AnimEigo - Megazone 23 OVA

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by The Collector FX

I thought I remembered NLScavenger mentioning that he planned on doing a comparison but I don't know where he's at on that.

I'm waiting for a price drop or an improvement in the euro-dollar exchange rate, which could take a long time considering current developments in the world. Hopefully someone else can take screenshots of the retail edition.

[NLScavenger]

Part I - 2022 US BD / 2021 US BD / JP BD: https://slow.pics/c/l1yNv0BD

2022 US BD


2021 US BD


JP BD


The retail edition in general preserves grain better than the Kickstarter BD and the lowpass filtered JP BD. It's too bad that Justin only got involved with AnimEigo releases after the 2-disc Kickstarter BD shipped out.

As for the artifacting in the reds in Part II, that seems to be something that's baked into the master: https://slow.pics/c/zKTaNAXF

Extras are presented in a more sensible manner on the retail edition: galleries are now navigable via the remote (played as movie on KS BD), trailers/promos can be accessed via menu (they played in the menu on the KS BD).


BDInfo 2022 BD

Disc Title: Megazone 23
Disc Label: MEGAZONE 23
Disc Size: 49,576,448,206 bytes
Protection: AACS
Playlist: 00000.MPLS
Size: 46,176,830,784 bytes
Length: 4:25:53.020
Total Bitrate: 23.16 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 16957 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: English / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz /  2090 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz /   768 kbps / 24-bit)
Audio: English / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /   893 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz /   256 kbps / 24-bit)
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz /   855 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz /   256 kbps / 24-bit)
Subtitle: English / 64.803 kbps
Subtitle: English / 70.295 kbps
Subtitle: English / 63.558 kbps
Subtitle: English / 70.187 kbps

[Prince_7]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Part I - 2022 US BD / 2021 US BD / JP BD: https://slow.pics/c/l1yNv0BD

Something definitely went wrong during capture of those screencaps on the third comaprison, lots of weird gray blocks in the black bars (unless that's in the encode, if so big yikes).

Can't notice them on my OLED screens but highly visible on a poor LCD monitor.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Prince_7

Something definitely went wrong during capture of those screencaps on the third comaprison, lots of weird gray blocks in the black bars (unless that's in the encode, if so big yikes).

Can't notice them on my OLED screens but highly visible on a poor LCD monitor.

Seems to be in the encode (took caps of same frame in MPV and MPC-HC + MadVR, then used paint bucket tool in MS Paint). Can't say that I notice them on my laptop LCD screen.

[Girls With Guns]

meh, for me there is too much grain in the 2022 release, I dislike an overly grainy image. I actually prefer the grain toned down to the level of the 2021 release - there is still a decent amount of grain there. The JP release is definitely scrubbed too much.

[Prince_7]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

Seems to be in the encode (took caps of same frame in MPV and MPC-HC + MadVR, then used paint bucket tool in MS Paint). Can't say that I notice them on my laptop LCD screen.

Here's how it looks like on the terrible PC monitor I have in stock.
Both US releases are affected by it on the third comparison, although the 2021 (pic I took) is straight lines, while the 2022 encode has blocks instead.
The JP release doesn't have them, so maybe something stupid was in the master and the JP released fixed it by adding new completly black bars on top of it.

Either that or MS Paint did an oopsie

[Girls With Guns]

That looks like a Moire pattern.

[Prince_7]

To make it easier to see what I'm talking about, I've elevated the gamma levels on all three pictures.
I guess it's a good reminder to QC on multiple display types because some issues only get revealed on certain panels.

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by Prince_7

Here's how it looks like on the terrible PC monitor I have in stock.
Both US releases are affected by it on the third comparison, although the 2021 (pic I took) is straight lines, while the 2022 encode has blocks instead.
The JP release doesn't have them, so maybe something stupid was in the master and the JP released fixed it by adding new completly black bars on top of it.

The masters were probably not great considering the artifacting in the reds in part II.

It's possible that they fixed the black bars when they did the filtering.

I forgot to mention that there seems to be another issue with the master and it's probably the reason why the JP BD was filtered. On the 2021/2022 BD at the start of a scene, the first frame is sometimes very grainy, but then the grain is a lot less pronounced in the next frames. Something to do with the nature of temporal noise reduction I guess? JP BD is filtered to make those grainy frames fit in with the rest.

JP BD


2022 BD


2021 BD

[CrashOveride95]

Man, everytime this thread gets new posts I keep getting worried it's gone OOP

[NLScavenger]

We also picked up the HD masters for the series, and have been busy conforming them with the original DVD release. We have to do this because they are not frame-by-frame identical!

Films like Megazone are… well, they're films! Made on real film, none of this newfangled digital stuff that the kids are into these days. And real film comes on reels about 20 minutes long. So when you transfer them to video (either SD, back in the day, or HD today), you do so a reel at a time, and then you edit them together.

And sometimes that editing isn't quite the same between releases, especially if the releases are created from different transfers. At any particular reel transition, one version might have a few extra frames -- or a few less. Or there might be a few black frames inserted. Or a frame might be repeated as a still. And all of this affects the synchronization of the audio.

So we have to find a way of editing the video and audio that preserves all of the HD goodness and maintains the audio sync of all the audio tracks. Fortunately, most of the time this is fairly straightforward, because in reel-based film, the audio track rarely extends across reel breaks. Instead, it goes dead for a few frames; if you're watching an old film and the audio seems to drop out for a fraction of a second, that's probably a reel break.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../posts/2693385

I was kind of curious about the edits, so I went over part 1.

Not counting the black frames at the start,
• 2 frames discarded at start reel 2 [00:18:43.205 AnimEigo BDs]
• 6 frames discarded at start reel 3 (this does affect the music slightly) [00:36:03.828]
• No edits on reel 4 [00:51:00.182]
• 2 frames at start of reel 5 replaced with 3 black frames [01:04:44.255]

[GeoffOliver]

Wow, the Media OCD disc is a slight improvement over the Kickstarter discs. I already have the latter, but I'm curious: does the Media OCD disc have all the bonus features, including the commentaries?

[NLScavenger]

Originally Posted by GeoffOliver

Wow, the Media OCD disc is a slight improvement over the Kickstarter discs. I already have the latter, but I'm curious: does the Media OCD disc have all the bonus features, including the commentaries?

It's missing the stretch-goal documentary, but otherwise the same bonus features.

[Ccharmanderk]

I'm late because I kinda forgot this thread existed lol.

Very happy to see that the retail disc is an improvement, though. I have the Kickstarter disc, but next time I have the cash to spare, I think I'm gonna spring for the retail version. I love MZ23 and I wanna have the best-quality version available, and this seems like what I'm looking for.