The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[pikagreg]

I remember having a similar problem with the Aria DVD's on my PS3 and I had to manually change S3 to 16:9 because it kept trying to force 4:3

[jsevakis]

Originally Posted by Logan Jones

I think the main reason why the US DVDs look worse than the R2 DVDs are because they are sourced from analog COPIES of the D-2 tapes to something like U-matic or Beta. (Just a hunch.) And the haloing everywhere was most likely because of the MPEG-2 authoring software having artificial sharpening baked into the footage by default. And to top it off, they encoded the video at the worst possible quality.

You're probably not far off. Nobody was using U-Matic professionally by the 90s (except for timecoding subtitles), but since D2 was a composite format, it did have to pass through composite interconnects every time it got duplicated, so there was some quality loss. The edge enhancement was likely added at this stage.

And while I appreciate the love, I'm VERY HAPPY not to have to deal with trying to make this look good!

[professorwho]

Of course. It would be hell to work with.

In which case, the best option is now to get the JP DVDs, rip them, sync up subtitles, and play it back on a modded Original Xbox on a CRT, as then you can play the DVD encode with subs.

[jsevakis]

One important thing to note is that Karekano, like a lot of 90s anime transfers, was done on a telecine that was out-of-phase, which means that the video fields don't cleanly line up with film frames. This means that you often see fields that blur one film frame into the next, probably halfway down the screen. You can't do anything with video like that. If there were no added video effects, some BD players are capable of a sort of janky sometimes-good IVTC and come up with something resembling a progressive presentation, but any IVTC is impossible with an out-of-phase transfer.

TBH, I'm not even sure I could do as good a job as Qtec did here.

[NLScavenger]

Keroro Gunsō the Super Movie - IVL DVD (Hong Kong)

DVD for a change. This is the official Hong Kong DVD release of the first Keroro Gunsō movie, which afaik is the only official English subtitled home video release. Movies 2-4 were also released in Hong Kong with English subs, but none were included with Movie 5. I have movie 2 as well, but I'll be taking screenshots of that later.

Video is hard telecined, so I used an IVTC filter. MPV screenshot settings:

--scale=spline36
--cscale=spline36
--vf=lavfi="pullup,dejudder,fps=24000/1001"

Audio
- Japanese Dolby AC3 48000Hz 6ch 448kbps
- Cantonese Dolby AC3 48000Hz 6ch 448kbps

Subtitles
- Chinese traditional
- Chinese simplified
- English

[theberserker22]

Originally Posted by chronoclast

He mentioned it displays correctly using a BD player so it could be that the PS4 and PC software he used aren't detecting the anamorphic flags correctly with SD content on BD. I remember Justin saying before how the PS4 had compatibility issues with SD-BDs which weren't fixed until he changed authoring software. It might just be a compatibility issue with how it was authored.

I can confirm that the issue with the Pailsen files appears both on my ps3 and my xbox one. Both machines show the 16x9 image squished into 4:3. I don't have any other players to check with but regardless this is a bit disappointing given how much of an improvement the set is otherwise.

I also popped in the original OVA set I still have from before and the issue does not exist there. It's 16x9.

[slerch666]

Originally Posted by theberserker22

I can confirm that the issue with the Pailsen files appears both on my ps3 and my xbox one. Both machines show the 16x9 image squished into 4:3. I don't have any other players to check with but regardless this is a bit disappointing given how much of an improvement the set is otherwise.

I also popped in the original OVA set I still have from before and the issue does not exist there. It's 16x9.

I will check Pailsen later today. I was happy with the TV series looking great.

[Logan Jones]

Originally Posted by jsevakis

One important thing to note is that Karekano, like a lot of 90s anime transfers, was done on a telecine that was out-of-phase, which means that the video fields don't cleanly line up with film frames. This means that you often see fields that blur one film frame into the next, probably halfway down the screen. You can't do anything with video like that. If there were no added video effects, some BD players are capable of a sort of janky sometimes-good IVTC and come up with something resembling a progressive presentation, but any IVTC is impossible with an out-of-phase transfer.

TBH, I'm not even sure I could do as good a job as Qtec did here.

Well... the out-of-phase field blending is probably, without a doubt, the WORST looking aspect of Kare Kano's production. The ghosting of characters moving onscreen is bad enough, but when the background scrolls, the jerkiness is really bad!

However, there was a fan made restoration of the show sourced from the R2 DVDs that was able to use an automated process the de-blend the frames! (Its still 30fps mind you, and there's still ghosting, but the sickening out-of-phase scrolling is almost completely gone!) Looks so much better to me.

Of course, this forum is about official releases, not fanmade restorations. Still, I was very impressed.

[BoscoTheMan82]

I opened the Pailsen Files disc in BDInfo and the episodes are flagged as 4:3, they got everything right here except 1 disc

[Mangaranga]

Cross post from the Inuyasha thread:

So the video issues for this set actually go deeper than dropped frames and interlacing artifacts.
It's nothing new that Viz's authoring house encodes in the wrong colour space, however in the case of InuYasha they appear to somehow have put the episodes through this twice.

https://slow.pics/c/BfVkCF22

The Spanish BD was encoded with incorrect gamma levels, but it's only after applying the BT.601 -> BT.709 filter twice that it resembles the Spanish BD colour wise. The NCOP has been put through the conversion once as per usual, hence why the episode matches it after one shift. Interestingly it also doesn't have any of the dropped frames or interlacing issues...

[kk1]

Are there no competent Blu-ray authors or can anime companies just not afford to hire them?

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by kk1

Are there no competent Blu-ray authors or can anime companies just not afford to hire them?

There's Justin, but he's insanely busy already (and he's never going to do stuff for Viz again), as well as mp3dom in Italy, but he's an employee at Dynit, so unless he does it in his free time, I doubt that would work either. David Mackenzie is probably the best compressionist on the BD and UHD format, but work via his place, Fidelity in Motion, is probably WAY too expensive for anyone outside of big indie labels to afford.

Duplitech, who does stuff for Shout Factory, Kino Lorber and Warner Archive is good, but also probably a bit too much. Hell, I bet even Radius60 is too much for most (but they're not a great choice).

So really... there aren't many options.

[kk1]

Originally Posted by professorwho

There's Justin, but he's insanely busy already (and he's never going to do stuff for Viz again), as well as mp3dom in Italy, but he's an employee at Dynit, so unless he does it in his free time, I doubt that would work either. David Mackenzie is probably the best compressionist on the BD and UHD format, but work via his place, Fidelity in Motion, is probably WAY too expensive for anyone outside of big indie labels to afford.

Duplitech, who does stuff for Shout Factory, Kino Lorber and Warner Archive is good, but also probably a bit too much. Hell, I bet even Radius60 is too much for most (but they're not a great choice).

So really... there aren't many options.

Just odd to me that such a technical job has people employed doing it who have no idea what they are doing, with people on the internet able to point out their mistakes. I don't understand why the people employing them continue to pay them for such shoddy work, since we know from people here they are getting some complaints, unless they know they are getting substandard work but don't feel like paying more for someone better. Though then that raises the question why the people doing the shoddy work don't fix it so they can charge more...

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by kk1

Just odd to me that such a technical job has people employed doing it who have no idea what they are doing, with people on the internet able to point out their mistakes. I don't understand why the people employing them continue to pay them for such shoddy work, since we know from people here they are getting some complaints, unless they know they are getting substandard work but don't feel like paying more for someone better. Though then that raises the question why the people doing the shoddy work don't fix it so they can charge more...

The general layman audience don't care about picture quality and as long as there are no mass returns or negative publicity on a grand scale, Viz will happily keep conducting business with them. Clearly they are happy with things as they are.

[theberserker22]

Has sentai said anything about possible replacement discs for the 4:3 error on their new Votoms set?

[Bobo1313]

I'd put the odds at 0%, it's a hardware issue with PS4 and works fine on Bluray Players. Maiden Japan probably couldn't afford to take on that extra cost either.

[chronoclast]

Originally Posted by Bobo1313

I'd put the odds at 0%, it's a hardware issue with PS4 and works fine on Bluray Players. Maiden Japan probably couldn't afford to take on that extra cost either.

It's actually a disc issue as the disc is flagged 4:3. My previous post in thread about it possibly being hardware was speculation and proven incorrect.

Setting the player to stretch 4:3 to 16:9 should yield the same results as if the disc had the proper anamorphic flag (I'm assuming all BD players have this ability?). For SD, 16:9 content is encoded squished down to 4:3 and there's an anamorphic flag that tells the player to stretch it back to 16:9. The disc is simply missing that flag. It should be fixable on the user side but it's still a very amateur mistake for the company to make as QC checks should've easily caught it.

[Bobo1313]

Originally Posted by chronoclast

It's actually a disc issue as the disc is flagged 4:3. My previous post in thread about it possibly being hardware was speculation and proven incorrect.

Setting the player to stretch 4:3 to 16:9 should yield the same results as if the disc had the proper anamorphic flag (I'm assuming all BD players have this ability?). For SD, 16:9 content is encoded squished down to 4:3 and there's an anamorphic flag that tells the player to stretch it back to 16:9. The disc is simply missing that flag. It should be fixable on the user side but it's still a very amateur mistake for the company to make as QC checks should've easily caught it.

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately Maiden Japan and Sentai can't seem to do SD-Bluray right. I can't think of a SD-Bluray release they put out that didn't have a problem.

[BigOnAnime]

A heads up, it seems the Mamoru Hosoda Collection release of Wolf Children uses a new disc. I was asked by someone to check the English disc credits for something, and out of curiosity, I popped both the original release and Mamoru Hosoda Collection release in, and they're not the same disc. I wonder if there's any difference in video quality between the two. I really need to figure out how to screencap Blu-rays and such.

Originally Posted by Bobo1313

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately Maiden Japan and Sentai can't seem to do SD-Bluray right. I can't think of a SD-Bluray release they put out that didn't have a problem.

Well you won't have to worry much about that anymore as they seem to be done with SDBD. If we don't get any SDBDs solicited for October, we'll go an entire year without a Section23 SDBD that isn't a combo pack, the last was Yumeiro Patissiere on 10/29/2019.
https://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=836126

Really wish they could figure out how to do SDBDs properly and they'd do them again as abandoning them severely limits what they can license given that Crunchyroll and FUNimation have effectively pushed them out of newer titles.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by kk1

Just odd to me that such a technical job has people employed doing it who have no idea what they are doing, with people on the internet able to point out their mistakes.

This is something I wonder about a lot Not just with regards to anime Blu-ray encoding, but in many lines of work.