The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[Naiera]

[Mangaranga]

Took the chance to revisit the old NISA BD for AnoHana, and whilst it's still pretty good with a solid 30mbps encode, I assume it was sourced from HDCAM masters due to the weird artifacts visible on the sides of the screen, and in anything that's a solid colour red. I pretty much forgot that most shows seemingly used to be delivered this way. The only modern exception I've seen to this was Yuri on Ice.

[professorwho]

Justin did compression, so he might remember the source.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

Cells can't be a clone. Aniplex's BD is 3 discs whereas the AUS/UK release is 2 discs.

I mean, if we want to be technical, then putting something on 2 can still be a clone in terms of encode. I believe the UK/AU of Your Lie in April is a 1:1 clone in terms of video and audio, but it was re-authored for each half to fit on 2 discs. Aniplex decides to leave lots of room on their discs, and in many cases, you can simply re-author the disc to add more .mt2s files with no difference in quality- assuming 5 or 6 episodes can fit within the 45GB limit most compressionists try to meet.

I noted a similar thing with Nozomi’s release of Revolutionary Girl Utena- there were only 4 episodes on each disc, but there was more than enough room to bump it up to 6 with no side-effects. It just means less discs to produce.

But in the case of Cells, it’s clearly not a clone.

[mp3dom]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

Took the chance to revisit the old NISA BD for AnoHana, and whilst it's still pretty good with a solid 30mbps encode, I assume it was sourced from HDCAM masters due to the weird artifacts visible on the sides of the screen, and in anything that's a solid colour red

Yes it is... due to the earthquake at that time and the difficulty to get -SR tapes, because only SONY facility produce them.

[BigOnAnime]

May be of interest to some even though I can't do a comparison (no external BD drive to capture screenshots or anything), the Grave of the Fireflies SteelBook uses an entirely new disc, so it might be of better quality, but I can't say for sure of course. The old disc had no music for its menu, the (incredibly annoying) crying baby TAN ad, and old Sentai logo. The SteelBook uses different disc artwork, the newest Sentai logo (which is a downgrade from their prior one, I really liked that colorful intro), indicates they got the movie from Toho (hence why GKIDS nor Disney never handled it), it has music for its menu, has an ad for HIDIVE, and different disc production credits. Lastly the original release played the Japanese credits untranslated, then the English ones, this disc goes straight to the English translated credits with the music playing.

Old production credits | New production credits

[DTG75]

Originally Posted by professorwho

My only real complaint isn't with the disc, but about the release. Aniplex of Japan should've put this out on 4K UHD. Yes, I know it was most likely composited at 1080p, but so was Kimi no na wa, and Tenki no Ko, and they're on UHD. Q-Tec is apparently pretty good at HDR mapping, as I've heard the Your Name UHD is reference quality in terms of HDR, besting titles like Mad Max Fury Road and The Revenant.

If it were on UHD, the fight scene at the 51 minute mark could be THE HDR demo Nozomu Abe's bit would be a showstopper.

It was composited at 855p

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by DTG75

It was composited at 855p

Source?

[pikagreg]

I want that steelbook but waiting for a price drop lol

[Suikoman444]

Same, waiting for their next sale.

[BigOnAnime]

Yeah, it's pricey. I mean, $70 MSRP for a re-release of a movie that's been out how long? It's basically around the price of the JP release. I still pre-ordered it anyway, got it for $42 from RightStuf who is already shipping it nearly an entire month early.

[NLScavenger]

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders – Madman / Manga UK BD

Screenshots


Don’t have screenshots from the JP BD to compare to, but the colors are different from a 2014 Crunchyroll WEB-DL. I suspect Madman received intermediates from VIZ Media USA with the color standard conversion mistake.

Left to right: BD / CR




Audio & subtitles
- Japanese 16-bit DTS-HD MA 2.0 with optional subtitles
- English 16-bit DTS-HD MA 2.0 with optional signs

BDInfo

Disc Title: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Set 2 Disc 1
Disc Label: JOJO_BIZARRE_ADV_SET2_DISC1
Disc Size: 49,680,303,702 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00000.MPLS
Size: 49,323,133,440 bytes
Length: 3:34:54.172
Total Bitrate: 30.60 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 25321 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: English / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1719 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1715 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Subtitle: English / 2.304 kbps
Subtitle: English / 33.589 kbps

x264 settings (some episodes retain the encoding settings)

Writing library: x264 core 155 r2901 7d0ff22
Encoding settings: cabac=1 / ref=4 / deblock=1:1:1 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=0.40:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=2 / sliced_threads=0 / slices=4 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=1 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=1 / weightp=1 / keyint=23 / keyint_min=1 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=23 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=22000 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=35000 / vbv_bufsize=30000 / nal_hrd=vbr / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:0.60

Bitrateviewer graphs
Episode #1


Episode #2


Episode #3

[Mangaranga]

As I suspected, these are merely Viz's encodes repurposed by Madman, but I assume it's less discs seeing as Viz's first BD is like 34gb for 6 eps. I don't necessarily think reusing the encodes was a bad thing as the encoding is actually really good, and the colour space can at least be fixed by applying the BT.601 to BT.709 shader in MPC. In all honesty I think if Viz can fix the colour space issue and sort out their awful subtitles, then their releases could be among the best out of the domestic distributors (Discotek aside).

Out of interest as well, where are you finding the encoding details?

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

As I suspected, these are merely Viz's encodes repurposed by Madman, but I assume it's less discs seeing as Viz's first BD is like 34gb for 6 eps. I don't necessarily think reusing the encodes was a bad thing as the encoding is actually really good, and the colour space can at least be fixed by applying the BT.601 to BT.709 shader in MPC. In all honesty I think if Viz can fix the colour space issue and sort out their awful subtitles, then their releases could be among the best out of the domestic distributors (Discotek aside).

Out of interest as well, where are you finding the encoding details?

In MediaInfo, either via the standalone program, or in MPC-HC via Properties > MediaInfo. On disc 1, only episodes 5, 7 & 8 have them. These settings can also be found on most, if not all, MediaOCD discs.

Madman is 3 discs.

Episode sizes disc 1:

Name            Time In         Length          Size            Total Bitrate   
----            -------         ------          ----            -------------   
00000.M2TS      0:00:00.000     0:23:43.088     5,017,006,080   28,203          
00001.M2TS      0:23:43.088     0:23:43.004     5,940,799,488   33,399          
00002.M2TS      0:47:26.093     0:23:42.462     5,916,696,576   33,276          
00003.M2TS      1:11:08.555     0:23:42.087     5,862,162,432   32,978          
00004.M2TS      1:34:50.643     0:23:42.504     5,915,209,728   33,266          
00005.M2TS      1:58:33.147     0:23:43.171     4,824,960,384   27,122          
00011.M2TS      2:22:16.319     0:23:43.213     4,813,575,744   27,057          
00013.M2TS      2:45:59.532     0:25:11.092     5,124,787,776   27,131          
00007.M2TS      3:11:10.625     0:23:43.046     5,907,922,944   33,213

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

These settings can also be found on most, if not all, MediaOCD discs.

Out of the MediaOCD discs I have, the only one that doesn't show them is Outlaw Star.

[Logan Jones]

What do you guys think of the Cardcaptor Sakura (1998 series) Blu-rays?

There first is an old release from the eary 2010s that appeared to be an upscale from an dated scan from the DVD era:

[Show spoiler]https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screenshot.php?movieid=102375&position=19

The second is a 2017 remaster in 4K(!) of the orginal 35mm film elements. (I don't have a screenshot, so this video will have to do)

ã€�カードã‚*ャプターã�•ã��ら】「クãƒ*ウカード編ã€�「ã�•ã��らカード編ã€�Blu-ray BOX＆DVD BOX発売告知PV（æ˜*åƒ�比較） - YouTube

I heard both releases have fairly aggressive DNR, but that can still be rectified to a certain extent, right?

[NLScavenger]

Despite the more aggressive dnr, the new 4k remaster looks better IMO because of the superior color correction. The old remaster (which is not an upscale) has boosted colors and chroma bleeding.

[professorwho]

I’ve seen Episode 1 and can confirm it looks pretty good compared to the original release. More detail and better color grading help it. Granted, it’s still Q-Tec, but honestly it looks fine. I’m hoping Anime Limited uses the 4K scan for the UK release of the series.

[GenPion]

It’s obvious the 4K remaster looks better. I wish a label would license it stateside. Might get the JP Blu-ray set and add custom subtitles eventually. Maybe.

[BoscoTheMan82]

I don't think anyone can license it again in the states till NIS America's license runs out