The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[Ajc228]

Does anyone know how the encode for the Crunchyroll release of Ranking of Kings looks? I’m assuming it’s mediocre but I was curious if anyone had some insight.

[gloomranger]

ARMITAGE III JP BD-Box

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/post834245

Screenshots:

[Ccharmanderk]

Lol you can still see dot crawl artifacts on her jacket and boots. Her boots in the last screenshot have it really obvious.

Seems like it's a quick and dirty upscale of the old DVD and not a very good one at that.

[NLScavenger]

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

Comparison

Bandai BD isn't worth going after I guess. There are scenes where the banding is slightly less emphasized than Funi BD, but there are also scenes where there's more banding. Dither/noise in darker scenes like the hospital rooftop scene is a bit clumpy because of the kneecapped video bitrate. Funi BD has chroma subsampling issue that's on every Funi release since 2016 (see shifted chroma in #2), but most people won't notice that.

This movie could use a remaster.

Bandai BD


Funimation BD


Kadokawa BD


BDInfo Bandai BD

Disc Label: The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
Disc Size: 35,549,456,090 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 01003.MPLS
Size: 33,995,710,464 bytes
Length: 2:43:15.952
Total Bitrate: 27.76 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 17827 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: English / Dolby TrueHD Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /  2881 kbps / 24-bit (AC3 Embedded: 5.1 / 48 kHz /   448 kbps / DN -27dB)
Audio: Japanese / Dolby TrueHD Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /  2913 kbps / 24-bit (AC3 Embedded: 5.1 / 48 kHz /   448 kbps / DN -27dB)
Subtitle: English / 28.502 kbps
Subtitle: English / 0.770 kbps

[nissling]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

The Funimation disc also has forced subtitles when viewed with original language. Not sure about the Bandai disc.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by nissling

The Funimation disc also has forced subtitles when viewed with original language. Not sure about the Bandai disc.

Not locked on Bandai BD.

[pixelforest]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

Just a quick one - the Japanese BD of Paripi Koumei (or Ya Boy Kongming) is a steaming pile of poo, with near constant banding and/or blocking.
Sadly this seems to be a very common thing with P.A.Works titles these days.

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

Remuxing to an MKV confirms that the disc author pulled a Viz on this one. Never expected to see this behaviour pulled for a Japanese release.

here's hoping the US BD is not worse, preordered it with fingers crossed.

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by pixelforest

here's hoping the US BD is not worse, preordered it with fingers crossed.

I doubt it'd be worse, but equally it can only be so good if the source is in an utter state. I remember Appare Ranman's JP BD was so bad that when it came time for Funimation to release it they applied a pretty heavy deband filter and dither to it. I doubt Sentai would do anything beyond their usual lowpass filtering, but that's not to say that it could be at least slightly better. It should have a higher average bitrate if nothing else.

Also fwiw, Akiba Maid War's first BD volume recently came out, and whilst nowhere near as egregious, it also suffers from some pretty unsightly source banding as well as another padded encode. The files suggest they are 7gb 37mbps encodes, but they're actually anything from 4-6gb (23-35mbps) depending on the episode. I don't mind CBR encodes when the actual average doesn't deviate much from the target and actually looks good (like the Mubi BD of Decision to Leave did), but I legitimately have no idea why anyone would artifically pad the bitrate 2-3x.

[NLScavenger]

HK BD of Perfect Blue seems to use the same master as US BD / UK Ultimate Edition BD

https://i.imgur.com/nji4Aym.png
https://i.imgur.com/yLTiHYK.png
https://i.imgur.com/m7pKksE.png
https://i.imgur.com/QdnZQgk.png

BDInfo

Disc Title: Perfect Blue - Blu-ray™
Disc Label: PERFECT BLUE
Disc Size: 47,391,403,398 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00001.MPLS
Size: 25,697,193,984 bytes
Length: 1:21:45.859
Total Bitrate: 41.90 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 34988 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 2355 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1793 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Audio: Japanese / Dolby Digital Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 384 kbps / DN -31dB
Subtitle: Chinese / 26.919 kbps
Subtitle: English / 30.555 kbps

Also found a comparison of Tokyo Godfathers HK, US, JP, UK BDs https://slow.pics/c/upbPYOYf

EDIT:

Disc Title: TOKYO GODFATHERS
Disc Size: 47,848,945,664 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00001.MPLS
Size: 29,551,749,120 bytes
Length: 1:31:43.498
Total Bitrate: 42.96 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 35996 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 2366 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1782 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Audio: Japanese / Dolby Digital Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 384 kbps
Subtitle: Chinese / 30.56 kbps
Subtitle: English / 29.418 kbps

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

and Millennium Actress

https://i.imgur.com/FhosRx8.png
https://i.imgur.com/i3EcYDH.png
https://i.imgur.com/4p5Vpso.png
https://i.imgur.com/8XV03Pi.png
https://i.imgur.com/7QlTEUG.png
https://i.imgur.com/XBgZkfL.png

Disc Title: MILLENNIUM ACTRESS
Disc Size: 47,783,344,128 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00001.MPLS 
Size: 28,472,315,904 bytes
Length: 1:26:20.000
Total Bitrate: 43.97 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 37001 kbps / 1080p / 24 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 2356 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1781 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Audio: Japanese / Dolby Digital Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 384 kbps
Subtitle: Chinese / 23.494 kbps 
Subtitle: English / 21.731 kbps

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Also found a comparison of Tokyo Godfathers HK, US, JP, UK BDs https://slow.pics/c/upbPYOYf

So we have a windowboxed release (JP), a non windowboxed version of the same master with the gamma bug (UK), a new DNR'd scan (US) and a version of the DNR'd scan with largely worse encoding and off contrast (HK). Kon films truly do have it good...

[NLScavenger]

There's also the region free Spanish BD with English subs that uses the new remaster, but with banding artifacts because of poor compression.

I have to say that I wasn't bothered by the dnr in Tokyo Godfathers. The new scan brings out detail that was not visible before.

[pikagreg]

How bad is the windowbox with TV zoom on? That was how I watched it the first time and the zoom felt like it was meant for that but I wasn't sure. I still enjoyed the new dub a ton from the US release but got rid of the Umbrella one.

[NLScavenger]

The windowboxing was meant for protection against overscan, so with overscan enabled the black borders should not be very noticeable.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

btw, does anyone know how the FR and US BDs of Mutafukaz (a.k.a. MFKZ in US) compare to each other?

FR/DE/US https://slow.pics/c/oVRV5pY7

None of them are ideal, though the FR BD suffers more from banding. Next time I can share shipping costs, maybe I'll pick up a used copy of JP BD.

[NLScavenger]

Tetsujin 28 (2004) - Discotek Media SDBD

This is a re-encode of the R1 DVD because of how poor the Blu-ray upscale apparently is. Never seen footage of the upscale, but I'll take their word for it. The image quality of the SDBD is quite rough, especially in darker scenes. I wonder how this re-encode compares to the R1 DVD, R2J DVD and the HK & TW R3 DVDs (not counting KR because that seems to be bootleg of R1 DVD with KR subs)

Disc Title: Tetsujin 28
Disc Label: TETSUJIN 28
Disc Size: 24,629,643,775 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00000.MPLS
Size: 24,282,296,832 bytes
Length: 10:39:51.803
Total Bitrate: 5.06 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 4300 kbps / 480i / 29.970 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: English / Dolby Digital Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /   224 kbps / DN -27dB
Audio: Japanese / Dolby Digital Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /   224 kbps / DN -27dB
Subtitle: English / 14.753 kbps
Subtitle: English / 1.271 kbps

[Loiky]

Does anyone know what we can expect from the Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne Blu-ray Box that will be released in March? I took a look at the Japanese DVDs and they're atrocious so I'm not sure if the show is salvageable.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Tetsujin 28 (2004) - Discotek Media SDBD

This is a re-encode of the R1 DVD because of how poor the Blu-ray upscale apparently is. Never seen footage of the upscale, but I'll take their word for it.

I'm guessing that the promo video (in SD) was sourced from the BD materials.

https://slow.pics/c/7QoUlTWJ

Promo video


Episodes

[Gowho]

Originally Posted by Loiky

Does anyone know what we can expect from the Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne Blu-ray Box that will be released in March? I took a look at the Japanese DVDs and they're atrocious so I'm not sure if the show is salvageable.

It's a late 90s Toei digipaint show so it'll be as much of an "improvement" as their upscales of Digimon & Doremi so don't expect much good here.

[Spoofer]

Originally Posted by emmet otter

I don't know if this was mentioned, but i'll just post these anyways.
My displeasement of the 'crapimations' release of Black Lagoon.

I don't know why there are so much gradient/banding issues with this. Its on many of the episodes.

[Show spoiler]Episode 6 @ 11:28


Episode 4 @ 10:15


Episode @ 10:36


Episode 7 @ 1:38


These shots to me are an anomaly. I don't understand why the 'low res' scan appearance on the outlines if you look closely. Any reason why these are like this?

Episode 11 @ 19:13


Episode 6 @ 7:38


Episode 6 @ 6:22


Episode @ 2:08

I did a search here and elsewhere, and the issue of whether this is an upscale or not seems conflated, especially with Funi at the time labeling everything they were provided 1080p transfers for being labeled "Native HD" regardless if it was a Japanese upscale or not (IDK if they still do this). But given the age of the show and how aliased those last batch of screenshots are, it is an SD upscale, right?

I have the Funi Premium set still sealed, but given the banding and aliasing, was thinking about flipping it and exploring other releases. Heard the Japanese BD doesn't have the gamma/brightness boost issue that Funi's BDs often had, but I typically restrict myself exclusively to domestic releases so was thinking about searching out the old Geneon DVDs, lol...

But yeah, just curious if there's any extra native resolution in the BD (like FMA was animated at 540p prior to upscaling). Maybe the low-res linework in the last shots were just lazily scaled elements in a recomposite? (Especially since some elements of the frame are fine.)

[Gowho]

https://twitter.com/g6xa3awstGCEljS/...67416271511553

Small comparison of Ghost Stories.