The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[FeelsBDMan]

Does anyone have the information for Aniplex US's Heavens Feel Part I release? Just want to see how the Madman version I just got compares, hoping its a 1:1 clone.


The Madman version is 32.7GB on a single BD50 with DTS-HD 5.1 tracks for both Japanese and English.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by FeelsBDMan

Does anyone have the information for Aniplex US's Heavens Feel Part I release? Just want to see how the Madman version I just got compares, hoping its a 1:1 clone.


The Madman version is 32.7GB on a single BD50 with DTS-HD 5.1 tracks for both Japanese and English.

Video: 36886 kbps
Audio: 1821 kbps DTS-HD MA Japanese 5.1; 1875 kbps DTS-HD MA English 5.1 both 16-Bit

[pikagreg]

Originally Posted by Sinthetic

Guys, haven't looked in here for so long. Can anyone give me some info about the US releases of Lu Over and Night is Short?

I remember the Anime Ltd releases had some issues, missing song subtitles on Lu/banding on Night is Short etc...

Long story short, are the US ones worth getting over the UK ones? Does Lu have the end song translated?

The song at the end is subbed for Lu it looks like though not the

[Show spoiler]concert during the finale when things go wrong

I forget if there were any other songs that weren't just intrumentals.

[FeelsBDMan]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Video: 36886 kbps
Audio: 1821 kbps DTS-HD MA Japanese 5.1; 1875 kbps DTS-HD MA English 5.1 both 16-Bit

Ah so looks like Madman did their own encode, bit mixed about that since they've done many terrible encodes and their DVD division is a lot more competent. I've thrown together some screenshots, to my eye it looks fine, although I have nothing to compare it to. It's probably worse but to what degree it is compared to the US/JP I have no clue.

https://imgur.com/a/6UWJ9LZ

Timestamps are 3:11, 9:19, 17:09, 1:11:53 and 1:36:26 if anyone is interested in comparing.

[professorwho]

What are the stats of the Madman disc, if you don't mind me asking?

[FeelsBDMan]

Originally Posted by professorwho

What are the stats of the Madman disc, if you don't mind me asking?

The Madman version is 32.7GB on a single BD50.

Audio is 1536 kb/s, DTS HD MA 5.1 16 bit for both tracks. I don't have high end equipment but it sounded fantastic to me. The transfer on my TV looked pretty damn good as well, fairly happy with the result. It has the MVM logo so the UK transfer is going to be identical. I'd love to have the Aniplex version to check if gamma is correct but as far as banding and artifacting I didn't see much if any,

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by FeelsBDMan

The Madman version is 32.7GB on a single BD50.

Audio is 1536 kb/s, DTS HD MA 5.1 16 bit for both tracks. I don't have high end equipment but it sounded fantastic to me. The transfer on my TV looked pretty damn good as well, fairly happy with the result. It has the MVM logo so the UK transfer is going to be identical. I'd love to have the Aniplex version to check if gamma is correct but as far as banding and artifacting I didn't see much if any,

Gamma appears to be correct

Aniplex

[Show spoiler]

Madman

[Show spoiler]

EDIT: Now that I think of it, it could be the same video encode. The AoA encode size with slightly higher audio bitrates isn't much bigger.

[FeelsBDMan]

I hope so, either way it's a solid enough encode that for the price I paid ($30 USD) I'm happy plus it has a similar artbook and animation booklet to the Aniplex LE minus the nice chipboard box. It's like the Madoka movies for UK/AU which were a third of the price of the US Aniplex release and were clones of their encode with the same booklet.

Love Aniplex but if I can get clones of their encode for a fraction of the price, I'll take it.

[vivablu]

Did anyone have any problems with the sound of the Maquia disc? I only have a soundbar hooked up to my bluray player, and that disc didn't produce any sound through my soundbar after the main menu. I had to turn off the soundbar and used the TV's speakers to watch it last night. This is the first time something like this ever happened to me.

[dannphou]

Originally Posted by vivablu

Did anyone have any problems with the sound of the Maquia disc? I only have a soundbar hooked up to my bluray player, and that disc didn't produce any sound through my soundbar after the main menu. I had to turn off the soundbar and used the TV's speakers to watch it last night. This is the first time something like this ever happened to me.

Well, for me the sound from the disc works perfectly fine. But, maybe that’s because I’m not using a sound bar but an AV Receiver?

And wait, I thought you’re supposed to hook the sound bar up to the tv and not the BluRay player?

[pikagreg]

Would anyone have any more information on what causes the issues found in Ancient Magus Bride? Funi got back to me and I figure giving them as much detail I can would help. (I already sent links and screenshots of the US vs JP discs but don't know enough about quality issues to really give feedback what causes them and anything that could be done to fix them.

[professorwho]

-Banding
-Macroblocking
-Noise

My main thing is this. You can use a pre-established encoding algorithm, as long as you have a decent compressionist who then fine tunes the image based on the results. Case in point- the 9/4 split can work, only if someone decent is working on it. In fact, why not make a 7/6 split instead? But that only makes the bitrates higher.

Higher bitrates make it easier to encode, but you can still f**k up. FUNi really needs to have QC testers view the show on multiple different displays and players, and if they notice anything wrong in the encode- FIX IT. Use the JP BD as a reference- zoom in. If it doesn't look 95% identical, they messed up.

It's hard to really describe, but pretty much change everything.

[Clark Kent]

QC testers cost time and money. Major studios barely QC their home video releases these days, much less an outfit like Funimation.

Every release nowadays is more or less in beta, and problems only get fixed if there is serious outrage on social media.

[vivablu]

Originally Posted by dannphou

Well, for me the sound from the disc works perfectly fine. But, maybe that’s because I’m not using a sound bar but an AV Receiver?

And wait, I thought you’re supposed to hook the sound bar up to the tv and not the BluRay player?

my soundbar came with an HDMI and optical cables, whereas my TV (a Sony 3D display, not a real TV) only has RCA outputs; therefore, I had to hook up my soundbar to the bluray player instead, and it's been working great so far.....until I tried to play Maquia last night. I wonder what caused the problem?

[Footlong Shoe]

Originally Posted by vivablu

my soundbar came with an HDMI and optical cables, whereas my TV (a Sony 3D display, not a real TV) only has RCA outputs; therefore, I had to hook up my soundbar to the bluray player instead, and it's been working great so far.....until I tried to play Maquia last night. I wonder what caused the problem?

Check to see if your Blu-ray player has a menu to select which audio outputs are supported by your soundbar. If you can't find any concrete information on your soundbar you may need to enable and disable some formats and find out through trial-and-error.

I had this problem the first time I tried to watch a Sentai Blu-ray through my soundbar, so I had to disable DTS 5.1 on my PS3. Now discs that default to that format output in a different, supported one (or something like that)

[vivablu]

Originally Posted by Footlong Shoe

Check to see if your Blu-ray player has a menu to select which audio outputs are supported by your soundbar. If you can't find any concrete information on your soundbar you may need to enable and disable some formats and find out through trial-and-error.

I had this problem the first time I tried to watch a Sentai Blu-ray through my soundbar, so I had to disable DTS 5.1 on my PS3. Now discs that default to that format output in a different, supported one (or something like that)

Thanks for the suggestion! Both of the language tracks on Maquia are DTS 5.1, so may be I'll have to look for a way to disable that on my bluray player. I've played all other discs from everyone else, and none of them had any problems at all. May be I'll try another disc with a DTS 5.1 language track to see if it produces the same problem.

[Naiera]

They're lossless DTS-HD MA tracks. Not plain DTS.

[Footlong Shoe]

Originally Posted by Naiera

They're lossless DTS-HD MA tracks. Not plain DTS.

That’s also the format on the Blu-ray that didn’t work for me, so disabling DTS 5.1 output should still fix the problem (Master Audio wasn’t a separate option on my PS3, at least, maybe because it’s connected through optical)

[slerch666]

Originally Posted by pikagreg

Would anyone have any more information on what causes the issues found in Ancient Magus Bride? Funi got back to me and I figure giving them as much detail I can would help. (I already sent links and screenshots of the US vs JP discs but don't know enough about quality issues to really give feedback what causes them and anything that could be done to fix them.

What causes it? Not having a clue what you're doing? Sorry. Butthole answer from a long time lurker.

The issue can be caused by excess compression to fit too many episodes on a disc. It COULD be an issue with the masters used. Sometimes I wonder if FUNi just takes the CR/FUNi.com encodes, done to save as much space as possible, and just slaps them on a disc instead of starting from a fresh set of masters.

I am guessing others can have much better, more technical answers as to HOW it could happen.

Disappointing, and I hope the information you are feeding them creates a change. If they know what is causing the issue, maybe they can do better (or actually do) QC.

As far as QC being difficult, all they need is a decent sized TV with a reference input then have some mook go through frame by frame to see if there are compression artefacts or banding. If there are, go back to the start and go fresh. But hey, what do we know?

[Gouki]

The issue is that would take effort, care, time, and (most importantly) money from Funi to do it. And that's just to actually do it. Knowing Funi they would fail spectacularly.

There's clearly no one over there saying, "Gee, our Re:Zero looks kinda trash, like worse than the stream. Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to just fix this before shipping, rather than have to have a replacement program after fixing it anyway?"

"Shut up Brett, we'll make the peasants pay to ship back their original discs anyway."