The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

I prefer Garma's shibou.

(Translator's note: shibou means death)

[professorwho]

What anime Blus do you guys want a breakdown of? You can check my collection, as I've listed everything I own on BD.

[pikagreg]

Soul Eater maybe?

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by pikagreg

Soul Eater maybe?

I'm working on that since Mangaranga brought it up.

[professorwho]

Soul Eater

Disc size: 39.9GB

Feature size: 39.3GB (episodes 1-9)

Episode 1: 4.2GB (file sizes per episode vary between 4.1GB and 4.5GB)

Video:
1080p MPEG-4 AVC
19.0 mbps AVG
40.0 mbps MAX
3.14GB

Audio:
Japanese Dolby TrueHD 2.0 733 kbps
English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 2177 kbps

I was going to say this was an earlier release for FUNi, but it's from 2011, and their first BD was in 2008. This is a similar story to FMA Brotherhood, though I'm not sure what the production resolution was here- it looks better than Brotherhood, so I'm guessing 720p. It looks good overall due to the slick designs and cinematography, but there are issues. First off is line inconsistency. The character outlines are either aliased or were artificially sharpened in compositing production. Once it's pointed out, you'll notice it all over. Second is banding. There isn't as much as FMA Brotherhood, but its there and noticeable when it shows up. The OP and ED look much better than the show itself in terms of encoding, but that still leaves no excuse for a low bitrate. All in all, it doesn't look bad, but it could be better.

I then looked at the site's review and was laughing. It doesn't even talk about encoding except for a few lines that don't give any real analysis. It's just about the visuals. I've noticed that many reviewers here love talking about aesthetics over encoding. This is the worst example. Ugh...

Audio fares much better. It's the same old story by this point... audio levels are about the same, as is compression/clarity so just choose whatever language you prefer. (I prefer Japanese except for Maka... I get that it was Omigawa Chiaki's first role, but her acting is very stiff. Laura Bailey is perhaps the best dub voice actress in the business and she is excellent.)

It's an alright release. Wish it was better encoded, but it's perfectly fine. Not terrible my any means, but nowhere near FUNimation's few high points.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

It certainly doesn’t mean that they used the Japanese encodes if that’s what you’re hoping for, as the OP/ED have replaced credits .

Of course that wasn’t what I was implying.

[professorwho]

Black Butler

Disc size: 35.3GB

Feature size: 34.9GB (episodes 1-9)

Episode 1: 4.7GB (it's only this high because there's a lossless commentary track included, the other episodes range between 3.1GB to 5.1GB, though they're all about 3.6GB)

Video:
1080p MPEG-4 AVC
18.9 mbps AVG
38.0 mbps MAX
3.24GB

Audio:
Japanese Dolby TrueHD 2.0 24-Bit 683 kbps
English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 24-Bit 3072 kbps

It's an upscale and it shows. This is disappointing. The first scene has a hazy effect to be more "film-like" and it looks terrible. Line detail is poor with noticeable aliased inconsistencies, and despite the gorgeous artwork, cinematography and colour design, it looks poor. Even the OP, which is typically the best encoded part of an episode has distracting banding in wider shots. Linework is very thin and colours are muted. I'm not sure how much is intentional or badly encoded. Banding is present and highly distracting when present. Either way, it looks better than any DVD I'm sure, but not much better. Aniplex later released it on BD in Japan 2 years later (in 2014) with the terrible second season, and both are probably better encoded there. Season 1 is on 5 BD-50s, compared to FUNimation's 3 here.

Once again, the site's review is laughable. Nowhere does it mention that it is an upscale, and it's more about aesthetics over encoding.

Audio is a repeat of before... audio levels are about the same, as is compression/clarity so just choose whatever language you prefer. (Being one of the first anime I ever saw, I first saw it dubbed, and looking back... most of it sucks. Sebastian and Ciel have very good British accents, but everyone else is either a stereotype or laughably bad. The acting isn't that good, really, even with our leads. I can appreciate when a British accent is replicated well, but not at the cost of good acting. So, just stick with Japanese.)

This was a 2012 release, and having 4 years experience at this point, you'd expect FUNimation to have grasped video compression by then, but it appears not...

[professorwho]

FUNimation: That's it... I give up. There's no way to make a good looking Blu-ray with a 9-4 split...

Sentai: Hold my beer...

My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU TOO

Disc size: 39.9GB

Episode 1: 4.4GB (file sizes per episode vary from either 4.3GB or 4.4GB)

Video:
1080p MPEG-4 AVC
21.5 mbps AVG
35.0 mbps MAX
3.79GB

Audio:
Japanese DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 24-Bit 2148 kbps

I tried to look for banding. I looked in dark shadows. I looked in bright spaces. I looked in the background and the foreground. I looked in scenes where the key animation is on par with Kyoto Animation... I tried real hard, going frame-by-frame at points, but I've come to the conclusion that SNAFU 2 has NONE.

That's right. It's perfect. Flawless. Other than the bitrate not being higher I have no issues. It is the best Blu-ray produced by a Western distributor that isn't a clone that I have ever seen. I'm sure there could be some banding, but I never saw any.

Audio is just as flawless. It's in DTS and not TrueHD like FUNimation, but it works just fine. I prefer LPCM but here it doesn't matter. It could be bit-for-bit identical to the Japanese release with only the codec changed- as it's WAY higher than FUNimation's lousy JP audio bitrates.

This is the best Region A anime BD encoded by a western studio, and I say that with 100% confidence. SNAFU 2 is just incredible. The first 3 episodes are a continuation of Season 1 but with infinitely higher production values, which transition into episodes 4 to 13, which offer perhaps one of the best written arcs in television I've seen. Ironic I'm putting a high school anime toe-to-toe with Legend of the Galactic Heroes, but the writing is equal in terms of depth.

I intend to buy the Japanese Blu-rays of this season as it's one of the best anime I've ever seen, and when I do... I'll put Sentai's BD to the test.

[Naiera]

Those Grisaia discs by Sentai were rather good, too.

I've put the MediaInfo from the first episode of Kobayashi in the spoiler. The entire disc is around 47 GB and the episode totals vary from 6.4 to 6.8 GB. I have no idea if any brightness was boosted, but it looks good. It's strange to see a 7/7 split where the space was actually spent wisely on one show, while a different current show is a complete pile of crap.

[Show spoiler]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, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 25mn 12s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 31.0 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 39.5 Mbps
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) : 0.623
Stream size : 5.45 GiB (89%)
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
Original source medium : Blu-ray

[husky1993a]

Originally Posted by Naiera

Those Grisaia discs by Sentai were rather good, too.

I've put the MediaInfo from the first episode of Kobayashi in the spoiler. The entire disc is around 47 GB and the episode totals vary from 6.4 to 6.8 GB. I have no idea if any brightness was boosted, but it looks good. It's strange to see a 7/7 split where the space was actually spent wisely on one show, while a different current show is a complete pile of crap.

[Show spoiler]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, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 25mn 12s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 31.0 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 39.5 Mbps
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) : 0.623
Stream size : 5.45 GiB (89%)
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
Original source medium : Blu-ray

There must be someone at FUNi doing a miracle. I want them to get more work.

[Naiera]

I've never seen an even split of episodes outside of Viz and of course AoA. It's completely out of character for FUNi. They've only ever done really well on feature films and Arise. Hyouka was also uncharacteristically good, but of course had one or two episodes with mosquito noise.

[professorwho]

I did find one flaw with SNAFU 2, though... the subtitles.

Unlike most Sentai translations where liberties are taken, this is a very literal translation, which makes sense as its a dialogue driven series, and its more accurate than anything FUNimation is pouring out today...

No, it's the text. Main dialogue is in yellow, which can be annoying, but I've gotten used to it, however the main issue is when they try imposing subtitles for Japanese text, sort of like this (from Chunibyo):



It's not as ugly as that, but it's distracting. Other than that, still the best encoded BD Sentai's ever made.

[pikagreg]

Sentai does use a lot of on-screen text compared to other companies I noticed. Did they ever change the whole "genuine" thing from the end of the 2nd season? I remember a lot of people complaining about the translation there while it was airing but idk if Sentai handles that during simulcast.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by pikagreg

Did they ever change the whole "genuine" thing from the end of the 2nd season? I remember a lot of people complaining about the translation there while it was airing but idk if Sentai handles that during simulcast.

I made a comparison between the fansub and the official BD subs of the scene I think we're both thinking of. One isn't better than the other, but I feel a better translation could be made by combining elements and lines from both:

Here

I think that may be one of the best monologues in anime history.

[pikagreg]

It sounds like Sentai did have different subs than CR though. I remember Reddit fans being mad because they used something like "I want the real thing" or something. Makes me wonder who exactly does the subs or if they just fix them for the BD.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by pikagreg

It sounds like Sentai did have different subs than CR though. I remember Reddit fans being mad because they used something like "I want the real thing" or something. Makes me wonder who exactly does the subs or if they just fix them for the BD.

Added Crunchyroll. And they're the worst.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by professorwho

My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU TOO

That's right. It's perfect. Flawless. Other than the bitrate not being higher I have no issues. It is the best Blu-ray produced by a Western distributor that isn't a clone that I have ever seen. I'm sure there could be some banding, but I never saw any.

Not to burst your bubble, but like every other Sentai release by their current encoder that I've seen, the show has artifacts around text (e.g. OP/ED), so technically it's not perfect

Funnily enough I've only ever seen this problem with Sentai's releases and one of the Japanese volumes of Euphonium 2 (volume 4 I think? Example).

[mp3dom]

That effect is due to a LPF (low-pass filter), a filter that attenuate/filters out high frequencies in order to encode the video better. While it's unnoticeable on "normal" video (because video hardly is so "sharp" to have such high frequencies), on text this is a problem because it's really sharp and at 1080 native resolution. The result is like that... a double/triple edges due to the taps of the filter.
Generally, you keep it disabled during OP/ED/texts and leave it enabled elsewhere... In the case of Euphonium they probably forgot to disable it in those parts.

[professorwho]

Ah! It's a low-pass filter! I'm more familiar with its use in retro gaming, particularly how the OSSC defaults to it when upscaling a 240p source.

But yeah, I checked SNAFU's OP and yeah, its there. Despite the rest of the picture (and episode) being artifact free, it's there. It's odd, though. It was probably an accident, though.

[Naiera]

Buttyeah.

I also have an OSSC, btw