The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[nyaa]

I've never been able to comprehend all of the rabid fascination with enhancing video quality. If you go to a certain website you'll see many different re-encodes of one series or movie with each one bragging about how they've applied various denoising, debanding and countless other enhancement algorithms and how much has been corrected or improved from the original source material. I've tried some experiments myself and honestly I'd literally have to look at single frames at x2 magnification of the before and after video to see any noticeable differences. In 95% of the time it just wasn't worth the effort. In most of my projects I use the original source dvd and bluray video material with no modification though I always upgrade the audio (say-replace lossy audio with lossless audio-if available) and use custom subtitles. But everybody has their own approach to it I guess.

[sephirothkefka]

Just got the Gurren Lagann 4K set earlier today. After some editing and muxing myself they def could have put the English audio and Japanese on the same disc but its w/e. The bitrate seems quite healthy too (~83mbps for all 4 discs). My question is how was the 4k transfer done? Was it done via AI? I'm quite curious.

[SpazeBlue]

Originally Posted by SMD88

I did a comparison with my DVD, and I thought the DVD won hands down.

Was wondering how the DVDs compared.

Originally Posted by SMD88

Did Miyuki, Slow Step and H2 also get HDTV remasters? I am NOT a fan of Miyuki, but would love the other two on BD. Especially Slow Step as it again, is LD only.

Don't see anything for Miyuki, but the other two seem to have HD streaming versions. Slow Step seems to just be a LD upscale, but H2 is remastered and looks pretty nice.

[SMD88]

Originally Posted by SpazeBlue

Was wondering how the DVDs compared.



Don't see anything for Miyuki, but the other two seem to have HD streaming versions. Slow Step seems to just be a LD upscale, but H2 is remastered and looks pretty nice.

The DVDs are very nice. I bought the 3 "cheap" boxsets in 2012?? It was when they were released. So long ago, I can't remember! I do not understand why Hiatari Ryoukou and Miyuki only received LD dump DVDs. Makes the HD masters being streaming only all the more frustrating. NINE did not even get a DVD release, nor did the Hiatari movie. TOHO have really screwed up. Well, they also screwed up the first NINE movie by cropping it. Such a shame.

I have not bought H2 yet, it was always too expensive and has only come down recently. I hope it is not yet another LD dump, grrr! I was not impressed when I bought the pricey Hiatari box set, hahaha.

Too bad about Slow Step being an upscale I guess it is another victim of "we lost, aka don't know where we put, the OCN because we in Japan are pathetically bad at preserving masters". Most Toshiba EMI releases did not receive a proper DVD release, or a DVD full stop. I am still surprised that the Ushiro to Tora DVD box was an LD dump. That was one I expected to be a new master, even though I have the ADV set and seem to remember it being reported that they got the Jp DVD masters at the time. Even so, the Jp box STILL looks so much better!

Hell, even Bubblegum Crisis was an LD dump of the 1998 BV LD-BOX! Something I only noticed recently when I watched the first disc again at the same time I ripped my BV BD box.

EDIT: Going through my maaaaany anime boxes yet to be unpacked, I found the VAP double DVD release of the TOUCH! TV movies. It is still sealed. I forgot I had it! They and the theatrical trilogy are strangely absent on BD as well. Sucks that they were not included in the BD boxes. I guess VAP will not be releasing it, much like the Shin Kimagure Orange Road movie, sigh......

[qw0aszx]

I saw someone posted this online saying Japanese release of The Boy and the Heron has a serious Dolby Vision error on UHD, basically all Dolby Vision information was lost after 20 minutes mark.

[NLScavenger]

johjima's JPN UHD graph also flatlines after 20m https://dprime.kr/g2/bbs/board.php?b...&wr_id=2771806

[CrashOveride95]

Midnight Eye Goku - Discotek BD vs. Toei Video BD


https://slow.pics/c/rOIAtLIE

Discotek bitrate for OVA1:


Toei bitrate for OVA1:


Toei Video BD has worse grain retention than Discotek BD despite being significantly higher bitrate and BD50 vs. BD25

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by qw0aszx

I saw someone posted this online saying Japanese release of The Boy and the Heron has a serious Dolby Vision error on UHD, basically all Dolby Vision information was lost after 20 minutes mark.

Replacement program: https://www.disney.co.jp/studio/info...30000000007978

[NLScavenger]

Had to reupload the screenshots due to a mistake. I accidentally set vs-preview output primaries to DCI-P3 instead of sRGB. My bad.

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

The Wonderful World of Puss 'n Boots - Discotek Media BD vs Toei BD
Comparison

[Show spoiler]The encode on the Discotek Media BD is a noticeable improvement over the Toei BD. However, not all is peachy with Discotek's release.

In regards to the English dub, they worked from the same audio source as the DVD release, presumably captured from retail VHS. The problem with that capture is that the right-channel is quieter and distorted in the first 47 minutes for whatever technical malfunction that occurred during the capture. Since the dub is in mono, the most sane solution would have been to discard the right channel, but they didn't for the 2006 DVD:


Having most of the audio come from of the left-channel does not make for a very pleasant viewing experience, so one would think that for the Blu-ray they'd redo the entire track from scratch. Ideally you'd access AIP's materials from MGM's vault if they're available and Amazon-era MGM grants access, or if that's not an option you make a brand new capture from the retail VHS.

Unfortunately they went back to the original capture. Now this would not have been such a terrible idea if they did the sensible thing by finally discarding the right-channel, but no. Somehow they made things even worse by amplifying the hell out of the right channel, which enhances all the distortions. Needless to say, the result is... catastrophic (pun intended)




--------------------------------------------------------


Here's the boring data:

Discotek Media




Toei BD

[Naiera]

For shame

[BlackDevil]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Replacement program: https://www.disney.co.jp/studio/info...30000000007978

Got an email from Amazon JP about this too. Are US buyers sol for getting a replacement?

[AniPhantom]

Fresh batch of reviews/screenshots from everybody's "favorite" ChatGPT dispenser, Neil Lumbard:

Oshi No Ko Season 1:
Regular: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Oshi-...358399/#Review
Steelbook ver: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Oshi-...358507/#Review

A Galaxy Next Door:
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/A-Gal...355727/#Review

Rent-A-Girlfriend Season 2:
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Rent-...340153/#Review

Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill:
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Campf...357665/#Review

I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World and Became Unrivaled in the Real World, Too:
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/I-Got...357664/#Review

(Dunno if this is the correct thread to post this in, but here you go all the same.)

[Tylerfan]

No, this is fine. I’ve posted review links here too.

[BigOnAnime]

Oshi no Ko Regular Edition: Streaming mentioned 6 times. Every single screenshot is from episode 1, with the final randomly being from like episode 8. I would have liked to see more variety in the screenshots provided. Also, why are you bringing up "purists"? You don't have to bring that up when mentioning it includes the Japanese audio.

Oshi no Ko SteelBook: Streaming mentioned 6 times. Only 2 actual screenshots, again both from episode 1. Would have been nice if there were more actual screenshots. The site does allow reviewers to separate screenshots by packaging and actual screenshots, like so.

A Galaxy Next Door: Streaming mentioned 5 times. Also continues to show ignorance about why the release isn't chock full of video extras. The Japanese release was barebones video extras-wise (most anime releases over nearly 3 decades were never like old Hollywood releases, they emphasize physical extras over video extras), so the American release was going to be the same. How good a release turns out is often heavily dependent on what the Japanese release had. In the case of Oshi no Ko, the Japanese release did have more than the normal stuff.

Rent-A-Girlfriend: Streaming mentioned a whopping 10 times. Goes on a tangent about Disney+'s audio quality when the review is for a show that isn't streaming on Disney+. Continues to go on "there's hardly any significant video extras" even though the Japanese release was the same, though it looks like Crunchyroll didn't get everything this time. They're missing shorts, something called ""Special Program and Her" Director's Cut Edition", and "Date Movies" and "Kanokari Call". Still, even if they included all of that, there's still nothing substantial as-is the norm, the stuff you're looking for tend to be included in booklets which tend to come over now only when there's a Limited Edition (I wonder where the booklet content for S1's LE came from...).

Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill: Streaming mentioned 5 times. Continues to judge subtitle quality only by grammar and spelling, never going into translation quality, typesetting, subtitle placement, timing, etc. Continues to bring up purists as if everyone that watches anime subbed is a purist (I watch most anime subbed as I prefer it, but I do also like dubs, so what does that make me?). Why even mention it? Side-note, I was annoyed when Ken Brown brought up "purists" for his Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie review. Again, the Japanese release doesn't have what you're looking for video extras aside from 3 cast interviews which Crunchyroll didn't get, so why would Crunchyroll have making-of extras? If you were to get anything, it would only be for the English production side, not the original Japanese.

I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World and Became Unrivaled in the Real World, Too: Streaming mentioned 5 times, same deal with subtitles, purists and all that. The Japanese release was barebones too.

Said it adnaseum, but who goes on a website named Blu-ray.com to read about how streaming compares to Blu-ray? For like 1.5-2 years now it's the same deal. His older reviews had problems with reading like they were copy/paste jobs from a template, but these newer ones read so much worse because of how upset he is over the current state of physical media. If anything, he's turning people away. I made a meme in 2015 called "PHYSICAL MEDIA MASTER RACE" and I don't want to use it ever again because I can't stand this kind of attitude anymore (especially when they begin to talk about expensive gear). Would really like for his reviews to improve because I know he can write better than this (I've read some of his old DVDTalk reviews), but I have little faith in that at this point.

[TThomas]

He didn't even mention that Cheat Skill also includes French & German dub & sub

[BigOnAnime]

So, another Classroom of the Elite S2 situation then.
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...7#post22212017

Also mentioned it before, but he continues to make no effort to figure out the disc sizes. Whenever the BD-25 and BD-50 fields are correctly left blank / unset, he always sets them both to 0, implying the release comes on Blu-rays with 0GB of data. He will approve people's submissions showing the actual breakdown, but what's even the point of setting them to 0 in the first place then?

You have the discs in your hands, flip them over and look at the number of barcodes on the inner ring.
BD-25: https://i.imgur.com/x4wCh8j.jpg
BD-50: https://i.imgur.com/ZbojRR7.jpg
DVD-5: https://i.imgur.com/D9RbKog.jpg
DVD-9: https://i.imgur.com/zkw2CdV.jpg

There are people that want to know about the disc sizes, not about how Blu-ray compares to streaming in nearly every single review you've written for Blu-ray.com over the last 1.5-2 years.

This also leads to misinformation. I highly doubt Spirited Away: Live on Stage is on 2 BD-25s. Someone assumed it was on 2 BD-25s, left the other fields blank, then Neil set the BD-50 field to 0 which was the only one still blank and never checked the disc sizes himself.
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Spiri...lu-ray/346755/
https://www.blu-ray.com/products/?p=...on=editproduct

[Edit]He left the "Inner Print" field set to "No", and yet I found this...
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GN1Xg3gFvfs

[BigOnAnime]

It says a lot when I check the new reviews, see one from Neil, then immediately do ctrl+f and type in "STREAMING" (yes, in all caps) to see how many times he used that word. There was a short time period like a year ago where I had hope, I was getting the 0 results noise, and then, ugh.

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by TThomas

He didn't even mention that Cheat Skill also includes French & German dub & sub

You can now add The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World, The Aristocrat's Otherworldly Adventure: Serving Gods Who Go Too Far, and The Reincarnation of the Strongest Exorcist in Another World to the list of multi-dub/sub releases he reviewed without mentioning the other language options, instead opting to mention the word "STREAMING" 5-6 times. Also, they supposedly all come on 2 BD-0s.

Worth noting he has reviewed these sorts of releases before and mentioned the other audio options, while also continuing to mention "STREAMING".

The Dawn of the Witch
The Greatest Demon Lord is Reborn as a Typical Nobody
The Legendary Hero Is Dead!
Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs

He's not going to convert people from streaming to Blu-ray like this, especially if he can't even correctly mention all the language options on a release. One of the very few good things from the merger is we now sometimes get other dubs which adds more value to the releases as there's now more ways to watch a show (despite the English subtitles being meant for the Japanese script, not the other dubs), but he doesn't seem to think much about that.

[CrashOveride95]

Aim for the Ace The Movie

2008 Bandai BD vs. 2023 Discotek BD:
https://slow.pics/c/ZsWIJSbn

Discotek BD has superior grain retention

Bandai BD bitrate:


Discotek BD bitrate:

[gameguru]

Hi everyone. I could'nt find anything helpful on the internet so i figured id ask here. I'm trying to do the 0.88 gamma adjust on MPC. I'm no coder so im a bit lost. I tried the Levels command listed on https://www.animemusicvideos.org/for...c.php?t=111837 in Avisynth and that worked, but I wasn't able to get chapters, subtitles, etc. I was wondering if someone has created an HLSL shader that does the same thing as the Levels command? any help is appreciated.