The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by Girls With Guns

OK, sorry, but just to clarify, in Naiera's post I take it the first image is DVD, second image is the blu-ray?

Since the difference here isn't huge, the easiest way to distinguish the two is to remember that the DVD images aren't quite as wide, and thus have black borders on each side.

[Girls With Guns]

Ok, ha, I didn't even notice the black edges, they were so thin... but I do see quite a bit of difference between the two, more so than with a lot of upscales. the blu-ray images are a good bit sharper. The reason I was asking was that that in your first post, the Blu-ray images were first, but in your re-scaled post they are reversed...

I have not seen either RahXephon or Eva (series), but I wasn't a fan of the first two Eva movies at all, just not my cup of tea. I'm thinking I would probably like the rip-off series more, lol...

[Naiera]

I noticed I never actually mentioned which show it was either

[Nostalgic Twilight]

I decided to do some comparison shots between the Viz DVDs of Maison Ikkoku and the Japanese Blu-rays. As expected, the results are pretty staggering. The JP BD shots are courtesy of hissatsu.

Shot 01
Shot 02
Shot 03
Shot 04
Shot 05
Shot 06
Shot 07
Shot 08

[vincentric]

Had a look at Haikyu vol.2 where 12 eps were stuffed into one disc. It's a monolingual release but still... stats weren't looking so hot. Each ep is given 3.5GB (x12, that comes out to 42 total GB) | around 3.3gb for the video and 200mb for the audio.

I looked and looked and looked in the usual places where video anomalies would be most present but despite the low bitrate, it looked mostly all good. There was very little in the way of banding, just a few slight instances. Compression blocking was noticeable at times but I was expecting a lot worse, considering the low amount of data, they kept things mostly under control. Good job overall.

Some screencaps.

Ep.14 -





Ep.15 -

[MoonFly]

Originally Posted by vincentric

Had a look at Haikyu vol.2 where 12 eps were stuffed into one disc. It's a monolingual release but still... stats weren't looking so hot. Each ep is given 3.5GB (x12, that comes out to 42 total GB) | around 3.3gb for the video and 200mb for the audio.

I looked and looked and looked in the usual places where video anomalies would be most present but despite the low bitrate, it looked mostly all good. There was very little in the way of banding, just a few slight instances. Compression blocking was noticeable at times but I was expecting a lot worse, considering the low amount of data, they kept things mostly under control. Good job overall.

Some screencaps.

Ep.14 -





Ep.15 -

What images have compression blocking? I have a hard time spotting that.

[vincentric]

Originally Posted by MoonFly

What images have compression blocking? I have a hard time spotting that.

Sorry about that, they were easier to see while in motion. Basically most visible in shots with darker (black, dark blue, etc..) colors in it such as their volleyball uniforms, hair, sky, backgrounds, etc... this shot in particular has the most noticeable:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/584/22...b9844114_o.png

Just to reiterate they did a good job keeping it under control, I've seen a lot worse. The UK Fate Zero release comes to mind, that one has some terrible blocking in it:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...&postcount=395

[MoonFly]

Originally Posted by vincentric

Sorry about that, they were easier to see while in motion. Basically most visible in shots with darker (black, dark blue, etc..) colors in it such as their volleyball uniforms, hair, sky, backgrounds, etc... this shot in particular has the most noticeable:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/584/22...b9844114_o.png

Just to reiterate they did a good job keeping it under control, I've seen a lot worse. The UK Fate Zero release comes to mind, that one has some terrible blocking in it:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...&postcount=395

Where exactly is the comrpession blocking in that shot so that I know what it is? Also in the UK vs AOA comparsion, I'm having a hard time spotting the difference there too other than the obvious brightness issue. I think I might see the difference in the clothes a little, but not really.

Also, in general if you or anyone would happen to know, what's the video quality and quality in general of anime blu-ray releases in other countries like Germany, UK, Italy, Spain etc ?

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by vincentric

Had a look at Haikyu vol.2 where 12 eps were stuffed into one disc. It's a monolingual release but still... stats weren't looking so hot. Each ep is given 3.5GB (x12, that comes out to 42 total GB) | around 3.3gb for the video and 200mb for the audio.

I looked and looked and looked in the usual places where video anomalies would be most present but despite the low bitrate, it looked mostly all good. There was very little in the way of banding, just a few slight instances. Compression blocking was noticeable at times but I was expecting a lot worse, considering the low amount of data, they kept things mostly under control. Good job overall.

Some screencaps.

Huh, they actually managed to do things well here. Though I still don't like the one disc practice (Aside from it making barebones releases even more barebones). Out of curiosity, how does Collection 1 which has two discs compare?

[vincentric]

Originally Posted by MoonFly

Where exactly is the comrpession blocking in that shot so that I know what it is? Also in the UK vs AOA comparsion, I'm having a hard time spotting the difference there too other than the obvious brightness issue. I think I might see the difference in the clothes a little, but not really.

Also, in general if you or anyone would happen to know, what's the video quality and quality in general of anime blu-ray releases in other countries like Germany, UK, Italy, Spain etc ?

No problemo, I'll zoom it in for you.

In the Haikyu shot, it's most noticeable in the spiky hair:



In Fate Zero, the blocking in the UK shot covers pretty much 75-80% of the image but I'll zoom in on the part that's most noticeable. Look at the hair next to his nose and mouth extending down to the hood of his shirt:

UK on the left | AoA on the right



If you still can't see it, am not sure what else I can do for you.

Regarding video quality in other countries, am not the most knowledgeable but I know a little. I'll just tell you what I know off the top of my head. A lot of UK releases seem to be terrible but there are exceptions. For example, the UK version of Blue Exorcist looks just as good as its Aniplex counterpart, I've also read that Durara and the upcoming Baccano release are very good. Italy from what I remember reading has a very good encoder that has done very good work on several titles, just can't remember exact titles at the moment. EDIT: Japan is usually the best bet when it comes to good video encodes but importing doesn't come cheap and can sometimes/often times not be english friendly (no dub/sub). I've imported my fair share of titles though and have found them to be very worthy.

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

Huh, they actually managed to do things well here. Though I still don't like the one disc practice (Aside from it making barebones releases even more barebones). Out of curiosity, how does Collection 1 which has two discs compare?

Same here, I would prefer to see the episodes spaced out as much as possible (4-5 eps per disc @6-7GB video data per ep preferably) but they did a fine job here with Haikyu no doubt about that. I'll fire up collection 1 and share some results as soon as I can, just a little busy at the moment.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by MoonFly

What images have compression blocking? I have a hard time spotting that.

Please don't quote that many pictures without at least using a spoiler!

Quoting a post directly above your own in its entirety is quite redundant, too.

[MoonFly]

Sorry, not exactly aware of how things work here.

But thanks Vincent, I see it more now. For me it is kind of hard to spot I guess unless if I really look hard in some areas. The only time I've really noticed some bad compression was in Funi's Psycho-Pass, and I also notice some compression that happens in Serial Experiments Lain's blu-ray. Actually, looking at the Haikyuu one, I notice that kind of compression alot. Doesn't bother me too much, but I did notice it I think in NISA A Lull In The Sea Blu-Ray where I'd see a part of someone's skin color change a little bit and it looked like a compression type puddle or something. The Fate/Zero one with blocking well, I just plain couldn't see that one too well.

[Naiera]

All Blu-ray video is compressed

It figures you'd notice how bad Psycho Pass is. It's supposed to be one of the worst.

I have to admit I didn't notice much of anything wrong with Lull. Though they squeeze too many eps on each disc, NISA is "the best of the worst" in the game. It's Aniplex and the rest, with NISA of course being king shit of turd mountain.

[vincentric]

Checked out Haikyu collection 1. The 9 eps on disc1, and the 4 eps on disc2 each have 4GB of data | 3.8gb for the video and 200mb for the audio. So it's pretty much just a 500MB increase in video data per ep over collection 2.

PQ is pretty much on par with collection 2, didn't bother taking too many screenshots. First two images are from ep7 and the rest are from ep13 -

[MoonFly]

Originally Posted by Naiera

All Blu-ray video is compressed

It figures you'd notice how bad Psycho Pass is. It's supposed to be one of the worst.

I have to admit I didn't notice much of anything wrong with Lull. Though they squeeze too many eps on each disc, NISA is "the best of the worst" in the game. It's Aniplex and the rest, with NISA of course being king shit of turd mountain.

Sevakis does a good job at cleaning things up as best he can, but I can spot the compression easily when it happens. I wouldn't call NISA a shit turd mountain by any means with the level of care that they do put into their releases when it comes to that though. If anything, right now Sentai is still in that area along with Funimation with their screw ups. I'd say NISA's level of Video Quality should be the bare minimum and not some of what I've seen since these companies are going to continue this disc cramming route which I don't care for much either. Psycho-Pass shouldn't be the way it is with that rampant banding, and the bad compression artifacts there is, ShinSekai Yori shouldn't have the most outright distracting banding I've ever seen to where it feels like i'm watching a picture with a rainbow moving around in the corners. And how they let Penguindrum get released the way it did overall is completely unacceptable.

AOA's video quality is probably the only redeeming thing to them at this point and that they include booklets for those who like them (even though they gimp on the pages and some extras).

[Naiera]

The only thing I dislike about AoA is that their titles aren't in wide distribution

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by MoonFly

I wouldn't call NISA a shit turd mountain by any means ...

Neither did I.

They're "King Shit of Turd Mountain"; the best of the worst.

[MoonFly]

Originally Posted by Naiera

Neither did I.

They're "King Shit of Turd Mountain"; the best of the worst.

I still wouldn't call them that considering that they do a pretty good job, out of what I've seen. The main problem they have is one that's been previously mentioned before in the thread and explained, the color issues.

[Naiera]

They still put too many eps on each disc. Can't do any better than Turd Mountain if you put nine eps on a BD50.

[MoonFly]

Originally Posted by Naiera

They still put too many eps on each disc. Can't do any better than Turd Mountain if you put nine eps on a BD50.

Their quality is still a whole lot better out of all of the non parent companies in terms of packaging (though that's starting to change seeing with what Funi and Sentai are trying to put out now to please collectors) quality and actual care. While yes, they cram too many episodes per disc, I really have nothing to complain considering how good it actually still looks compared to other companies. Sure it doesn't have the max bitrate, but hey, it looks a whole lot cleaner unlike Sentai and Funimation Blu-Rays. If anything, it'd be nice even if they were to charge 10-20 bucks extras for them to include a little bit more in their releases along with an extra disc to crank the bit rate.