The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[vincentric]

Checked out the Noir Funimation release. Spec wise, the average video data rate for each episode clocks in at around 3.5 GB. Wasn't too thrilled about that since AoA regularly doubles that usage amount for their titles. In spite of lower data amount, it doesn't look half bad, especially when compared to the old ADV DVDs, it looks good (but then again, just about anything would look good compared to the old adv crap dvd). Colors in particular are a massive improvement.

01 - R1 ADV DVD | Funimation BD

02 - R1 ADV DVD | Funimation BD

03 - R1 ADV DVD | Funimation BD

04 - R1 ADV DVD | Funimation BD

05 - R1 ADV DVD | Funimation BD

06 - R1 ADV DVD | Funimation BD

07 - R1 ADV DVD | Funimation BD

[Naiera]

How the shit do they only use 3.5 gigs per ep with nine eps per disc? Stupid idiots.

[Clark Kent]

Originally Posted by Naiera

The morons left almost 10 gigs unused



Looks a lot like a Viz disc

I'll post the stats later.

I didn't expect Aniplex numbers of course. Blue Exorcist has to be an exception.

There could be good financial reasons why you leave 10 GBs left unused on a BD-50. Blu-ray replicators found that any BD over 44/45 GBs led to higher defect rates. The smaller Blu-ray labels are often charged more per disc if a manufacturing run has more bad discs than normal. Hence why you rarely see 48-50 GB Blu-rays from anyone but the major Hollywood studios.

Originally Posted by vincentric

Was able to take some comparisons between the Sentai 1080i (dual volume) and 1080p (complete set) versions of Fate Stay Night.

Sad to report that other than the interlacing (which is quite easy to deinterlace with VLC's inverse telecine), there is no difference. The banding, blocking and just overall fugliness looks even across the board. I read that the 1080p version was supposed to have an improved transfer, it doesn't, it's just as terrible. If anything, the 1080i set provides slightly higher data (a little over 4GB vs a little under 4) for most of the episodes.

The exact same encoder settings will result in slightly higher bitrates on interlaced video than progressive video. It's "easier" to encode progressive video.

Originally Posted by Naiera

I received Student Council's Discretion today and had the disc in the drive to read the disc ID anyway, so I figured I'd run it through MakeMKV as well.

Unlike Maoyu, which was my first Sentai one-disc'er, where the eps were 2.6 gigs each, these eps are 3.5 each. I didn't bother checking Non Non Biyori when I received it a few weeks ago, but at least Student Council's Discretion shows some sort of progress for silly Sentai.

Student Council's Discretion on Blu-ray looks vastly better Crunchyroll's HD streaming. It's a solid-looking anime Blu-ray set.

[vincentric]

Originally Posted by Naiera

How the shit do they only use 3.5 gigs per ep with nine eps per disc? Stupid idiots.

I know right, it's mind boggling.

If I had to go into extra detail, each episode is actually around 4.5 GB total but close to around 1 GB is used for the Dolby True HD audio. Still, altogether, a good chunk of the BD50 is not being used which one would think they would try to to max out if they were cramming 8-9 episodes into it. IIRC, the first disc is 40GB, second 39 GB and the third around 38. I could be off by a little but just don't feel like checking them again with makeMKV.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Clark Kent

The exact same encoder settings will result in slightly higher bitrates on interlaced video than progressive video. It's "easier" to encode progressive video.

Thanks for the heads up, did not know that.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by Clark Kent

Student Council's Discretion on Blu-ray looks vastly better Crunchyroll's HD streaming. It's a solid-looking anime Blu-ray set.

I think it looks absolutely horrible, actually. But that seems to have nothing to do with the encode.

I didn't know about the Blu-ray equivalent of the safe zone on DVD. I've seen FUNi do more than 49 gigs (Index season 2).

[UseY0ur1llusi0n]

Any comp shots of the JP BD? No doubt a BD info scan will trump Funi's

[vincentric]

Originally Posted by UseY0ur1llusi0n

Any comp shots of the JP BD? No doubt a BD info scan will trump Funi's

Are there any 1080p screenshots of the JP release floating around out there? If so, I can try using them as a starting point for some comparisons with the Funimation set.

Or vice versa, if anyone who owns the JP set wants to try using my Funimation 1080p screenshots as a starting point can go ahead and do that, the ones I used for the DVD comparisons yesterday, I can provide time stamps if needed.

Until then, we'll just have to wait, I guess.

[Norbie]

Originally Posted by UseY0ur1llusi0n

Any comp shots of the JP BD? No doubt a BD info scan will trump Funi's

If the file sizes were doubled, how much of an improvement could it be? 10%? 20%?

[Sylontack]

Originally Posted by Girls With Guns

And after that, I really want to delve into learning a good, proficient way to add subs to non-subbed Blu-rays, including burning them back out onto BD-R (no MKV files!) - I'm going to start in on that as my next hobby, lol...

Throwback to this brief discussion in here. Both pertaining to acquiring better quality BDs and BDs unavailable outside of Japan- I think I've managed to pop my Blu-Ray remux cherry (I have no idea if it was a success or not, it's processing now, been on 5% for some time, fairly confident the English audio track was perfectly synced and the subs were perfectly synced to that audio track so I assume they are too so unless some random extra delay is put in during the remux it should come out right I'm hoping).

Still not ready to do it with my Macross Frontier set (because some of the episodes are in one long file and some are in individual files but all out of order and I am still not ready to retime subtitles) or any TV series for that matter so I'm doing a test with Brave Story. I'm really excited to finally put that JPBD of it I bought ages ago to good use and I'll be updating y'all on how it goes. If it becomes enough of a discussion point we can perhaps consider making a separate thread.

EDIT: Looks like the English dub came through fine, the subs are off though, will have to figure out where they went wrong (starts out fine then slowly goes more and more out of sync. But the timestamps in the .ass file seem to be correct?). Will also have to edit out the song lyrics- forgot about them and they kind of appear as a mess on the screen trying to alternate between romaji and translation.

[Z-95]

Doing some analysis on the 5 Centimeters Per Second blus, I have found out that the video bitrate on the pink Global edition is actually higher than the blue domestic release: 37.9 Mbps vs 32.2 Mbps with file sizes (of just the video data) of 15.1 GB vs 13.7 GB.

It looks like they made room for the LPCM audio on the domestic release by taking it from the video.

This leads to the following (at least for the 5 releases I own):
Best Video: Japanese Global Blu (Pink Case)
Best Japanese Audio: Japanese Domestic Blu (Blue Case)
Best Bang Zoom Dub Audio: Bandai DVD (since it is LPCM on the DVD while Dolby Stereo on the Global Blu)
Best ADV Dub Audio: ADV DVD
Best English Subtitles: Unknown! All 4 releases with subs I have (Japanese Global Blu, US Bandai DVD, US ADV DVD, UK Manga DVD) have different subtitles. The ones from the Global Blu look the best since they are higher res, but just at a quick glance they don't translate all signs. Example: At 5:50 the itinerary lines are all translated in the Bandai and ADV DVDs (Bandai as one text blob while ADV does it line by line as the image scrolls) while the UK Manga DVD and Global Blu just translate the last line "Meet Akari at 7 PM" and ignore the subway stops. Also the Blu doesn't have a separate Songs and Titles track for when watching a dub--its all or nothing.

[vincentric]

Originally Posted by vincentric

I noticed that there is a review of the AoA version of Blue Exorcist posted on this site with screenshots. Similar to what am planning with Bodacious, I'll try using those shots as a starting point for some comparison images.

Finally got a chance to take some Blue Exorcist comparisons. To quickly reiterate the UK release packs a high amount of data, each ep averages a little over 7 GB (7.11 to be exact) and it looks great. I think it's pretty much a carbon copy of the AoA release if am not mistaken.

Anyway, it took some time but I was able to capture the exact frame of reference. The main difference is that the BR.com screenies available to the public are a bit more compressed (low jpg) compared to the ones I captured (high png), otherwise they are a very close match.

01 - AoA BD | UK BD

02 - AoA BD | UK BD

03 - AoA BD | UK BD

04 - AoA BD | UK BD

05 - AoA BD | UK BD

06 - AoA BD | UK BD

07 - AoA BD | UK BD

08 - AoA BD | UK BD

09 - AoA BD | UK BD

Haven't forgotten about Bodacious Space Pirates, I'll try to get some comparisons for that as soon as I can.

[Naiera]

I haven't checked any stats or anything, but Devil Survivor 2 (Sentai) looks really nice.

D-Frag, on the other hand, is not spectacular. Both have nine eps on the first disc and the rest on the second disc.

Both shows are really good. The two eps of DS2 I watched just flew by. Same for D-Frag, too.

[vincentric]

Good to know, thanks. Am interested in checking out both shows but haven't even started a 'stream before I buy' session yet.

Am currently interested in picking up Gargantia. This thread has really been useful in stating how the Viz release is garbage and how the UK release is not bad at all. I have really enjoyed the show though and am thinking of importing the pricey JP sets (which seem English friendly enough to me with the inclusion of eng subs).

I wonder how the UK release compares to the JP one, video quality wise mostly?

[Naiera]

I can help with the UK release of Gargantia. It looked nice here, but it wasn't Japanese quality. You might as well pony up the cash already.

[Girls With Guns]

Originally Posted by vincentric

Good to know, thanks. Am interested in checking out both shows but haven't even started a 'stream before I buy' session yet.

Am currently interested in picking up Gargantia. This thread has really been useful in stating how the Viz release is garbage and how the UK release is not bad at all. I have really enjoyed the show though and am thinking of importing the pricey JP sets (which seem English friendly enough to me with the inclusion of eng subs).

I wonder how the UK release compares to the JP one, video quality wise mostly?

Oooo... just get the JP releases and be done with it, vince - I have them all. Three really nice art boxes for the series itself - plus there are also the two separate OVA sets - the first OVA includes a fourth art box that has a blank space for the second OVA, which is just releasing next week.

[vincentric]

Damn you guys ( ) , I was hoping you'd talk me out of it (kind of) but instead talked me into it. Added to wishlist for now, gonna try and wait for the price to drop on each box a thousand yen or two before pulling the trigger.

[neoz]

I personally like the dubs for Gargantia I thought they did a decent job. Shame that the US transfer isn't that good. I have been watching it on Netflix and love the show.

[Girls With Guns]

Originally Posted by vincentric

Damn you guys ( ) , I was hoping you'd talk me out of it (kind of) but instead talked me into it. Added to wishlist for now, gonna try and wait for the price to drop on each box a thousand yen or two before pulling the trigger.

You're Welcome!

[vincentric]

Originally Posted by neoz

I personally like the dubs for Gargantia I thought they did a decent job. Shame that the US transfer isn't that good. I have been watching it on Netflix and love the show.

Nice, did not know it was on Netflix. Have been streaming it subbed on Crunchy. While I prefer subbed, I can't say no to a good dub, I'll check it out on nEtflix for sure.

Originally Posted by Girls With Guns

You're Welcome!

Price dropped on the first box by around 300 yen since adding it to wishlist, hoping it drops more, going to keep my eye on it!

And not Blu-ray but got some specs for the first volume of the recently released Turn-A Gundam DVD nonetheless for anyone curious. The 25 eps are on 6 discs in a 4-4-4-4-4-5 layout. Data wise, the first disc contains 5.2 GB (dual 2.6 GB files with two episodes in each), for around 1.3GB per ep. Am too lazy to check the other discs but am assuming that they'll have the same structure. Oh man, I wish I were sharing the specs for the BD instead.

[Naiera]

I came in here to axe for Turn A stats

They left more than two gigs unused