The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[Mangaranga]

Here's another Justin vs Com'On with the Japanese BD thrown in as well.

Japanese BD




US BD




UK/FR BD




When I first got the UK Euph BD back upon it's original release, I wasn't impressed. Unfortunately for the longest time there was no easily available information out there for the Japanese/US BDs to compare it to, but as expected the US BD (which you haven't been able to buy in it's entirety for the last few years) is vastly superior to rubbish we got. Purely in regards to the video, the UK release middles between occasionally looking okay (mainly during bright scenes), and bad, as dark colour gradients or scenes pretty much always show banding and blocking to some extent. There is also seemingly some colour shift, but this may be at least partially due to the poor encoding. The US BD (authored by Justin) on the other hand looks more or less identical to the Japanese BD.

Three way comparison on Slowpics - use the arrow keys to navigate

https://slow.pics/c/4qnDPQkP

Where the UK release also falls flat is the subtitles. The subtitles look like DVD subs which is bad enough, but Com'On are entirely incapable of having more than one line of subtitles on screen at any given time. Their solution to this problem? To remove most of the sign subs throughout the series. Here's a few additional comparisons showing some of the omissions vs Justin's work.

https://slow.pics/c/8FiA3JeG

On a whole, as someone who really loves this show it's saddening that this franchise has received such poor treatment in the west. Expensive 3 part CE releases for Season 1 in packaging literally no collector wants (Part 1 being OOP for years), expensive 2 part standard edition releases for season 2 in Black DVD cases, meanwhile the movie releases Liz & Bluebird and Chikai no Finale both got released with the theatrical master, as well as both being dubbed with different dub casts.

[pikagreg]

Didn't realize Justin did the US BD. I was mad at the packaging and sort of just passed on it blindly and ended up picking up the UK set later since it wasn't too expensive lol

[NLScavenger]

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by pikagreg

Didn't realize Justin did the US BD. I was mad at the packaging and sort of just passed on it blindly and ended up picking up the UK set later since it wasn't too expensive lol

Despite really loving the franchise I passed on them for the exact same reason. I plan to eventually get the JP BD Boxes.
From memory I'm 99% sure Justin did the Euph S1 BDs (I think I asked on Twitter way back) as well as most of PC's output. I have no idea who authored Season 2 of Euphonium though, as that one appears to use the encodes from the JP BDs unlike everything else PC released.

[tglover79]

Originally Posted by kevers7290

Professorwho--do you have a list of MediaOCD encodes that are not Discotek releases? I know Mr. Sevakis did some work for NISA, Anime Ltd. and Viz. You can PM me if posting it publicly is not allowed.

I thought I heard he did some stuff for PonyCan USA while they were around.

[NLScavenger]

Kemono Friends - Discotek Media BD



Bitrate episode #1


Bitrate episode #2


BDInfo Disc 1 (episodes #1-#9)

Disc Title: Kemono Friends - Disc 1
Disc Label: KEMONO FRIENDS DISC 1
Disc Size: 46,905,183,978 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00000.MPLS
Size: 46,575,700,800 bytes
Length: 3:36:28.308
Total Bitrate: 28.69 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 22988 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: English / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  2304 kbps / 24-bit
Audio: Japanese / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1536 kbps / 16-bit
* Audio: English / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1536 kbps / 16-bit
Subtitle: English / 45.255 kbps
Subtitle: English / 7.024 kbps

[professorwho]

Violet Evergarden
(FUNimation)

I don't own it, but my friend Joan did, and she shared the info in her Discord server;



For reference, here's the JP BD;

(from Mangaranga)

Audio is in LPCM 2.0 16-bit for the FUNi release, which is REALLY shocking. Also, regarding the subtitles, "it's not using the Funi font either
it's Tahoma without bolding"

Plus, there's apparently x264 encoding settings left in, so it looks like it could be the Anime Limited disc ported over.

I don't have it, but this seems like an interesting release for sure!

Also, while we're at it, here's a bitrate comparison of the movie from Mangaranga;

JP BD


US BD

If anyone owns these, please share more info. This is really interesting...

[NLScavenger]

Maybe they ported the Madman discs.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Maybe they ported the Madman discs.

Madman episode #1

Originally Posted by BoscoTheMan82

Here's a bitrate scan of episode 1 of Madman's Violet Evergarden

Episode 1


Each episode is between 6.0-6.5 GB, Case says DTS-HD Master for audio but its actually LPCM. The episodes are encoded using x264 and the encoding settings are left in.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Madman episode #1

Not sure if the bitrate posted was from Episode 1 or not. I'll ask to find out.

[BoscoTheMan82]

Here's the same episode from the Madman disc, its an exact match

[professorwho]

Wow. Seems like the subtitles should be the same too (aka bad, as is, they're the Netflix translations with all the errors).

[BigOnAnime]

So, this also means they're using the TV broadcast masters, especially in the case of Episode 13? Ugh..... Has FUNimation ever cloned another company's Blu-ray discs before? I'm not aware of them ever doing something like this before.

[BoscoTheMan82]

Demon Slayer is just a clone with the extras stripped out, here it looks like Funi just changed out the logos and changed the region setting. I checked out the back cover for the standard version and it has the same error on it as the Madman cover showing the audio as DTSHD-MA.

[professorwho]

Any thoughts on the Blu-ray upscale of Eureka Seven? Doesn't look that good to me in the screencaps I've seen, but if it's an improvement over the DVDs I'll get it. If not, I'll import the JP DVDs since they're cheap and should be better encoded than the old Bandai NA and FUNi ones.

[Logan Jones]

I got one of the Bandai DVDs... It came in a cool box and inside it contained a crappy illustrated shirt and a manga. I recall the quality looking okay on that disc, but I was watching on a CRT in component, mind you.

[BigOnAnime]

8 of the 12 singles were like that, they got LEs, each came with a shirt, 2 came in chipboard boxes meant to serve as artboxes for 6 volumes each, 6 came with the E7 manga, 2 came with the spin-off manga Gravity Boys & Lifting Girl, and 3 of them came with CDs, with one being the complete best that also came with a bonus DVD containing the clean version of each opening and ending. Those things were stupidly cheap years back as everyone was trying to clearance them out.

As for the quality of Bandai vs. FUNimation with the Blu-ray, I wouldn't know. Also, FUNimation botched a subtitle in the Blu-ray.

Originally Posted by sonic

A couple people brought up things were missing from the Eureka Seven Part 2 Blu-ray Set released by FUNimation in the series release thread here and here.

The prime issue is some missing dialogue in the subtitles for episode 43, titled "The Sunshine Underground." At 15:32 to 15:36 on the Bandai DVDs the subtitles read "It was Adroc who scientifically proved..." and "that the crown was nothing more than that of a clown." However, on the FUNimation Blu-ray, disc 6 at around 03:04:13-16, it only reads the first line and the second line is completely absent from view while they are still speaking. This is a definite oversight on FUNi's part, and one that actually takes away part of understanding the context of the conversation; which is very plot heavy at that moment.

Another couple things missing from the BDs are the 4th clean OP, "Sakura" by Nirgilis, and the 4th clean ED, "Canvas" by Coolon. They are not included as extras on disc 7 along with the clean 3rd OP and 3rd ED. Interestingly, the clean versions of the 4th OP and ED were stated as extras on the back cover of the Bandai DVD volumes 10 and 11, however they too are not on those discs. Perhaps there is a licensing issue involved here?

Another thing to note is that the clean 4th OP and ED are included on the DVD disc with the Eureka Seven Complete Best soundtrack despite not being on the Bandai DVDs or FUNi BDs. The Eureka Seven Complete Best 2-Disc soundtrack was included with the 12th volume Bandai limited edition set; go figure. How the clean 4th OP and ED were on that DVD and not the Bandai volume sets or the FUNi BD release is strange to say the least. I'm pretty disappointed I don't have a cleaned up HD version of them with the FUNi set, though.

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...-line-in-ep-43

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Takarajima (Treasure Island) - Anime Limited France

Not so great encode of a not so great transfer with scanner noise.

Japanese and French OP and ED are encoded once and linked to the episodes via branching.



BDInfo episode #1

Disc Title: L'ILE AU TRESOR - BD1
Disc Label: L ILE AU TRESOR BD1
Disc Size: 47,568,948,473 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00018.MPLS
Size: 4,894,162,944 bytes
Length: 0:24:09.281
Total Bitrate: 27.02 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 21860 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: French / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1606 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1850 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Subtitle: French / 30.126 kbps
Subtitle: French / 4.509 kbps

Bitrate in the graph is slightly different because I did not include the 1 second of black video at the end

Avex BD (JP)



Better than the FR BD, but I wouldn't call it a slam dunk because of the compression and the black levels.

The JP doesn't have the idiotic branching for OP/ED in the FR BD, but that's not to say that the JP BD doesn't use branching. For some reason episodes are split in 4 parts (prologue+OP, first half, second half+ED, preview), but at least the branching is seamless unlike the FR BD.

Bitrate episode #1

AVG: 19863 kbps | MAX: 44447 kbps

Audio is 16-bit PCM 2.0

[SpaceDandy]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

The JP doesn't have the idiotic branching for OP/ED in the FR BD, but that's not to say that the JP BD doesn't use branching. For some reason episodes are split in 4 parts (prologue+OP, first half, second half+ED, preview), but at least the branching is seamless unlike the FR BD.

Actually that's because AL France somehow figured that people did not want to watch the opening or the show. They thus moved it to bonus material for Cat's Eye, stating that no one wanted to watch the opening on every episode and anybody healthy would skip it. This caused a huge backlash and they eventually stoped doing this. Treasure Island was being worked on at that time so they probably had the "cut" video masters ready for authoring and they fixed their terrible choice by software.

[NLScavenger]

Violet Evergarden Pony Canyon JP BD vs Anime Limited FR/UK BD

This is depressing. Anime Limited has released a few stinkers over the years, but this is possibly the worst one so far.

https://slow.pics/c/gKLI1IP3

FR/UK BD screenshots from @_MassiX_ on twitter

Gallery FR/UK BD: https://postimg.cc/gallery/y7Kqc4L
Gallery JP BD: https://postimg.cc/gallery/rL2BwmY

Mediainfo FR/UK BD episode #1
Mediainfo JP BD episode #1

Bitrate episode #1 FR/UK BD

AVG: 30500 kbps | MAX: 55202 kbps

Bitrate episode #1 JP BD

AVG: 36492 kbps | MAX: 40684 kbps