The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[SpaceBlackKnight]

Originally Posted by v_i

As of right now, the only way to watch the wonderful "gunDAMN" dub for the movies is the old AnimeVillage/Bandai VHS tapes. Didn't even make it to DVD.

Those and Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ's English dub didn't make it to DVD or Blu due to Sunrise being extremely peculiar in terms of correct translation and pronunciations of it's Gundam properties. They were horrified with the "gunDAMN" mispronunciation for the English movie dubs and especially how Animax and Omni Productions (yes, THAT Omni who did the Transformers and Godzilla dub) handled Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ.

[The Collector FX]

Didn't Toonami pronounce it "gunDAMN" too when Gundam Wing came to Cartoon Network?

EDIT:

Nope, but gosh dang that trailer hit my nostalgia feels hard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy0j...ature=youtu.be

[Member-571539]

Was there a consensus on which English friendly version of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya was best?

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by gloomranger

Was there a consensus on which English friendly version of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya was best?

I eventually plan to cover it, along with the series in way more detail, but I honestly don't know.

Apparently there's a Hong Kong BD with English subs which may be a clone of the JP BD, but I can't confirm that, or if the subtitles are any good. Besides, you loose the English dub that way, which is one of the best ever due to Crispin Freeman giving the performance of a lifetime as Kyon- probably the best performance in any anime dub out there, and is even significantly better than Tomokazu Sugita... and the HK BD has no extras.

The Bandai BD has correct brightness, I believe, but the bitrate is pathetic (~18 mbps vs ~30 for JP BD), and there's worse compression than the JP BD. Extras are included, fully subbed on a DVD with it.

The FUNi BD has a significantly higher bitrate (almost as high as the JP BD, FUNi is ~28 mbps vs JP ~30), but was encoded with incorrect gamma settings, so there's that in addition to meh encoding settings. Extras included on a DVD.

Remember that the JP BD isn't perfect. The film is long, but the compressionist at Kadokawa left a few gig unused on the disc, meaning it could have a higher bitrate, (the extras Blu-ray uses more space and has a higher bitrate than the movie- thanks Kadokawa, smart thinking) and like A Silent Voice, KyoAni have some occasionally terrible exports/rendering (not necessarily compositing itself) that has a ton of awful source artifacts (lots of banding at points), so I hope that Dynit can pick up the film in Italy (they had/have? the series) and try to fix the master issues and encode it better. (If anyone at Dynit is reading this, please, I'll buy it ASAP if you do it)

If you don't want to fix it yourself or pray that it gets fixed in the future, the Bandai BD is probably best.

[BigOnAnime]

I remember ages ago seeing screenshots of the Bandai Blu-ray having plenty of ugly banding in the darker scenes (can't link because ImageShack). Also said Blu-ray was authored by Bang Zoom!, they have no other Blu-ray authoring credits.
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/enc...any.php?id=628

[SpazeBlue]

US vs JP from earlier in the thread:

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya – Funimation BD vs Kadokawa BD

Kadokawa BD screenshots from kyoani.de

Funimation BD video bitrate: 27998 kbps
Kadokawa BD video bitrate: 29164 kbps

https://slowpics.org/comparison/8fcf...5-ec11a5c87e6e


Funimation BD

[Show spoiler]

Kadokawa BD

[Show spoiler]

[Member-571539]

Originally Posted by professorwho

If you don't want to fix it yourself or pray that it gets fixed in the future, the Bandai BD is probably best.

I had a feeling it wasn’t good. It’s a shame though because it is one of the better anime films to come out in the last decade.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by gloomranger

I had a feeling it wasn’t good. It’s a shame though because it is one of the better anime films to come out in the last decade.

Not only that, it's one of my favourite films of all time, in all honesty. A master class in direction, cinematography, editing, sound design, voice acting, musical scores (both pre-existing: see the use of Gymnopédies by Satie; and original), and so on. I think someone even did a 5+ hour video series breaking down the visual storytelling of the film on YouTube, lol

When there was a big announcement for Haruhi teased last year (that ended up being the new light novel), I hoped it would be a new BD Box with Disappearance on UHD. The source is 1080p, so I think the Q-Tec FORS process could actually improve the material in some ways (reduce banding and blocking) without the side-effects of a normal SD to HD upscale from them. But, such will never happen, sadly.

[NLScavenger]

JP BD screenshots look worse than they're supposed to be. I notice now that whoever did the JP BD screenshots used nearest neighbor chroma upscaling, so colors show jaggies.

HK BD is not a clone. It has a corrupted frame in one scene and some issues with how the subtitle is rendered (it uses same Quarkboy translation as other English releases). Less banding than Funi BD, same colors as Funi BD.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

JP BD screenshots look worse than they're supposed to be. I notice now that whoever did the JP BD screenshots used nearest neighbor chroma upscaling, so colors show jaggies.

Guess I'll be rectifying that soon(ish)...

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Guess I'll be rectifying that soon(ish)...

I should probably also redo the Funi BD screenshots someday (noticed a rounding error in first screenshot).

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Apparently there's a Hong Kong BD with English subs which may be a clone of the JP BD, but I can't confirm that, or if the subtitles are any good.

It definitely exists, as I have it

[mp3dom]

Originally Posted by professorwho

(If anyone at Dynit is reading this, please, I'll buy it ASAP if you do it).

Unfortunately, Dynit doesn't have the license anymore... so quite unlikely it will happen. :P

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Naiera

It definitely exists, as I have it

I knew it existed, I just didn’t know if it was a clone of the JP BD (seeing as it’s listed as also having a PCM 5.1 track), which I now know it isn’t.

[NLScavenger]

Black Lagoon - NBCUniversal JP BD (2013) vs Funi US BD

Comparison

They're both problematic, but the US release is obviously significantly more problematic. As shocking as the US BD episode 1 bitrate may appear, there is so much temporal/spatial redundancy that a higher bitrate wouldn't change much. Bitrates vary a lot (e.g. episode 5 is 23579 kbps).

JP BD (2013)


Funi BD


JP BD (2013) bitrate episode 01

Size: 5,036,070,912 bytes
Length: 0:23:27.531
Total Bitrate: 28.62 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 25594 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: Japanese / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1536 kbps / 16-bit

US BD bitrate episode 01 (Full BDInfo disc 1)

Disc Title: Black_Lagoon_S1S2_D1
Disc Label: BLACK_LAGOON
Disc Size: 31,035,532,763 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00009.MPLS
Size: 3,061,966,848 bytes
Length: 0:23:28.532
Total Bitrate: 17.39 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 12169 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: English / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /  2234 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz /   768 kbps / 16-bit / DN -6dB)
Audio: Japanese / Dolby TrueHD Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /   776 kbps / 16-bit (AC3 Embedded: 2.0 / 48 kHz /   192 kbps / DN -24dB)
Subtitle: English / 48.780 kbps
Subtitle: English / 2.613 kbps

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

Comparison AKIRA JP UHD and US UHD (replacement)

Bandai UHD (from caps-a-holic)


Funi UHD


BDInfo Funi replacement UHD

Playlist: 00800.MPLS
Size: 59,606,460,288 bytes
Length: 2:04:19.666
Total Bitrate: 63.92 Mbps
Video: MPEG-H HEVC Video / 48913 kbps / 2160p / 24 fps / 16:9 / Main 10 @ Level 5.1 @ High / 10 bits / HDR10 / BT.2020
Audio: Japanese / Dolby TrueHD Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /  3559 kbps / 24-bit (AC3 Embedded: 5.1 / 48 kHz /   448 kbps / DN -27dB)
Audio: English / Dolby TrueHD Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /  3220 kbps / 24-bit (AC3 Embedded: 5.1 / 48 kHz /   448 kbps / DN -27dB)
Audio: English / Dolby TrueHD Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /  1535 kbps / 24-bit (AC3 Embedded: 2.0 / 48 kHz /   192 kbps / DN -27dB / Dolby Surround)
Subtitle: English / 27.490 kbps
Subtitle: English / 0.482 kbps

The downsampled Hypersonic track sounds muffled compared to JP UHD Hypersonic track (not as if the JP UHD Hypersonic track was any good). Streamline dub retains the mono inserts from previous BD.

[NLScavenger]

Black Lagoon Kazé BD

A lot more watchable than the Funi BD for sure.



Compression in Kazé BD is noticeably worse than both in OP/ED. Interestingly Funi BD OP/ED is darker

Opening/Ending (JP BD / Funi BD / Kazé BD)





Kazé BD episode 1 bitrate

AVG: 7896 kbps / MAX: 50649 kbps

[TThomas]

An Anime Blu-ray, that uses more space for Audio than for Video?
(6x LPCM 2.0 - Jap, Eng, Fre, Ita, Esp, Ger)

[NLScavenger]

Martian Successor Nadesico The Movie: Prince of Darkness - Nozomi / Anime Limited UK BD



Not a great encode. The remaster is also dnr'd and in some shots frozen grain processed


This only includes the 5.1 remix, just like the JP BD. Don't know if anything was changed in the remix. The TV series remix is substantially different from the original mix (none of the remastered DVD/BD releases include the original mix).

UK BDInfo

Disc Title: Nadesico BD 4
Disc Label: NADESICOBD4
Disc Size: 24,341,647,188 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00001.MPLS
Size: 23,747,923,968 bytes
Length: 1:19:07.367
Total Bitrate: 40.02 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 28793 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: English / LPCM Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /  4608 kbps / 16-bit
Audio: Japanese / LPCM Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /  4608 kbps / 16-bit
Subtitle: English / 3.696 kbps
Subtitle: English / 60.790 kbps

[SpaceDandy]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Black Lagoon Kazé BD

A lot more watchable than the Funi BD for sure. [...]

Hah, everyone dislike this release because how wrong it feels (2xBD25 for 12 episodes with 6 audio tracks) and the banding all over the place. Guess the grass is not that greener elsewhere. There were nothing for Kazé to mess with at that point.

If anyone wants to do again a (proper) Haruhi movie BD comparison with selected releases, I can provide the french BD captures.

[professorwho]

https://www.kyoani.de/11269/review-d...ay-deutschland

German release seems to be the same as the French (also Kazé), and matches up with the info from ViCklatereur‘s video. But once I have the JP BD in my hands, if you want to replicate the shots I do (either myself or what Scavenger does and I replicate), go ahead.