The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[T26S]

Has anyone got the Jojo UK bluray yet and how it compares to US counterpart video wise. Thanks.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by T26S

Has anyone got the Jojo UK bluray yet and how it compares to US counterpart video wise. Thanks.

I matched the UK screenshots to the US screenshots that were posted here by Zet last year. It appears the UK Blu-ray does not have the color issue found on many Viz Blu-ray releases, but without access to the JP Blu-ray I can't say for sure.

Episode 2:
- UK vs US
- UK vs US
- UK vs US

UK episode 2 bitrate


Episode 4:
- UK vs US
- UK vs US
- UK vs US

UK episode 4 bitrate


Episode 7:
- UK vs US
- UK vs US

UK episode 7 bitrate



UK Blu-ray Menu

Region B locked, forced English subtitles on Japanese audio track, forced English signs track on English dub.

[T26S]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

I matched the UK screenshots to the US screenshots that were posted here by Zet last year. It appears the UK Blu-ray does not have the color issue found on many Viz Blu-ray releases, but without access to the JP Blu-ray I can't say for sure.

Episode 2:
- UK vs US
- UK vs US
- UK vs US

UK episode 2 bitrate


Episode 4:
- UK vs US
- UK vs US
- UK vs US

UK episode 4 bitrate


Episode 7:
- UK vs US
- UK vs US

UK episode 7 bitrate



UK Blu-ray Menu

Region B locked, forced English subtitles on Japanese audio track, forced English signs track on English dub.

Thanks by the looks of it seems like a solid release which is rare from Kaze, I definitely been picking it up. Thanks again.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by T26S

Thanks by the looks of it seems like a solid release which is rare from Kaze, I definitely been picking it up. Thanks again.

Yeah, it's a surprisingly good release from Kazé. I watched the first four episodes and I don't have anything to complain about, except for a minor subtitle problem that I have seen happen twice in episode 3:

[SeaFox]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Yeah, it's a surprisingly good release from Kazé. I watched the first four episodes and I don't have anything to complain about, except for a minor subtitle problem that I have seen happen twice in episode 3:

Is that the actual subtitles as rendered by a blu-ray player? That's sure a leap forward in readability over what most licensees use.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by SeaFox

Is that the actual subtitles as rendered by a blu-ray player? That's sure a leap forward in readability over what most licensees use.

Yes.

Here's a sample of subtitles without formatting problems:

[professorwho]

I don't have the JP BD, but I can take some screenshots of the VIZ BD for comparison if you want. I can say, the subs aren't as nice as that (if I remember correctly).

[SeaFox]

While I don't have the full dialog context from your Jojo clip, I suspect the character at the start before "the" is an endash or emdash. It really reminds me of OCR errors or cases where SRT subs are being written using a font that does not contain all the characters needed.

That means it was recorded this way in the subpicture. A rather silly QC blunder as it suggests the scriptwriter and subtitle people were not on the same page about what font they were using.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by professorwho

I don't have the JP BD, but I can take some screenshots of the VIZ BD for comparison if you want. I can say, the subs aren't as nice as that (if I remember correctly).

Could you please take screenshots of the Battle Tendency arc?

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Could you please take screenshots of the Battle Tendency arc?

Any specific episodes? (The VIZ BD is mastered in a weird way where it’s all one big 40GB file, rather than individual episodes)

[Zet]

Huh, it's a shame Viz doesn't put as much effort into their encode quality as they do their packaging. Even with a higher bitrate there still seems to be slightly more compression artifacts than Kaze's release.

[Show spoiler]That being said, I'm still content with Viz's BD's. I'm a sucker for chipboard boxes.

Something I found interesting though: On the jojocomparisons github site, they feature some screengrabs from the TV and BD versions of JoJo. I noticed the colors on theirs are a bit more in line with Viz's BD's. I sent an email to the one who runs that site asking if they get their's from the Japanese BD's or a stream. They couldn't have got them from Viz's release as those comparisons were posted before the BD's released in the US.

[NLScavenger]

That's weird. Openings are not subtitled, except for episode 15..

Originally Posted by Zet

Something I found interesting though: On the jojocomparisons github site, they feature some screengrabs from the TV and BD versions of JoJo. I noticed the colors on theirs are a bit more in line with Viz's BD's. I sent an email to the one who runs that site asking if they get their's from the Japanese BD's or a stream. They couldn't have got them from Viz's release as those comparisons were posted before the BD's released in the US.

The jojocomparisons sites already existed before the Viz BD release, so I believe the screenshots were captured from the JP BD. It is possible that the screenshots were not captured correctly, for example by using the screenshot function of VLC. VLC does not use the correct color matrix, hence VLC cannot produce screenshots in the correct colors.

If I take a screenshot of UK JoJo with VLC, the colors end up roughly the same as the US BD.
UK MPC-HC with madVR | UK VLC | US

Originally Posted by professorwho

Any specific episodes? (The VIZ BD is mastered in a weird way where it’s all one big 40GB file, rather than individual episodes)

I can't think of any specific episode, but maybe at least one episode with darker colors, such as episode #15.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by Zet

Huh, it's a shame Viz doesn't put as much effort into their encode quality as they do their packaging. Even with a higher bitrate there still seems to be slightly more compression artifacts than Kaze's release.

[Show spoiler]That being said, I'm still content with Viz's BD's. I'm a sucker for chipboard boxes.

Something I found interesting though: On the jojocomparisons github site, they feature some screengrabs from the TV and BD versions of JoJo. I noticed the colors on theirs are a bit more in line with Viz's BD's. I sent an email to the one who runs that site asking if they get their's from the Japanese BD's or a stream. They couldn't have got them from Viz's release as those comparisons were posted before the BD's released in the US.

The Viz BDs have more saturated, incorrect colours. It's been the case for a while now for all their recent releases and evidently Subatomic have made no attempt to rectify this (K Missings Kings, K Return of Kings, One Punch Man and Jojo all suffer from this). In some scenes it can be quite subtle yet very noticable in others (The logo for example).

Regarding compression - I've only seen the creditless opening from Kaze's disc and it was a bit of a toss up between the two releases. Viz's obviously has the colour issue which, as seen in K, can cause problems with banding, but generally it still looked better than Kaze's effort which had worse compression and detail loss in darker areas and fast moving scenes respectively.

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

On another note, super late with this one as I'm not exactly active on forums nowadays, but nobody else seems to have commented about it.
Funimation's Yuri on Ice BD may or may not have some problems. Granted this is based on my experience with the first 8 minutes or so of episode 1, and I think this is a materials problem from the licensor rather than Funimation buggering things up themselves.

Based on previous titles that have had the same problems, I'm assuming that Funimation (and CR for streaming) were sent regular HDCam masters for YOI as there are missing pixels on both sides of the image and there's some weird ghosting going on with anything red. There's also a few frames which have some bad compression artifacts. Screenshotcomparison isn't working for me so the screens are below for anyone interested.

1 - JP BDrip - US BD - CR
2. JP BDrip - US BD - CR

May or may not also be worth pointing out that this title was put out on Home Video by Avex in Japan - the same company which banned exports of their products overseas... Coincidence?

[Zet]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

It is possible that the screenshots were not captured correctly, for example by using the screenshot function of VLC. VLC does not use the correct color matrix, hence VLC cannot produce screenshots in the correct colors.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Last year I had to replace those screencaps I took because of VLC.

[Show spoiler]The ones you're using are the corrected ones, just to clarify.

Been using MPC-HC/madVR since then.

[NLScavenger]

Finished watching Phantom Blood and first two episodes of Battle Tendency. There are indeed compression artifacts here and there in high motion scenes and banding in dark colors (1|2|3|4). The compression artifacts and banding are bearable, so I will stick with Kazé for JoJo, unless Viz Stardust Crusaders somehow has the correct colors.

Something else that I noticed with the Kazé Blu-ray is that the Phantom Blood textless ending is not included and that the Blu-ray does not continue playing where I left off, which is a bit annoying. Menu is a little bit annoying to navigate.



Since the people of screenshotcomparison.com seem to have thrown in the towel, here's a re-upload of the Funimation vs Dybex Cowboy Bebop comparison:

1:Funimation vs Dybex
2:Funimation vs Dybex
3:Funimation vs Dybex
4:Funimation vs Dybex
5:Funimation vs Dybex
6:Funimation vs Dybex
7:Funimation vs Dybex
8:Funimation vs Dybex

Dybex screenshots are sourced from caps-a-holic

[dan2026]

The Funimation release looks real crappy compared to the Dybex one.
Looks blurrier and full of macroblocking.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by dan2026

The Funimation release looks real crappy compared to the Dybex one.
Looks blurrier and full of macroblocking.

For some reason, FUNi decided to de-grain it, then apply a ton of grain over the de-grained image. Why? Maybe they were gonna DBZ it (crop to widescreen, remove all grain and boost contrast), but decided later on to keep 4:3 ratio and grain.

That’s the only possible answer I can think of.

Plus, by forcing 1080p, the originally interlaced 30fps content has obvious artifacting (ghosting and scanlines)- maybe the extra gain would be to cover it up?

I like me some scanlines, but only on 240p games...

[Lambadelta]

I know this isn't a Blu-ray question, but what was the quality like on the InuYasha DVD's that Viz released?

[nagpo]

Originally Posted by Lambadelta

I know this isn't a Blu-ray question, but what was the quality like on the InuYasha DVD's that Viz released?

I'm not a tech guy but I own all of inuyasha and watched the DVDs. I have no complaints with it, the show looked bad once it went digital but that, as far as i can tell, had nothing to do with the DVD's.

[dan2026]

Originally Posted by professorwho

For some reason, FUNi decided to de-grain it, then apply a ton of grain over the de-grained image. Why? Maybe they were gonna DBZ it (crop to widescreen, remove all grain and boost contrast), but decided later on to keep 4:3 ratio and grain.

That’s the only possible answer I can think of.

That has to be the most absurdly incompetent thing I have heard in quite some time. I feel for anyone who bought that release.