Belladonna of Sadness 4K UHD (1973)

[Kyle15]

Originally Posted by SgtBilby

Which disc is the 4k and which is the Blu-Ray?
because neither disc has any indicators of such

Yes they do. The 4k disc has the UHD logo on it and Blu has the Blu-Ray logo.

[bobrocks95]

I seem to be far behind the curve on anime blu-ray releases and I guess I just need to step my game up and open my wallet WIDE because it seems like every time I see a new release, an older, out of print, $100+ one was the better option.

DNR I can live with- though it's definitely not my preference, a lot of anime directors overseeing restorations seem to like the look and push for it. What I don't like is a bit-starved disc with noticeable compression issues and what sounds like maybe a very overblown HDR mastering?

IDK I feel like I've been waiting to buy this movie for like 5 years. Oh, a 4K is coming, I'll wait for that. Forget about it for quite awhile, almost buy the UK 4K on ebay (I literally backed out of a sale), then see it's picked up for US distribution, oh I'll wait for that...

[peppapigstan]

Originally Posted by kmhofmann

Way. Keep in mind that this is not a single-layer Blu-ray - it's their UHD offering ...that they touted earlier would be of amazing quality and have much better compression than previous releases.

You also have to keep in mind Discotek is a very small company & the CEO is extremely tight when it comes to disc space. Often times MediaOCD's encoding doesn't suffer badly but Belladonna is one of those rare cases where the encode fails to meet expectations. They weren't lying when they said this is better than the previous USBD however & I believe that's what they're referring to when talking about previous releases since Discotek is an American company. MediaOCD, when they're NOT constrained by disc limitations, can put out MUCH better encoding work than other competitors (even Japanese encoding houses) as seen here:
Neon Genesis Evangelion GKIDS USBD vs. King Records JPBD (close-up comp example)

Neon Genesis Evangelion GKIDS USBD vs. King Records JPBD + other encodes (couldn't find a pure BD comp, sorry)

Kimagure Orange Road USBD vs. JPBD vs. fan chroma-denoising test (ignore the last category)
- worth noting the JPBD has more discs & bitrate size, but Toho Animation isn't as good as MediaOCD

The Bullet Train (1976) Discotek BD vs. Eureka BD
- MediaOCD CC'd the movie to remove the green tint overcast

I'd also like to bring up this remark:

Originally Posted by gigan72

A very well regarded industry man, who works on grainy releases with HDR and no notable DNR, David M, came into a thread to clarify that it's not necessary and that they never apply DNR to help with the encode (and to specifically dispel rumors that it is necessary).

and I was curious to know the full context of what David M. said, so I found this video (and it's not in a thread):
https://www.youtube.com/supported_br...tube.com/watch
Interesting. This is an older video, but he never said anything about how DNR is needed, just that his job as an encoder is to be faithful to the look of the masters provided. Now, I don't know his full stance on DNR so unless someone can actually LINK me to the POST David M. appeared in as the OP of the quote says, then I'm gonna write this quote off as twisting words to support an argument. Disliking DNR is valid! Twisting words to invalidate other professional encoders is not.

Anyways, judging by this thread, it's evident none of y'all really have seen any other Blu-rays/restorations of cel-era Japanese anime & only came in here to see the drama with this UHD & MediaOCD without knowing anything about anime BDs or the company's work. (Though it does says a lot about the more mainstream(?) appeal Belladonna has which is good) Y'all would be the coughing babies to the nuclear bomb that are the majority of anime restorations done in Japan:

(screencap from a entry in the Doraemon franchise, a beloved series in Japan)

(from a iconic sports anime entry in the Aim for the Ace franchise)

(from the latest TV entry in the Wataru franchise)

Now, I still think the Belladonna US UHD is a miss & the criticisms are valid, but the outrage expressed here & the way it was expressed is very baffling to be honest.

[kmhofmann]

Originally Posted by peppapigstan

You also have to keep in mind Discotek is a very small company & the CEO is extremely tight when it comes to disc space.

So what? That doesn't excuse anything, and let's not resort to fallacies here. Loads and loads of other labels are also very small companies and they get both preservation of the master as well as encoding right.

Originally Posted by peppapigstan

when they're NOT constrained by disc limitations

Wut?! That BD-66 was, like, literally used only to 40% capacity, while the remaining space was willfully wasted. Why be tight when it comes to disc space when using more is literally for free?

I can only think of two reasonable causes: it's either gross incompetence or they're absolutely not giving a shit, or a combination of the two.

Add the clearly bad taste when it comes to both DNR and HDR and it's a very unholy combination that makes me pray that label is not licensing any more films I may be interested in.

[peppapigstan]

Hence why I said Belladonna is a rare case of encoding failure. Also, it's a BD-50, not a BD-66. I do agree the encoding was probably rushed though. Not sure how many titles smaller labels like Deaf Crocodile release per year but Discotek actually releases ALOT of BDs every year and with how MediaOCD owns AnimEigo now (and started up a new live-action level called Whole Grain Pictures), I wouldn't be surprised if the encoders were stretched thin (maybe), hoping they'll be more careful next time

I also provided other examples (like Kimagure Orange Road) where Discotek/MediaOCD never DNR'd anything. While they're more accepting of DNR and use it when they feel it's appropriate, they rarely use it as often as you believe. I'd like for you to see the 4K restoration (though no UHD yet) they did of Project A-ko.

I highly doubt they'll license anything on the same caliber as Belladonna as far as animation goes since such titles are rare, but their live-action output for older movies has consistently been good like The Bullet Train, as well as the releases for cult classics such as Suicide Club, and Shogun's Samurai.
Whole Grain Pictures recently started up and released: Too Much Sleep & Journey From The Fall & are incredibly grainy so there's that

[P.A.C.O.]

They try to be careful with the words they use, but I think they've made comments that they try to aim for a look somewhere between pure cel purity and film grain. I interpret that as reducing grain.

I can only speculate, but I also suspect it's to help the encode so they can squeeze everything on a single layer.

[Deciazulado]

The difference in cropping between these two appears to be the 5% difference between Camera Aperture vs Projector Aperture, +/-1% horizontal/vertical,
which is proper.

UK


US


Of course this is what would be centered:

is less than 1%

Click for 4K.


I’ve noticed in many many transfers from many studios a certain tendency to keep more headroom (raise the PA matte upwards) like if we were still in the days of overscan and using Safe Action Area headroom in the transfers. (Maybe they all have an edict to “Keep it JoeSixPack-out of the boxTV safe”. Or old habits die hard)

screenshots from secretplace

[Deciazulado]

Now about the HDR.

Measuring the nits from secretplace’s post raw pics here:

Originally Posted by secretplace

here are some screens straight from mpv that aren't tonemapped and that have the HDR metadata intact. They will tonemap automatically in properly color managed browsers and will display properly on HDR displays. Feel free to do with them as you wish:

On the first two, the white diffuse areas measure at about:

Top: 324-356nits. 2 f-stops higher than normal in SDR.
and Middle: 429-470nits, about +2.5 f-stops higher than normal in SDR.

(a f-stop is how we perceive a doubling increase of brightness. So 1 f-stop or full tone brighter to the eye, measures 2X, 2 f-stops, or two full tones, measure 4x, 3 f-stops 8x, etc)


Applying HDR to them -the PQ curve and 2020 color space; plus leveling for 300 nit displays (like this site’s 2016-17 true 4K HDR screenshots) would result in the following for display, since those measured white diffuse nit values are above 300nits:

for 300nit monitors



They look blown out at that screenshot-“300 Nittage” parameter.

(Those true 4K HDR for “300” ‘shots are not clipped, but the highlights above 300 are super heavily compressed, so that 10,000 nits fit within 300-320 nits, and then the values under 300 nits are displayed at their true 1:1 brightness relationship if you adjust your Computer display’s white to ~ 300-330 nits).


Even the Bottom bearded guy one, the one that most of it ‘fits” inside within the 300nits, has some of the hair/white in the left top going up and surpassing it, and the paper white unpainted area at the top left reaches about 490nits, which is +2.3 f-stops above the SDR’s limit of 100% video level 235 maximum white. And 2/3rds of an f-stop above the “300” nits:

for 300nit monitors






So instead of applying 2020PQ for 300 only, I also applied the 2020PQ straight at full 10000 (will look right if your computer display can display white at 10,000 nits brightness which is 6.66 f-stops more than SDR), down to PQ-600 where if your display white is adjusted to at least around 600-660 nits, which is only one f-stop brighter than the 300s, you see the tones at 1:1 PQ brightness.

for 600nit monitors. Click for 4K




The 600 ones should be able to contain the tones. But just in case:

for 700nit monitors.



for 1000nit monitors

[Show spoiler]

for 4000nit monitors

[Show spoiler]

for 10000nit monitors

[Show spoiler]

If your computer monitor has a sRGB color space, you’ll see the colors correct up to that but not above. With a P3 gamut monitor, you’ll see the colors correct up to the P3 space if there are P3 colors in the disc (or up to whatever space your display can reach to).
If you happen to have one of those best QD-OLEDs TVs, hooked to your PC, and everything is properly color profiled and managed, you could see colors up to 2020 reds oranges yellows magentas and blues and NTSC greens and cyans if there’s even any on the disc (and therefore the ‘shots).

They are in “gamma”, so you can move the white point level slider down if you want to make them brighter yes even the 10K, if your monitor can’t be set to 600 nits. Or 10000 . At one point sliding the white point down they’ll clip of course.

All in γ2.4 for dark surround viewing.

[peppapigstan]

Originally Posted by peppapigstan

I'd also like to bring up this remark:

and I was curious to know the full context of what David M. said, so I found this video (and it's not in a thread):
https://www.youtube.com/supported_br...tube.com/watch
Interesting. This is an older video, but he never said anything about how DNR is needed, just that his job as an encoder is to be faithful to the look of the masters provided. Now, I don't know his full stance on DNR so unless someone can actually LINK me to the POST David M. appeared in as the OP of the quote says, then I'm gonna write this quote off as twisting words to support an argument. Disliking DNR is valid! Twisting words to invalidate other professional encoders is not.

I see the OP who brought our attention to David M's quote has read this thread's recent activity & yet has failed to provide the thread of this exact quote, so I'm going to write off what they said as false

Anyway, I do concur the HDR is too bright for this movie in addition to the encoding problems. There are other releases I can look into (except for the original USBD lol) so this THANKFULLY isn't the worst case scenario in terms of releases for this movie (unlike say, American Graffiti), especially since UHD players/discs are region free

[McCrutchy]

This discussion would seem to be a moot point now, as the UK edition has been sold out for some time, as far as I can tell. If Anime Limited can, they should perhaps consider a standard edition repress, so that people can actually buy their disc for a reasonable price and compare it to the Discotek disc.

[kmhofmann]

Originally Posted by peppapigstan

I see the OP who brought our attention to David M's quote has read this thread's recent activity & yet has failed to provide the thread of this exact quote, so I'm going to write off what they said as false

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...2#post22102092
Happy?

And on the topic of grain reduction in animation:
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...9#post21017799
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...9#post21017799

[peppapigstan]

of course! Thanks for providing insight properly. I'd love to see more grainy animation with HDR on UHDs, The Last Unicorn actually is an example of such

[orfy]

Originally Posted by McCrutchy

This discussion would seem to be a moot point now, as the UK edition has been sold out for some time, as far as I can tell. If Anime Limited can, they should perhaps consider a standard edition repress, so that people can actually buy their disc for a reasonable price and compare it to the Discotek disc.

For anyone still on the hunt for the UK edition, copies are available here at cost price (just received mine today in robust pacakaging!)

https://www.animebluray.co.uk/Home/Product/1933

Unfortunately they only ship to the UK.

[McCrutchy]

The UK edition seems to be available again:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...6#post22762386

[BubblegumMecha]

wrong thread

[Kyle15]

Originally Posted by BubblegumMecha

I just noticed that the US Amazon preorder popped up again with a September 16 release date. Is the re-release back on?

It's been out already. Think you're thinking of something else!

[BubblegumMecha]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

It's been out already. Think you're thinking of something else!

I am. I clicked on the wrong thread from my search and posted without being sure