The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[NLScavenger]

LoveLive! Sunshine!! Season 1 US/UK BD - Screenshots

Each episode is around 5 GB

Episode 01 video bitrate
AVG = 22997 kbps
MAX = 32590 kbps


Episode 02 video bitrate
AVG = 22999 kbps
MAX = 31618 kbps

[professorwho]

Re:Zero's Western Blu-rays Show Color Banding Artifacts, Companies Respond

It's on ANN

YES. The day has come. Now, they either admit defeat or own up to it and fix it.

[Lambadelta]

How can they fix it if the issue is with the master?

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Lambadelta

How can they fix it if the issue is with the master?

I think it’s a PR excuse to hide the fact they screwed up. It uses the same master, but it still means they can mess it up by lazy encoding.

[SeaFox]

Originally Posted by Lambadelta

How can they fix it if the issue is with the master?

They can exercise some level of professionalism and demand a better source? They aren't being given the right to release for free from Japan. They paid for it, and should be holding the producer to some minimum standard for their investment.

[Kyle15]

While it's certainly possible Kadokawa sent them a bad master on purpose to deter importation back into Japan, I wouldn't be surprised if it were simply a case of cost-cutting Funi-isms.

[DaBawss]

But why is the crunchy stream better? I would imagine they would have been given the same master.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by DaBawss

But why is the crunchy stream better? I would imagine they would have been given the same master.

I'm suspecting FUNi rushed it out the door without passing quality control, if they have any...

[SeaFox]

Originally Posted by DaBawss

But why is the crunchy stream better? I would imagine they would have been given the same master.

Crunchyroll stream is a going to be a broadcast master delivered per episode during production. Heck, the producers might even be providing it in final form to Crunchyroll. It isn't going to handled every week by the same compressionist doing a home video release down the line.

[PissedOffPeoN]

Here is FUnimation reply or lack of a reply
Thank you for voicing your concerns about the recent Re: Zero release.


We’ve heard from a handful of people that there may be issues with this release. We used the approved materials from the licensor under their direction, however based on what we're hearing from our fans, we’re continuing to further investigate this issue.


Our fans and their feedback are important to us and we want to make sure you have the best anime experience possible—thank you again for bringing this to our attention.


Thank You!
Dillon

Funimation Support

Posted today in my mail .

[professorwho]

We’ve heard from a handful of people that there may be issues with this release. We used the approved materials from the licensor under their direction, however based on what we're hearing from our fans, we’re continuing to further investigate this issue.


Our fans and their feedback are important to us and we want to make sure you have the best worst anime experience possible—thank you again for bringing this to our attention.


Thank You!

Fixed it
(lol)

[professorwho]

Anime Limited on doing things in-house

Context:

Others even smaller editors/distributors (In france/Belgium for example) are capable of doing their own authorings, wich most of the time are better than the US authoring, and their price are waaaaaay lower than the US/UK market.

I don't deny the cost cutting is important but sometime that argument are not valid at all, and it's just a question about how fast a company want to release their product, neglecting the quality control.

Response (from Andrew):

The difference on a production side is in French territories is that you have no other option so it has to be done and you are not reduplicating the workload there. The thing is for the UK is that very often the US are dubbing the series and also then preparing the authoring. By the time we receive all the materials they will have prepared (bonus content translation, dub tracks etc) then there is a natural delay to a release vs using the same discs.

By working with the USA where we can, it allows us to work on our own projects too and release within a good timescale, especially of late for the majority of projects. We're working hard on making headway there and while it will never be enough or quickly enough at any given time for one subset of fans or another - we try our best.

This entails a degree of trust, which usually pans out fine and honestly, pans out about as often as our own would. What I have learned over the years is sadly you will never make everyone happy whatever you do juggling the needs of fans is an eternal dilemma. I don't think anyone wants to neglect quality control there (at least among the UK companies) but there is a balancing act especially with the pressure placed on companies for timely releases of products vs the other territories.

In short - I will never make everybody happy so I am usually just aiming to disappoint the least number of people at anytime!

Best,

AP

I get it. I get that they want to release content as close as possible to the US as possible, but the downsides are huge as well. Andrew is right in that they can't please everyone, which is a sad thing. Unfortunately, there isn't a right or wrong answer. While I would personally prefer them to author everything in-house for better PQ than FAILimation, the release window would be totally different.

[Yuripa]

Depend.

For example the french release (wich is presumed to not be as bad as Failmation) are planned for June 27, so the gap between the US/UK release and the french release (wich have it's own authoring) is not that big (freaking 2 days gap)...
They perfectly can use thoses masters and put english Subs/dub on those discs, they're already doing that for many releases.
I suppose being on par with the US release date is more important than releasing a correct product, even if its for a few days...

Remenber the fiasco for Your name, its the same, they wanted to release that movie as fast as possible so they used Madman authoring...
The french release (wich have a perfectly fine authoring) was released ~ 15 days after...
All that shit happened because of 15 days, great business plan...

[professorwho]

Man... that just makes things worse when put into perspective...

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by PissedOffPeoN

Here is FUnimation reply or lack of a reply

Checked my email and that is word-for-word what I got.

[PissedOffPeoN]

Is Jormungand Japanese box comparison anywhere in here?

[reignofkindo]

Originally Posted by professorwho

I'm suspecting FUNi rushed it out the door without passing quality control, if they have any...

3 is more than I was expecting, honestly.

EDIT: apparently I don't know how to use the IMG tag. https://imgur.com/a/FigcI3p

[DaBawss]

Originally Posted by reignofkindo

3 is more than I was expecting, honestly.

I just assume most of those people have no idea what banding and other issues are. They are probably just asked if they see anything wrong, and since they don't know what to look for, they give it a passing grade. Obviously that is just an assumption.

For all I know It could also be a time vs cost thing. They notice it, but are told that since it only happens a little bit not to worry about it.

[Gorgon]

Originally Posted by reignofkindo

3 is more than I was expecting, honestly.

EDIT: apparently I don't know how to use the IMG tag. https://imgur.com/a/FigcI3p

Anyone else notice the dearth of Asian personnel involved in this?
I'm not saying these folk don't know what they are doing (okay, yes I am) but it's probably a safe guess to say they may not have the incite to what the original Japanese authors wished to convey...

[Naiera]

Insight?

FUNimation is an American company. Why would they have more Asian people involved than on any other American Blu-ray release?

I doubt any of those three quality assurance people noticed anything. Most people don't notice anything wrong, ever, which is why FUNi just doesn't care.