters' faces, it replaces the haze effects above the flames, it's on the building, the ground... everywhere. Even the beautiful opening sequence has it. It's so bad.

I made this Imgur album with some shots from Episode 1 (albeit taken with VLC, but when I compared these shots to what was on my TV, there was barely any difference). Here are some to show off how bad it is:







The video bitrate is really low because all 4 episodes are on 1 BD-25. I was hoping it would be a BD-50, but nope. It averages 20 mbps which isn't the worst I've ever seen, but I'm willing to bet that with a higher bitrate, some of the banding could have been reduced.

In terms of audio... what happened? It's not bad, but being Viz, I thought it would be 16-Bit, thus making the video bitrate higher. But it is 24-Bit. And for some strange reason, the SPANISH audio has a higher bitrate! Yeah, the Spanish dub. The original audio track has a lower bitrate... that's unacceptable. All the tracks sound fine, but damn. Not giving the original audio track a higher bitrate is stupid. Only StudioCanal does that really (obviously FUNimation does too, but the stereo vs 5.1 difference makes sense- 5.1 needs a higher bitrate) to this degree.

Overall, in terms of audio 9/10. It's very good. And video... Well, it's not as bad as Re:Zero, but it's damn close. 2/10

[Dailyan]

Sweet Jesus that looks fookin’ terrible. Even the worst Kino Lorber and Shout Factory discs I’ve seen didn’t have this much banding. That makes Re: Zero look like a David M encode.

[professorwho]

I'd say it's on-par with FUNi Steins;Gate and Psycho Pass in terms of awfulness. It ain't Re:Zero bad, but it's so close...

[Dailyan]

Originally Posted by professorwho

I'd say it's on-par with FUNi Steins;Gate and Psycho Pass in terms of awfulness. It ain't Re:Zero bad, but it's so close...

I cannot believe somebody Q&A’ed this and thought t looked good. I wouldn’t be surprised if Viz were supplied streaming masters. I can’t wait for Kauffman to praise the “aesthetic” in the eventual review.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Dailyan

I cannot believe somebody Q&A’ed this and thought t looked good. I wouldn’t be surprised if Viz were supplied streaming masters. I can’t wait for Kauffman to praise the “aesthetic” in the eventual review.

Yup. In fact, he won't say jack about encoding! It'll just be the pretty colours! But even then, they aren't pretty... then again, he gave Penguindrum, Psycho Pass and Steins;Gate all 9/10 ratings...

[LexInHD]

Ya can't un-beat that meat! Seriously though, who uses a BD-25 these days?! I don't recall any episodic content ever being put on a single-layer disc until this moment.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by LexInHD

Ya can't un-beat that meat! Seriously though, who uses a BD-25 these days?! I don't recall any episodic content ever being put on a single-layer disc until this moment.

FUNi and Sentai put episodes on BD-25s all the time.

The 9-4 split. 9 on a BD-50, and the other 4 on a BD-25.

But as for everything on a BD-25? Outside of Japan putting 2 or 3 episodes on one for individual volumes, it's practically unheard of outside Japan.

[Dailyan]

Originally Posted by LexInHD

Seriously though, who uses a BD-25 these days?!

Plenty of small labels such as Kino and Mill Creek still use 25GB discs. For a lot of films, if there’s little to no extras they’ll just cram it on a 25GB disc.

[Naiera]

A BD25 can be just fine for a normal length movie with few or no extras.

It’s not fine for what Viz did here.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Richter

Die banding. You don't belong in this world!

Yeah that banding looks bad, but I wonder if it was baked into the master.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Yeah that banding looks bad, but I wonder if it was baked into the master.

Maybe? As with Steins;Gate, some was baked into it, but it wasn’t much. As a result, FUNi’s BD... well, we all know. I’m willing to bet some is baked into its source, but I highly doubt that the compositing team could leave so much in...

[professorwho]

I showed the screenshots to one compressionist (Justin) and he just laughed. I wonder what our anime Blu-ray Wizard from Italy thinks about Castlevania...

[Naiera]

It's not anime, so he thinks nothing