The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[NLScavenger]

That's another OPM S2 BD with picture quality issues, the other one being the French Kazé release.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

That's another OPM S2 BD with picture quality issues, the other one being the French Kazé release.

Got any information/caps for that one? It's entirely unsurprising to me at this point that French BDs are trash, but I'd still be interested to see how bad.

[kk1]

Well that knocks it even further down my priority list to ever pick up, what's wrong with these companies?

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

Got any information/caps for that one? It's entirely unsurprising to me at this point that French BDs are trash, but I'd still be interested to see how bad.

My friend ViCklatereur covered it in detail in his video review here;

[Show spoiler]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIqp__dqOsM

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

Got any information/caps for that one? It's entirely unsurprising to me at this point that French BDs are trash, but I'd still be interested to see how bad.

From https://twitter.com/ViCklatereur/sta...83492378894336

https://imgur.com/Cweo9Sa
https://imgur.com/UijOjtU
https://imgur.com/ecmpY60

From https://twitter.com/ViCklatereur/sta...70954069094402

[SpaceDandy]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

Got any information/caps for that one? It's entirely unsurprising to me at this point that French BDs are trash, but I'd still be interested to see how bad.

Harsh, some distributors have good technical staff and some boxsets definitely competes with the Japanese releases (and I'm not talking about mp3dom works). It's just like any other European country market. I think there's a bias due to the recent Kazé releases which were all featured here because how bad they are.
To give some context, they just restarted their home video activities after two years with nearly no new titles. Previous staff was laid off and they just hired new people who are seemingly clueless about what they're doing.

Anyway, don't mix Kazé with the more competent french distributors!

[Footlong Shoe]

This is rather old news and I'm not even sure this is the best thread to bring it up in, but I never heard anything about this so I want to at least put the word out there.

Funimation's Blu-ray for Hinamatsuri only has the first version of the OP. The visuals are supposed to have subtle and not-so-subtle changes throughout the series that are important for narrative and symbolic reasons, but since those changes aren't present, it can lead to confusion and muddled messaging when you get towards the end of the show. Curiously, every version of the ED is present, and they even switch to Japanese credits halfway through to accommodate them. I assume they weren't given creditless materials for the later versions, but in that case they should've made this compromise for the OP too.

It might be insignificant for some but personally it makes the series feel incomplete, not just from a content perspective but also in terms of storytelling. I'm putting an example in the spoiler below if you need to see what I mean.

[Show spoiler]
Both of these screencaps were taken from Crunchyroll



Closing shot of the OP at the beginning of the series (the Funi BD uses this version throughout the entire series)



Closing shot of the OP later in the series

The first version is intended to mislead the viewer into thinking Utako, the woman, on the left, is a much more important character to the narrative than she really is. After a certain point the series, once the protagonist realizes she's not as great of a person as he thought, she's removed from different parts of the OP each episode until eventually she's only shown in her necessary scenes.

I thought this was important to note because usually when Funi uses bad materials, the problem is that they use broadcast masters instead of home video masters, but in this case something is missing that was present in the broadcast. You effectively get a more complete experience watching the series on Crunchyroll than on Blu-ray. I just want to warn people in case it's a dealbreaker for them.

[BigOnAnime]

Reminds me when FUNimation failed to include the other clean version of the OniAi opening in the extras. They instead included one of them twice.
https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...-missing-extra

[kk1]

Thanks yeah no way I buy that, wonder if it's the same on the UK discs.

[Footlong Shoe]

I don't think Hinamatsuri has UK discs, unfortunately. According to its entry here, the discs are Region A & B compatible, but I haven't tested that myself. I can when I get home, but even if they aren't Region B compatible these seem to be the only English-friendly discs.

[Memade]

I am late for the Violet Evergarden discussion. If I understand correctly, the Funimation version is worse than JP ver. but slightly better than the UK/FR ver.?

I did notice that the packaging was showing DTS but PS5 was giving me LPCM and I was very confused.

[BlackDevil]

Originally Posted by Memade

I am late for the Violet Evergarden discussion. If I understand correctly, the Funimation version is worse than JP ver. but slightly better than the UK/FR ver.?

I did notice that the packaging was showing DTS but PS5 was giving me LPCM and I was very confused.

From my understanding the Funi video quality isn’t necessarily “bad” it just isn’t using the JP Home Release masters that had improved/extended animation changes, and also has the Netflix subs.

[kk1]

Originally Posted by Footlong Shoe

I don't think Hinamatsuri has UK discs, unfortunately. According to its entry here, the discs are Region A & B compatible, but I haven't tested that myself. I can when I get home, but even if they aren't Region B compatible these seem to be the only English-friendly discs.

Hmm for some reason I thought I saw it did, must be confusing it with something else, dang. Well guess we should be expecting more and more of this in the future with Funimation's monopoly. Time to rethink this hobby

[Memade]

Originally Posted by BlackDevil

From my understanding the Funi video quality isn’t necessarily “bad” it just isn’t using the JP Home Release masters that had improved/extended animation changes, and also has the Netflix subs.

I see. Well it certainly is a bummer.

I love this show so much and it sucks that we can not own the best version possible... If only the JP version offers English subtitles.

[NormanicGrav]

Originally Posted by Footlong Shoe

I don't think Hinamatsuri has UK discs, unfortunately. According to its entry here, the discs are Region A & B compatible, but I haven't tested that myself. I can when I get home, but even if they aren't Region B compatible these seem to be the only English-friendly discs.

Yeah there's no UK release. Last I heard it was rejected when the first batch of catalog was being brought over (that's how bad the situation is in the UK).

[SpaceDandy]

I love it when the BD titles order does not reflect the episode order. Here's episode 9 rather than the first, because they reversed the IDs.

Nadia - The Secret of Blue Water (Dybex - France)
Episode 9 captures
(click the link for more)

Authoring house: IDP Home Video

Episode 9 bitrate


Complete Media-Info (w/ encoding settings)

[Show spoiler]

General
Unique ID                                : 13686240236059467835819393016509144966 (0xA4BDFBDC97B908F69B284AD84829F86)
File size                                : 5.27 GiB
Duration                                 : 25 min 4 s
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 30.1 Mb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-12-22 17:41:12
Writing application                      : MakeMKV v1.15.4 darwin(x64-release)
Writing library                          : libmakemkv v1.15.4 (1.3.10/1.5.2) darwin(x64-release)

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4.1
Format settings                          : CABAC / 3 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 3 frames
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 25 min 4 s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 27.0 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 40.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.543
Stream size                              : 4.62 GiB (88%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 133 r2334 a3ac64b
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=4 / deblock=1:1:1 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=10 / psy=1 / psy_rd=0.40:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / slices=4 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=1 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=1 / weightp=1 / keyint=24 / keyint_min=1 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=24 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=27000 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=40000 / vbv_bufsize=30000 / nal_hrd=vbr / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:0.60
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Codec ID                                 : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration                                 : 25 min 4 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 275 MiB (5%)
Title                                    : Stereo
Language                                 : Japanese
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Audio #2
ID                                       : 3
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Codec ID                                 : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration                                 : 25 min 4 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 275 MiB (5%)
Title                                    : Stereo
Language                                 : French
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

Text #1
ID                                       : 4
Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Language                                 : French
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

Text #2
ID                                       : 6
Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Language                                 : French
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

Menu
00:00:00.000                             : en:Chapter 01
00:01:23.750                             : en:Chapter 02
00:02:00.411                             : en:Chapter 03
00:12:58.694                             : en:Chapter 04
00:23:55.267                             : en:Chapter 05

I'm not going to compare to the japanese BDMV but according to Tetho from mata-web, the colors of the Dybex BD may be more accurate.
Additional captures, all credits to Tetho:
• Episode 1
• Comparison with King Records BD

[SpaceDandy]

The Tatami Galaxy (Black Box - France)
Episode 1 captures
(click on the link above for more)

Authoring house: IDP Home Video

Episode 1 bitrate plot:


Media-Info:

[Show spoiler]

General
Unique ID                                : 64663447073033308568636737423483167680 (0x30A5BA1648ADFA06880388E70D4963C0)
File size                                : 4.49 GiB
Duration                                 : 22 min 52 s
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 28.1 Mb/s

Video
ID                                       : 1
ID in the original source medium         : 4113 (0x1011)
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4.1
Format settings                          : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 22 min 52 s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 25.0 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 35.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Standard                                 : Component
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.503
Stream size                              : 3.99 GiB (89%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 144
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=4 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=1 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / slices=4 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / minigop=1 / stitchable=1 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=2 / b_pyramid=0 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=1 / weightp=1 / keyint=24 / keyint_min=1 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=24 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=25000 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=3 / 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=1:1.00
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
ID in the original source medium         : 4352 (0x1100)
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Codec ID                                 : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration                                 : 22 min 52 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 30.001 FPS (1600 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 251 MiB (5%)
Title                                    : Stereo
Language                                 : Japanese
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Audio #2
ID                                       : 3
ID in the original source medium         : 4353 (0x1101)
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Codec ID                                 : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration                                 : 22 min 52 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 30.001 FPS (1600 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 251 MiB (5%)
Title                                    : Stereo
Language                                 : French
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Text #1
ID                                       : 4
ID in the original source medium         : 4608 (0x1200)
Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 21 min 10 s
Bit rate                                 : 52.8 kb/s
Count of elements                        : 650
Stream size                              : 7.99 MiB (0%)
Language                                 : French
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Text #2
ID                                       : 6
ID in the original source medium         : 4609 (0x1201)
Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 15 min 0 s
Bit rate                                 : 3 579 b/s
Count of elements                        : 44
Stream size                              : 393 KiB (0%)
Language                                 : French
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Menu
00:00:00.000                             : en:Chapter 01
00:03:19.991                             : en:Chapter 02
00:04:49.914                             : en:Chapter 03
00:09:23.729                             : en:Chapter 04
00:21:21.363                             : en:Chapter 05

Black Box even dubbed it, and it is not bad at all!
I think my captures are slightly bloated on that one. Weird, but it seems really good to me.

[Mangaranga]

Promised Neverland - UK Anime Limited Release authored by Madman















This is one of those releases which is seemingly as good as the unfiltered source allows for. The actual encoding itself looks pretty good most of the time, but there's definitely problems which seem to be baked into the source - e.g. banding for one - but it's never really to the point that I'd outright say it's overly bad or awful. Another thing I noticed that does seem to very rarely pop up is that there will be vertical lines going across the screen - namely these two caps. It's worth pointing out that these are also present in the CR streams, somewhat confirming it's a source issue and not Madman's encoding.

This inevitably leads to questions about how it fares in relation to the Aniplex discs, and the answer for the most part is pretty well. I assume Aniplex applied some sort of filtering to their release as, whilst still present, banding is handled somewhat better, and most of the few instances of horizontal lines I noticed were also removed too (would their lowpass filter attribute to this?). For what it's worth I also played around with applying a deband filter to Madman's BD via MadVR and got similar results to the Aniplex BD in regards to both issues.

All in all, I honestly didn't even really have any problems with this release until I started really digging deep with it. I watched through the first 6 episodes the other night and wouldn't really say there's anything too distracting for a casual watch. Considering it's less than a third of what the US BD would cost to import over here in the UK, it's an easy recommendation. Considering Madman used to consistently put out awful discs, it's really nice to see how far they've come since cocking up and subsequently fixing the Your Name discs. My only real ask from them at this point would be to considering using 24bit LPCM audio > 16bit seeing as Aniplex masters their audio at 20/24bit, and moreso considering they usually have enough disc space left over to accommodate it.


BD Info



I don't normally post the mediainfo, but seeing as SpaceDandy's post shows the encoding settings I checked TPN and they're also present.

General
ID                             : 0 (0x0)
Complete name                  : Z:\BDMV\Raw\Promised Neverland\D1\BDMV\STREAM\00000.m2ts
Format                         : BDAV
Format/Info                    : Blu-ray Video
File size                      : 6.07 GiB
Duration                       : 22 min 49 s
Overall bit rate mode          : Variable
Overall bit rate               : 38.1 Mb/s
Maximum Overall bit rate       : 48.0 Mb/s

Video
ID                             : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID                        : 1 (0x1)
Format                         : AVC
Format/Info                    : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                 : High@L4.1
Format settings                : CABAC / 3 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC         : Yes
Format settings, Reference fra : 3 frames
Codec ID                       : 27
Duration                       : 22 min 49 s
Bit rate mode                  : Variable
Bit rate                       : 33.0 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate               : 35.0 Mb/s
Width                          : 1 920 pixels
Height                         : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio           : 16:9
Frame rate                     : 23.976 (23976/1000) FPS
Color space                    : YUV
Chroma subsampling             : 4:2:0
Bit depth                      : 8 bits
Scan type                      : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)             : 0.664
Stream size                    : 5.34 GiB (88%)
Writing library                : x264 core 157 r2935 545de2f
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=24 / lookahead_threads=4 / 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=33000 / 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
Color range                    : Limited
Color primaries                : BT.709
Transfer characteristics       : BT.709
Matrix coefficients            : BT.709

Audio #1
ID                             : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID                        : 1 (0x1)
Format                         : PCM
Format settings                : Big / Signed
Muxing mode                    : Blu-ray
Codec ID                       : 128
Duration                       : 22 min 49 s
Bit rate mode                  : Constant
Bit rate                       : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                     : 2 channels
Channel layout                 : L R
Sampling rate                  : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                      : 16 bits
Stream size                    : 251 MiB (4%)

Audio #2
ID                             : 4353 (0x1101)
Menu ID                        : 1 (0x1)
Format                         : PCM
Format settings                : Big / Signed
Muxing mode                    : Blu-ray
Codec ID                       : 128
Duration                       : 22 min 49 s
Bit rate mode                  : Constant
Bit rate                       : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                     : 2 channels
Channel layout                 : L R
Sampling rate                  : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                      : 16 bits
Stream size                    : 251 MiB (4%)

Text
ID                             : 4608 (0x1200)
Menu ID                        : 1 (0x1)
Format                         : PGS
Codec ID                       : 144
Delay relative to video        : 7 s 633 ms

Finally just to point out - there is no signs/songs track for the dub as there's no signs to translate in the series, and Aniplex only TL the creditless sequences so there's no song subs.

[AreaFive]

So, there's apparently too much EE in Weathering With You 4K, no HDR in Akira, and Violet Evergarden has issues, in addition to others.

I'd rather have non-optimal releases than no releases, obviously, but this has not been the best few weeks for video quality.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by AreaFive

So, there's apparently too much EE in Weathering With You 4K, no HDR in Akira, and Violet Evergarden has issues, in addition to others.

I'd rather have non-optimal releases than no releases, obviously, but this has not been the best few weeks for video quality.

Which is why I've tried to highlight an actual good release after looking at so many awful ones in the last few days.
It's nice to look at a BD which isn't full of blocking and generally shit encoding. In the last few days alone I've looked at Violet Evergarden, the UK release of Birthday Wonderland (which also has the same issues as Violet), and Viz's One Punch Man S2 BD.