The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[SpaceDandy]

Originally Posted by Total Procall

Would you mind specifically stating what is different in screen cap 19? I keep A>B and i cannot for the life of me find a difference?

Edges of the two light stones at the top are slightly blurriers. And there's some apparent macroblock edges along the top of the beam above the door.

[NLScavenger]

Macross Plus OVA 1 - GBR/USA BD vs JPN/ITA BD
Comparison

Movie Edition - GBR/USA BD vs JPN BD (2013)
Comparison

Locked subtitles on OVA and Movie Edition discs. OVA 4 Manga dub is accessible via the extras menu and it's the 5.1 upmix instead of the original 2.0 stereo.

Movie Edition doesn't have the original 2.0 Dolby Surround mix. It's present on the recent Korean BD.

Subtitle sample


Menu


Bland compared to what was used on the Italian and Korean releases (and I presume also the Japanese release).

Italian BD Menu Disc 1 & 2


BDInfo OVA 1

Disc Title:     Macross Plus - OVA Edition
Disc Label:     MACROSS_PLUS_OVA_EDITION
Disc Size:      48,960,584,415 bytes
Protection:     AACS
Playlist:       OVA 1
Size:           11,510,728,704 bytes
Length:         0:38:54.332
Total Bitrate:  39.45 Mbps
Video:          MPEG-4 AVC Video / 32,995 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio:          Japanese / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  2304 kbps / 24-bit
Audio:          English / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  2304 kbps / 24-bit
Subtitle:       English / 25.27 kbps
Subtitle:       English / 2.44 kbps

Bitrate graph OVA 1 JPN/ITA BD


BDInfo Full Disc

Disc Title:     Macross Plus - OVA Edition
Disc Label:     MACROSS_PLUS_OVA_EDITION
Disc Size:      48,960,584,415 bytes
Protection:     AACS
Playlist:       00000.MPLS
Size:           47,214,649,344 bytes
Length:         2:35:39.330
Total Bitrate:  40.44 Mbps
Video:          MPEG-4 AVC Video / 32,991 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio:          Japanese / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  2304 kbps / 24-bit
Audio:          English / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  2304 kbps / 24-bit
* Audio:        English / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /   929 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz /   768 kbps / 24-bit)
Subtitle:       English / 21.64 kbps
Subtitle:       English / 2.47 kbps

BDInfo Movie Edition

Disc Title:     Macross Plus - Movie Edition
Disc Label:     MACROSS_PLUS_MOVIE_EDITION
Disc Size:      48,848,164,561 bytes
Protection:     AACS
Playlist:       00000.MPLS
Size:           36,009,381,888 bytes
Length:         1:54:27.694
Total Bitrate:  41.95 Mbps
Video:          MPEG-4 AVC Video / 35,986 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio:          Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /  3874 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz /  1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Subtitle:       English / 21.46 kbps
Subtitle:       English / 16.11 kbps

Bitrate graph Movie Edition JPN BD

[Total Procall]

Is someone planning to grab the Anime Ltd UK version of Naruto when it's released in a few days? Held off because of the Viz versions atrocious quality...hoping these are better as they are apparently authering the discs themselves.

[SpaceDandy]

Originally Posted by Total Procall

Is someone planning to grab the Anime Ltd UK version of Naruto when it's released in a few days? Held off because of the Viz versions atrocious quality...hoping these are better as they are apparently authering the discs themselves.

Captures posted over animeuknews suggest a slight colour difference but no improvement in regard to the master and its lack or sharpness (and likely combed frames). Subtitles are also too small and ugly on AL's release.

[Hydra Spectre]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

The NLD BD uses theatrical master, so the difference probably stems from the color temperature conversion.

I noticed that the USA BD frequently has gray pixel artifacts in the lowest pixel row before the letterbox matte. It's not present on the Japanese release.

Is the US UHD affected by this too?

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by Hydra Spectre

Is the US UHD affected by this too?

Checking the same frame and subsequent frames would suggest no.
FWIW as I haven't seen it explicitly posted anywhere, the UK UHD is a clone of the US UHD.

[Total Procall]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

Captures posted over animeuknews suggest a slight colour difference but no improvement in regard to the master and its lack or sharpness (and likely combed frames). Subtitles are also too small and ugly on AL's release.

I don't mind a lack of sharpness at all, given it's from a SD source. It's the other issues it had that bothered me.

[CrashOveride95]

Future Boy Conan

New comparison, this contains pretty much every BD released:
https://slow.pics/c/B2c3pvti






IMO, Dynit UHD wins overall, but the Anime LTD UHD is a close second

[SpaceDandy]

The usuals:
- Com'On Screen (AL FR) encode is utter garbage.
- Selecta BD has both black crushes and clipped whites. This is not just elevated gamma but some weird sigmoid mapping (bad full->limited range conversion?)

Other comments:
- AL UK BD has some weird chroma aliasing? See the foamy wave on the first capture.
- AL UHD grain retention is all over the place. E.g. capture 9 is especially bad. It is nearly identical to the US 1080p BD, and pales badly in comparison to Dynit. I would not say it is a close second at all.
- For standard 1080p BD, the best is Dynit (not pictured) followed by GKIDS/Polyband.


For the Love Live universe fans, The AL UK (= English) release of Yohane the Parhelion is authored by Com'On Screen. You still have 2 weeks to cancel your orders

[pikagreg]

Anyone check if Viz 86 is as bad as every other Viz CR set yet? lol

[BigOnAnime]

No screenshots as I still can't take those, but if anyone ever wondered how Mayo Chiki! on Blu-ray from August 2014 looked, it's not very good. It was authored by David Williams, and has the overly large subs. The menus have jpeg compression as is typical of DLW encodes, but as for the show itself, it's plagued with banding, it could be rather distracting. There's probably more issues I could have noticed if my setup was better (32 inch Vizio from 2012 I sit 10 feet away from).

Really hope if this show gets a re-release in the next few years, the video quality ends up significantly improved. Also I watched it dubbed rather than subbed (good dub, RIP Christopher Ayres), but the translation probably would need tweaking as it was originally translated by JN Productions.

Looking at the Fandom Post thread from back when for screenshots (they don't work anymore because Imageshack), I found they apparently botched the JP audio track. The few clips I watched to compare to the dub did seem quiet.

Originally Posted by Davidnes

Does anyone else have issues when playing the Japanese audio tack on their blu-rays? I've managed to get through the first 4 episodes but both the music and sound effects were significantly louder than the dialogue, and the overall audio quality sounds horribly muffled.

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...ge3#post463642

Originally Posted by consignia

I noticed that problem with the DVDs a while back: https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...c-3#post270766

It's a bit irritating if this is on the Blu-rays as well, since I specifically ordered them because I thought it might just have been a botched DVD authoring job.

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...ge3#post463644

Another release I want to bring up is Kitty's Fetish Favorites. Hentai, I know (since when is hentai mentioned in this thread?), but oof. This had even worse banding issues than Mayo Chiki!, mainly for Iizuka's Bangin' Blazer. Maid for Loving had banding issues too, but way less of them. Quite a shame the much better OVA here had the far worse video quality as Iizuka's Bangin' Blazer is now my second favorite hentai after Fuzzy Lips (MAL gave each episode of that a separate entry).

[kk1]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

Another release I want to bring up is Kitty's Fetish Favorites. Hentai, I know (since when is hentai mentioned in this thread?), but oof. This had even worse banding issues than Mayo Chiki!, mainly for Iizuka's Bangin' Blazer. Maid for Loving had banding issues too, but way less of them. Quite a shame the much better OVA here had the far worse video quality as Iizuka's Bangin' Blazer is now my second favorite hentai after Fuzzy Lips (MAL gave each episode of that a separate entry).

Not sure I'll ever buy it, but out of curiosity is the original DVD better?

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by pikagreg

Anyone check if Viz 86 is as bad as every other Viz CR set yet? lol

I can now answer that question, and the answer is yes and no. 24bit audio was an immediate red flag as it's a telltale sign that the encode will suffer from the gamma bug (which it does). As per usual, the encode likes to shit itself, even on static parts of the image and is visible in motion, with this issue amplified massively in higher motion scenes like in the OP.

The poor compression and blocking is less noticable in static scenes compared to something like Jojo due to the source being relatively flat and clean though, and it's not as disastrous as something like Jujutsu Kaisen which has terrible compression, banding and other artifacts that look to be due to poor decompression of the masters, but equally you shouldn't buy this when the UK Funi BD exists.

TLDR: Just get the Funi BD. It's actually very good as far as their discs go, with all the episodes encoded at 32mbps and a boatload of extras.

[kk1]

Don't understand why Viz can't hire someone competant enough to encode their stuff, or someone who at least learns from their mistakes and gets better.

[bigblkhrt]

Originally Posted by kk1

Don't understand why Viz can't hire someone competant enough to encode their stuff, or someone who at least learns from their mistakes and gets better.

The short answer is they’re not always willing to pay for someone who can do it competently. At least, there’s an alternative in the case of 86, but we’re not always so lucky.

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by kk1

Not sure I'll ever buy it, but out of curiosity is the original DVD better?

For Mayo Chiki!? No idea, but keep in mind that apparently had botched audio on that subbed-only DVD.

As for Kitty's Fetish Favorites, the DVD which came out at the same time as the Blu-ray should just be a downscale of the Blu-ray. The OVAs on it are from 2015 and 2016, so they're HD-native.

[Naiera]

Mayo Chiki sounds terrible on the Blu-ray release. The JP track.

[Mangaranga]

Planetes isn't the usual in house Funimation disc in either disc setup or encode. If what I'm seeing is correct, it suffers from the gamma bug, poor IVTC, bad compression (on top of the already at times poor source) and padded files, by as much as 2-3gb when remuxed. It looks like a Viz disc, and I really wouldn't be surprised if it turned out Subatomic Digital did something with it, even if it was just the IVTC.

[shushutto]

Does anyone know how well the PQ of the SK8 the Infinity NA blus hold up?

[NLScavenger]

Megazone 23 JPN and AnimEigo 2021/2022/2024 BD comparisons

Part 1: https://slow.pics/c/wuQ5gq0j
Part 1 NSFW scene where compression struggles: https://slow.pics/c/kHQ4KbjA
Part 2: https://slow.pics/c/VfDHDwZK

Part 3 and BDInfo will follow later