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Originally Posted by cfx
There are a lot of issues with this newer version though. You can only watch the movie with the original black-background credits with the mono audio, which I guess is how it was originally, but that audio track is also harsh-sounding and headache-inducing for me. The older release lets you mix and match things much more between the video and audio options.
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If you rip the disc, then you can watch the original version with all audio options (accessible via 00002.mpls in playlist folder). The included Laserdisc Dolby Surround mix is quite nice.
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Opinionated ranting below...if I've got facts wrong someone please correct me:
I think there is/was a site that compared images from both blu-rays, but the gist of it is they're both done from the same scan. The original movie has some various issues, like it appears many of the cel composites were photographed out of focus when making the original film master, so certain views are blurry. After seeing this on the BDs, it's visible on the Bandai DVD I used to have too once you know about it so it's not a new thing.
There are also parts that are very grainy in dark areas; whether this is on the original film or some other issue I have no idea. So the older BD shows these faults, but in that newer one Bandai tried to fix them and of course made everything worse. They did some kind of sharpening and/or edge enhancement on the blurry bits with the expected results, and they upped contrast, lowered brightness, and/or adjusted gamma to hide some of the grain in the dark scenes, of course making them all look worse as well.
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RE: old BD
http://www.kentaiblog.com/2012/08/do...mber-hate.html (screenshots are gone now)
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Pay close attention to the black outlines on the right-hand side, on the guy's arm and the folds on his shoulders... notice anything funky about the Blu-ray? What you're seeing is ghosting, data repeated from prior frames because the information is "similar enough", even if it isn't exactly the same. That's basically how grain removal works, and the above is a perfect example of what can go wrong if you try to smooth over between separate frames just a little too hard... a shame the HD version has this fairly obvious defect, since in this shot especially it looks pretty good otherwise. (Besides the crushed/smeared shadow detail, but more on that in a second!)
At first, the Blu-ray looks like a pretty substantial improvement; grain is better defines, outlines are substantially crisper, and of course there's none of that bullshit four-sided windowboxing to deal with. But look at the background, specifically the "lights" behind the two Zentradi commanders; they're actually blurrier on the Blu-ray! DVNR works in two ways, averaging between frames (temporally) and within a single frame (spatially). Ghosting is the temporal side-effect, blurring is the spatial equivalent. Both are an unfortunate side-effect of digital grain removal tools... and how, you ask, can I be sure that they even used grain removal?
I'm not going to lie; I haven't seen the master print they used for DYRL, nor have I seen whatever HDCAM-SR master the Blu-ray was pulled from. That said, I'm DAMN sure that a cartoon from 1984 was animated on some form of film stock, most likely 35mm in this case, and while the DVD has a pretty stable and natural looking level of grain, the Blu-ray just... doesn't. The grain looks like it just barely creeps in around the edges of moving objects and darker areas of the screen, which just isn't how celluloid crystals work. There should always be some level of visible grain on 4-perf 35mm, and the moment you see areas literally devoid of grain, you have every reason to be suspicious.
Oh god, I think I just threw up a little! So, the BD master clearly pushed the contrast and chroma saturation harder than its DVD equivalent, and doing that can enhance the original grain into the harsh shit you see above. Add some temporal filtering on top that's designed to keep SOME frequencies of noise which may or may not be outlines - you know, hard contrasty bits - and the results... look like shit.
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The uncut BD is better IMO, but it's still very much a mixed bag. They tried to alleviate the issues mentioned above, but at the same time introduced some other issues such as the out-of-focus and blurry scenes that were sharpened as you had mentioned.
I personally think that they made the right call with the color grading, since the digitally enhanced film grain in the dark colors doesn't look very natural when every bright color surrounding it appears to be almost devoid of any grain.
Old BD (screenshot borrowed from Macrossworld forum)
New BD (screenshot borrowed from Macrossworld forum)
It's really in dire need of a new restoration.
Bonus:
Raw scan (?) from original camera negative (
source):
2012 remaster (
source):
2016 BD:
They used an interpositive for the HD remastered DVD.
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That Dynit release is some sort of perfection.
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