The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[Pyoko]

Originally Posted by SirYodaJedi

Um, I was under the impression that all DVDs were interlaced (except for the rare 240p disc). Progressive scan players just deinterlaced the footage.

I believe the DVD specification requires that the stream be output interlaced, but there are two ways of actually encoding the video. One is "hard" interlaced where every interlaced field is encoded separately in the stream. The other is "soft" interlaced, the video is actually encoded progressively at 24fps and the interlaced output is calculated on the fly, so it's fairly trivial to just reverse that and reconstruct the original frames, and in the case of software DVD players I think they might actually access the progressive image data directly. The vast majority of mainstream movies and TV shows based on 24fps sources were encoded progressively ever since the beginning, but sadly anime DVDs were (are?) for the most part hard/true interlaced.

[SirYodaJedi]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

The other is "soft" interlaced, the video is actually encoded progressively at 24fps and the interlaced output is calculated on the fly, so it's fairly trivial to just reverse that and reconstruct the original frames, and in the case of software DVD players I think they might actually access the progressive image data directly.

Hmm, I see that now. Are there any hardware players that can output the native 23.976 Hz footage (not just a reverse telecine)? My Sammy BD-J5100 just outputs all DVDs at 1080p60, regardless of encoding.

[BoscoTheMan82]

It's not soft interlaced its 23.976 or 24 fps progressive with pulldown to 29.976 fps, progressive scan does reverse pulldown to take the footage back to progressive. Sounds like your player is doing a bob deinterlace to 59.94fps.

[SirYodaJedi]

Originally Posted by cfx

no standard for 24Hz in NTSC (SD) video, it's always 60Hz so at least originally there would've been no accounting for this with DVD.
<snip/>
Blu-ray players that upscale DVDs and output HD via HDMI could possibly do that though?

I mean, yeah, my post was looking for an upscaling one that outputs "soft interlaced" without the interlacing step, at 1080p24 (or 2160p24).

Originally Posted by BoscoTheMan82

It's not soft interlaced its 23.976 or 24 fps progressive with pulldown to 29.976 fps, progressive scan does reverse pulldown to take the footage back to progressive. Sounds like your player is doing a bob deinterlace to 59.94fps.

I'm not an expert on this either, so I only understood half of what you said. I'm pretty sure we are using "soft interlace" as a colloquialism to refer to DVDs that are encoded as 480p24 and pulldown+interlacing is applied by the player, as opposed to native 480i60 encoding (or PAL equivalent, but I'm fortunate enough to not have to deal with that).
Eww, I don't trust reverse pulldown, especially if it is automated.
I don't mind 3:2 pulldown (I deal with it a lot, as I usually watch streaming content on a 60 Hz monitor or tablet; Crunchyroll is mostly 23.976, and many YouTube videos are too), but I was curious since I do notice the occasional judder caused by the frame pacing in wide panning shots (especially animated, but anime is what pushed me to finally get a Blu-ray player). If the most of 24 Hz players just do reverse pulldown, I can deal with that (as long as it can be disabled). I take it VLC probably can display 23.976 without the superfluous steps, though?

[Pyoko]

There are upscaling players that can output progressively-encoded DVDs at 24Hz, my Oppo UDP-203 has that option for example. In addition some TV sets are capable of judder-free playback even from a 60Hz signal with repeated frames so it might not even be needed if you have one of those.

However getting a proper, progressive 24Hz output from an interlaced DVD like most anime is a different beast. I'm not sure if the Oppo can do it and unfortunately I don't have any DVDs like that to test.

[Sylontack]

Originally Posted by PissedOffPeoN

Did anyone get the madman re zero releases? I wonder how it compares to funimations disaster.

I picked them up today although I don't plan on unsealing them yet (not totally decided if it's a show I want to keep or not), although the release uses FUNi's reissued discs verbatim.
For some reason the print quality on the cover slicks isn't great though, not sure if they're from a different printer, being part of their new release method for FUNi/CR titles.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by ChilledOctopusOnLava

I wouldn't say it means nothing as the higher the bitrate, the less compression artifacts you get on your image. Eventually, of course, you get to the point that any higher rate will result in no visual difference. Of course mathematically this would be incorrect, but if no one can see the difference, at least according to the editor or whoever is hired to take care of the authoring, then that is okay in their books...

What show(s) is(are) this(these) that has the lowest bitrate yet still look good at (F)HD resolution size? I would very much like to see his works....

Doesn't UHD blurays use more than that.....every second?

That's 720p 16:9 yes? or something aspect ratio with 720 height? Either way, that means I should have waited for a bluray release of it all(If they even come...) then since they run minimum 720 height and whatever adjusted width with or without black bars to keep the aspect ratio correct....?

So apparently this is best viewed on a dedicated DVD player and TV screen and *not* a DVD drive on a computer and whatever monitor I have....?



I can work with Region B, I'm from Australia and our region is B for bluray and 4 for DVD.....are these German ones VIZ media or some other company?

In order:

Not necessarily. Yes, a higher bitrate makes it easier to have an artifact free image, but there’s no fact that higher=better. Take a look at Metropolis (2001 by Rintaro, not the Fritz Lang 1927 film), the UK BD has a lower video bitrate than the US release and even the Japanese release, yet the picture quality is the best of all because the compressionist knows what they’re doing. Your theory that bigger=better is incorrect. It makes it easier, but there’s no guarantee. Let’s say two compressionists are working on the same movie. Both have the same source and audio, the only difference is the video encode. The better compressionist can achieve a better image at 20 mbps than the worse one at 35 mbps.

Anything by Discotek. Justin Sevakis does fantastic work.

Again, not necessarily. The Revenant averages 36.91 mbps on its UHD, but because H.265 is a very efficient codec, and there are lots of spikes over 100 mbps, it looks better than the standard BD.

Sure. It would I be good to wait.

Yeah. Best viewed on a TV and player and not on PC. With a TV and BD player you get the best possible experience.

The German BDs aren’t from Viz, instead Studio Hamburg Enterprises, but they have the English dub.

[TThomas]

Originally Posted by professorwho

In order:
The German BDs aren’t from Viz, instead Studio Hamburg Enterprises, but they have the English dub.

Applies for Pokemon Season 17-19.
For Season 20 onwards and several movies Polyband is in charge.

[ChilledOctopusOnLava]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

For reference an uncompressed 24fps HD master with 10bit color depth (which is a very standard configuration) is about 1400 Mbps, masters that get sent out to third parties though would most likely use something like ProRes compression, which is over 250 Mbps with full color resolution for the same configuration.

I take it that ProRes is lossless compression compared to lossy compression that H.264 and H.265 are? Although, supposedly, you can also get lossless transcodes on those latter two somehow.....

Originally Posted by Pyoko

The only reason a DVD would be better in a stand-alone player is if the disc is encoded with interlaced video, because software DVD players have always been notoriously bad at handling that type of disc. Other than that it's not going to make much of a difference.

HMmm, I seee.....so there is still an advantage of using a dedicated player over a bluray combo drive on a PC even if connected to a TV screen.....

Why do they even still make DVDs interlaced? I thought that was to make it work with CRT TVs but now that they're mostly gone, there's no reason to continue using interlace and use progressive....for LCDs......and newer tech...

Originally Posted by Pyoko

Apart from the compression issues your Pokemon screenshots show a lot of jagged edges and some ghosting and looks very much like interlaced video being de-interlaced poorly by the player, so that probably doesn't help.

Well I was playing it in PowerDVD 10 if that helps....might be different if I was playing it from the latest version, powerDVD 18....maybe incorrect de-interlace setting for software?

Originally Posted by Pyoko

DVD is just not very good. The bitrate is too low, the codec used for compression is old and inefficient, the resolution is low which means that when you scale it up to cover the screen all the compression artifacts are scaled up and enhanced as well. On top of that I suspect DVD production got lazier and lazier when Blu-ray came around, no point in trying to do a good job when it's going to be vastly inferior to Blu-ray no matter what.

Well you can always increase the bitrate and resolution size to 1080p24 to be inline with bluray standard, just that maybe the movie or episode will only be half an hr in length at most or even less to keep the quality the equivalent to a bluray.....hahahaha

Can you imagine, an episode per disc....but with extremely high quality transcode on a dual layer DVD? Hah...and the show having 4 seasons with 20 episodes per seasons.....so 4x20 = 80 discs......

Originally Posted by SirYodaJedi

Um, I was under the impression that all DVDs were interlaced (except for the rare 240p disc). Progressive scan players just deinterlaced the footage.

Isn't there two standards? Ours is PAL which is interlaced whilst yours is NTSC or something and is progressive at 30fps instead of 24 or 23.999999999999999999999999 recurring.....apparently the reason behind this is because we use different power settings..........or at least I read...maybe I read wrong....so correct me if I am wrong...

Originally Posted by professorwho

Not necessarily. Yes, a higher bitrate makes it easier to have an artifact free image, but there’s no fact that higher=better. Take a look at Metropolis (2001 by Rintaro, not the Fritz Lang 1927 film), the UK BD has a lower video bitrate than the US release and even the Japanese release, yet the picture quality is the best of all because the compressionist knows what they’re doing. Your theory that bigger=better is incorrect. It makes it easier, but there’s no guarantee. Let’s say two compressionists are working on the same movie. Both have the same source and audio, the only difference is the video encode. The better compressionist can achieve a better image at 20 mbps than the worse one at 35 mbps.

Ah yes you're right I guess. It also depends on the the source too, so if the good compressionist got a bad quality source, it's still not gonna be better than a bad compressionist with a good quality source - this I forgot to mention in my previous post...

Originally Posted by professorwho

The German BDs aren’t from Viz, instead Studio Hamburg Enterprises, but they have the English dub.

Hmm, thanks...

[professorwho]

Yeah. You have a LOT of false information and understandings. I don’t feel like explaining everything, but as cfx said, there’s probably some good explanations out there on video standard basics.

[BoscoTheMan82]

Steamboy
(Umbrella Entertainment)



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

Audio
English DTS-HD Master Audio 4196kbps 5.1 24 Bit 48 kHz (768kbps core)
Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 4131kbps 5.1 24 Bit 48 kHz (768kbps core)

Screenshots

This disc is not region locked like other discs from Umbrella. The back of the case is actually correct for the audio for once.

[NLScavenger]

I think that audio bitrate is incorrect. 6912kbps is the bitrate of PCM 5.1 24-bit. Mediainfo doesn't always display the correct bitrate of DTS-HD MA.

[Naiera]

Italian Mirai specs, in case anyone case.

[Show spoiler]General
ID : 1 (0x1)
Complete name : /Users/kristianmeller/Desktop/mirai.ts
Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 27.4 GiB
Duration : 1h 37mn
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 40.0 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 35.5 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 1h 37mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Maximum bit rate : 37.5 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Language : English

Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : DTS XLL
Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems
Commercial name : DTS-HD Master Audio
Muxing mode : Stream extension
Codec ID : 134
Duration : 1h 37mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Frame rate : 93.750 fps (512 SPF)
Bit depth : 24 bits
Compression mode : Lossless
Language : Japanese

Text
ID : 4608 (0x1200)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : PGS
Codec ID : 144
Delay relative to video : 27s 402ms

[professorwho]

Italian Mirai is a 1:1 clone of the JP video encode.

[Naiera]

I know.

[FeelsBDMan]

Just chiming in some thoughts on Funimation's Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid release.

Split is 7/7, each episode about 6.7GB~ which is good to see. Audio is good on both languages although I'd argue the English TrueHD 5.1 track has a tiny bit more punch. Picture quality looks really good to my eye, I couldn't see any banding in any of the "darker" scenes and everything looks pretty awesome.

As much hate as they get, the last two releases I've gotten from Funimation have been stellar (MKDM, FMP IV). They literally just need to keep this level of quality and no one would actually have a problem with them.

https://imgur.com/a/iPp81Gr

[professorwho]

FMP IV is actually one of their best releases ever.

[BigOnAnime]

This is related to a DVD release (show has no Blu-rays in Japan unfortunately), but here's disappointing news for fans of the Crest/Banner of the Stars franchise that I found in the discussion thread on an ANN review of FUNi's re-release. FUNimation, why must you be so incompetent?

Originally Posted by Levonr

If you have the old Bandai DVD's keep them because these FUNimation DVDs are actually lower quality. FUNi's video is a little more cropped, blurry & with other small artifacts. Its not a massive difference but if you're someone who really wants the best video quality seek out the old Bandai release. Its cheaper too.
Seriously how can a modern release look worse than a release from over 15 years ago? FUNimation

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/bbs...162201#5162201

Originally Posted by Levonr

I only checked random lines and they were exactly the same translation as Bandai's but I didn't check them all so maybe there's adjustments that I didn't see. I wouldn't count on it however, there wasn't a lot of effort into this release it seems.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/bbs...162634#5162634

When I eventually get my hands on FUNi's re-releases, I'll try to do a comparison myself with random screenshots. The only benefit FUNi's release has over Bandai's is their Banner of the Stars set has the previously unlicensed Banner of the Stars III.

[ChilledOctopusOnLava]

Originally Posted by cfx

No you can't do this; that's not a DVD anymore and isn't part of the standard, and no existing player could play it.

oh right...forgot that it would break the standard.......and I guess only top end DVD players would be able to eat the extremely high bitrate.....or and even choke on it too...

Originally Posted by cfx

You have a misunderstanding of a lot of the basics of video; more than can really be answered in forum posts. I'm sure there is somewhere online with articles or tutorials but I do not know where.

I did read an article on it a few months back as I pondered why frame rate of movies never went passed 24fps.... whether that article was incorrect or I my memory failed me, is another matter......

Now if only I could find that article I read of the history behind it all and see if the article is incorrect or my memory failed......

Originally Posted by FeelsBDMan

Just chiming in some thoughts on Funimation's Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid release.

Split is 7/7, each episode about 6.7GB~ which is good to see. Audio is good on both languages although I'd argue the English TrueHD 5.1 track has a tiny bit more punch. Picture quality looks really good to my eye, I couldn't see any banding in any of the "darker" scenes and everything looks pretty awesome.

As much hate as they get, the last two releases I've gotten from Funimation have been stellar (MKDM, FMP IV). They literally just need to keep this level of quality and no one would actually have a problem with them.

https://imgur.com/a/iPp81Gr

ooooh, those look very clean! I wonder if my Madman copy is the same or if it's just a rebrand with funimation's permission to resell in the oceanic region....

[professorwho]

Kobayashi Madman is the same discs.

I’d highly advise reading up on the basics before posting further, as it appears you’re going into one area of video without first understanding the basics. We’ve all been there at one point, so it’s nothing personal- is just don’t want to see you get even more lost and confused on this admittedly niche and complex topic.