The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[chronoclast]

A potential part of Funi's problem could be the sheer amount of new product they churn out every month. Most months they usually have around 10-12 new releases. A lot of them are TV series and some are combo packs. That's a ton of new discs that each have to be approved, encoded, QC'd, etc. That's not even counting the slew of re-releases which still require some work.

They strike me as very volume oriented and focused on cranking out as much product as possible. They're likely understaffed for the workload so I wouldn't be surprised at all if they cut corners as much as they can just to make deadlines.

[Robbl]

Hire someone who knows how to scenefilter and encode :^)

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Robbl

Hire someone who knows how to scenefilter and encode :^)

Agreed, but it’ll probably never happen. Simply put- they only care about money.

And even then, I have no idea who at FUNi does this. Is it at the FUNi building? Is it a freelancer? Or is it outscorced? (If it’s the latter- they could go to Media OCD for the higher end titles- but I doubt it.)

[pikagreg]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Agreed, but it’ll probably never happen. Simply put- they only care about money.

And even then, I have no idea who at FUNi does this. Is it at the FUNi building? Is it a freelancer? Or is it outscorced? (If it’s the latter- they could go to Media OCD for the higher end titles- but I doubt it.)

That is kind of what I wonder too. It isn't like EVERY Funi release is bad but it is inconsistent enough where it would be nice to figure out where things go wrong.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by pikagreg

That is kind of what I wonder too. It isn't like EVERY Funi release is bad but it is inconsistent enough where it would be nice to figure out where things go wrong.

Yeah. Not every release uses the same encoding algorithm. Yamato and Escaflowne both seem to use the same setup (30 mbps target), which is different from FMA Brotherhood and Soul Eater which is 100% different (aim for less than 20 mbps but with lots of spikes), and still different from many of their other releases.

It appears that they have many compressionists, but where they are from and where they work is a mystery to me.

[chronoclast]

I was always under the impression that Funi does all of their production work in-house as it has been said to be cheaper than outsourcing. I could very well be wrong however.

[professorwho]

Wow. Just Googled, “funimation encoder” and pretty much answered my question. (I also asked Justin, but I figured, ‘hey- why not see if I can find evidence myself to form the same conclusion).

Duncan Yan- Video/Audio Compressionist- FUNimation. That says he’s an employee. What else does it say?:

Cinema Craft SP3 Encoder
Sonic CineVision HD Encoder

Okay. The first is an MPEG-2 encoder for DVD titles. Can’t find an exact date on when it first released, but it appears to be standard.

Then the second one. This explains a bit. This article explains a bit about it;

NOVATO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 28, 2006--Sonic Solutions(R) (NASDAQ:SNIC), the leader in digital media software, today announced that Europe's first commercially-available HD DVD title was produced using Sonic's Scenarist(R) advanced interactive authoring and CineVision(TM) high-definition encoding solutions. Developed by authoring studio Imagion AG of Trierweiler, Germany (https://www.imagion.de/), the title is built around the computer-animated 3D short Elephants Dream, which was created by an international creative team led by Ton Roosendaal, chairman of Blender Foundation. Elephants Dream is notable not only as the first HD DVD title made under production conditions in Europe, but also as a showcase for the stunning visual quality and advanced interactivity of HD DVD. Special features on the title include on-the-fly menus and scene selection, picture-in-picture, and an interactive side-by-side comparison of HD and SD video quality.

"The tools and training that we've gained through our membership in Sonic's High Definition Authoring Alliance (HDAA) were absolutely essential to the success of this ambitious project," said Michael Becker, who led the Imagion team for the production and is a member of Imagion's Managing Board. "Elephants Dream demonstrates in a very exciting way what is possible with HD DVD, when you have the applications and expertise to take full advantage of the format's Advanced Content capabilities. Sonic not only provided us with the required technology, but also helped develop our understanding of this new format, so that we were able to envision and execute this unique and creative interactive title. Their support has been invaluable."

So, that’s a big wall of text. When was it written? August, 2006.

FUNi is using first gen encoders. Old, decade plus year old programs.

[professorwho]

(I reposted it with a correction. That’s why it appears out of order)

[chronoclast]

Originally Posted by professorwho

So, that’s a big wall of text. When was it written? August, 2006.

FUNi is using first gen encoders. Old, decade plus year old programs.

Them using ancient outdated encoders wouldn't be a shock lol. The compression on some of their BDs now looks similar to their releases from over a decade ago.

[Robbl]

Isn't x264 free? Why would you use outdated proprietary garbage?

[Gouki]

Because Funimation.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Robbl

Isn't x264 free? Why would you use outdated proprietary garbage?

They paid big $$$ for the encoders back in like 2007/2008 and haven’t upgraded.

Because they’re cheap.

[mp3dom]

Oh no... please let me explain this because it can be easily misunderstood.
Cinema Craft was a renowned brand of japanese MPEG-2/4 encoders and considered as one of the best available for dvd (SP3) and blurays (HDe) titles. While the encoder itself was developed years ago, the encoder engine was still updated and improved over time. With the same "way of thinking", x264 was born in 2005 so we should consider it to be outdated as well? Obviously not...
Cinema Craft doesn't exist anymore, but all the customers switched to Sirius Pixels which is essentially the new version of Cinema Craft line of encoders, with new additions and improvements. Check the website (there are GUI screenshots too) and you'll see that indeed it's a "beast" of software in just less than 10 Mb.
Regarding CineVision encoder, it doesn't exist anymore as well. FUNi used it at the beginning because CineVision was a (relatively) affordable encoder at that time (bundled with Scenarist, the authoring software) so it was a good "starting point" to create in-specs blurays. The "gamma" problems of lots of the old FUNi blurays comes from this encoder. It's not the fault of the encoder itself, but due to the wrong settings applied to the encoder. Now (well, it's already some years) FUNi is using Sirius Pixels encoder.
Just to specify... Sirius Pixels IS the most used encoder on commercial blurays. Almost all the Majors use it and almost all the japanese blurays you see are encoded with this software. So, FUNi actually is using a top-notch encoder.
Regarding x264, is a good encoder that ouputs very good quality especially at lower bitrates (when you put 8-9 and more episodes/disc) but at higher bitrates may exhibit some severe flaws that are hard to fix even with manual intervention. It's used mainly by independent or small labels because it's "free" nature made it affordable for everyone, while Sirius Pixels encoders are really expensive.
Considering that the ones (in the bluray industry) who uses x264 just use "standard" settings, I guess they're not even aware of the problems they may have in the encoded stream.

[professorwho]

Huh. Then, the person who works there should update his page. Plus, Justin told me that they use first gen encoders.

Thanks for clearing that up.

[mp3dom]

Well, here: http://siriuspixels.com/customers.php you can see that FUNi is listed as their clients (and you can also see the huge amount of other clients as well). They also list the FUNi version of "your name."

[professorwho]

Oh I believe you. So, in this case, the issue is not the software, but rather (as we’ve suspected) the people inputting the settings?

[professorwho]

I find it ironic that under their “outstanding encodes” is this from FUNi:

[mp3dom]

If I'm not mistaken, S;G had gamma shift problems. With that encoder is almost impossible to shift the gamma so I think they've used the old CineVision on it.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by mp3dom

If I'm not mistaken, S;G had gamma shift problems. With that encoder is almost impossible to shift the gamma so I think they've used the old CineVision on it.

It does. But, are they from the same family (company)? If so, I could understand why they’d put it there, but I don’t see it as a legacy product (from my tiny research).

[mp3dom]

The encoders are made by two totally different companies and I've checked right now one episode and it's encoded with CineVision.
The titles listed there are provided by the customer itself, so they have wrongly sent the title/image to the wrong company.