The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread

[NLScavenger]

A Silent Voice - Kazé FR BD vs Anime Limited UK BD

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/128681

Check comparison #3. The baked-in color banding + Kazé compression don't play very well together.

FR BD screenshots were posted by Youtube reviewer ViCklatereur on his twitter. His review of the Kazé BD will be interesting because he's picking up a copy of the Dynit BD with reduced banding (not fully eradicated mind you).

[Yuripa]

Originally Posted by NLScavenger

The screenshots are still accessible on Aniblu.de. Links to the screenshots can be found on the wayback machine. I made a backup of the Kazé screenshots of The Garden of Sinners Limited Edition. The LE bitrates are really something:

It should also be noted that many (like the majority) of the pressed Blu-ray N°3 are corrupted.
That Blu-ray (Movie 5,6,7) have a encoding/decoding problem for the movie 5, many scenes are corrupted/unreadable, so the player will purely and simply skip those sequences, several minutes during that movie.
I checked my discs today and yup same for me, Kazé are really trash.

[Robbl]

Originally Posted by Yuripa

It should also be noted that many (like the majority) of the pressed Blu-ray N°3 are corrupted.
That Blu-ray (Movie 5,6,7) have a encoding/decoding problem for the movie 5, many scenes are corrupted/unreadable, so the player will purely and simply skip those sequences, several minutes during that movie.
I checked my discs today and yup same for me, Kazé are really trash.

The LE disc or the fixed SE disc?

[Yuripa]

LE discs.

[chronoclast]

I recently finished watching the series and film BDs of Beyond the Boundary from Sentai. The series BDs from 2015 have some mild banding that crops up every so often throughout it. It looks to be source based though as it doesn't appear in gradients all of the time. The encode is solid as the compression looks great, it's just the banding that brings it down a little bit. Screenshots were posted here back in 2015.

The BD with the recap film I'll Be Here: Past and the sequel film Future is a more recent encode from 2017. Past just recycles footage from the series and it has the same banding in the same places, I'm fairly certain it's the source as it looks no different from the series. Future however is entirely new footage and it has almost no banding. I have zero complaints as it's an excellent encode overall. I unfortunately don't have a drive to take screenshots nor have I been able to locate any screenshots for the films.

[professorwho]

I have the films. It’s a miracle. 3 hours on a single disc with 4 (in total) lossless 5.1 tracks at 24-Bit (each being about 4.3 mbps). Yet it looks great. The Bitrates are rather low (21.99 for movie 1 and 21.97 for movie 2) but the compressionist achieved a near flawless image. Whoever did the compression on that disc needs to be congratulated.

[pikagreg]

I know you guys mentioned Shout not having great releases but this is the first time I have seen something like this. I put Maquia in my pc and saw it was on a BD50 and thought....cool! After scanning it I noticed it had two different video tracks. The file with the JP track on it also has no subtitle file and they are hardcoded into the video. The English track has two sub files for song/signs and hard of hearing subs with descriptions for sounds.



Both files are about the same size at around 20.2 per video file.

Disc Title: Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 0 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: English / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)

Screenshots

First two screenshots are taken from the JP file.

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[chronoclast]

Originally Posted by pikagreg

After scanning it I noticed it had two different video tracks. The file with the JP track on it also has no subtitle file and they are hardcoded into the video. The English track has two sub files for song/signs and hard of hearing subs with descriptions for sounds.

Are there any differences in the video tracks other than the subtitles? I wonder if they were told to do locked subtitles by the licensor and Shout did that hard sub solution out of total ignorance.

[professorwho]

Well, let’s hope Liz isn’t like this... (Justin cornfirmed to me that the Shout disc of Perfect Blue is his exact same transfer, so that’s fine)

[pikagreg]

Originally Posted by chronoclast

Are there any differences in the video tracks other than the subtitles? I wonder if they were told to do locked subtitles by the licensor and Shout did that hard sub solution out of total ignorance.

Not really sure since I have only seen the movie in Japanese so far. I know there were dates throughout the movie so maybe those were in English too. I took these in mpc before ripping my disc when I noticed the different video files.

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[professorwho]

From the Bitrate scans you showed me, the runtimes are 100% identical, so I doubt there are any.

[kevers7290]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Well, let’s hope Liz isn’t like this... (Justin cornfirmed to me that the Shout disc of Perfect Blue is his exact same transfer, so that’s fine)

Hmm...I was delaying my purchase but if this is the case, I might just order the Shout release of Perfect Blue. Did @Anime say they were doing a collector's edition, or am I misremembering? If so I'll wait still.

On that note, whatever happened to Right Stuf's exclusive CE of Maquia? I'm having a really hard time fighting the temptation to just order the standard edition.

[professorwho]

Yeah, Anime Limited is doing a collector’s edition. It’s been delayed, so I hope it's so they could do their own disc.

[chronoclast]

With Maquia being the first Eleven Arts release through Shout, they possibly could be to blame too for how the subtitles were done.

None of the Gkids releases through Shout up to now have been handled like this as far as I know.

[pikagreg]

Lu is different at least lol

Disc Title: Lu Over the Wall
Disc Label: LU_OVER_THE_WALL
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 0 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video (1) / 0 (0) kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
File Size 26.9 GiB
Audio: English / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Audio: Japanese / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Audio: French / Dolby Digital Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 448 kbps / DN -4dB
Audio: Japanese / Dolby Digital Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / DN -4dB
Subtitle: English (dub script with sound effects)
Subtitle: English (JP Translated subs)
Subtitle: French
Subtitle: English (For commentary it looks like)



Screenshots

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[NLScavenger]

I thought of ordering Maquia, but I dodged a bullet there. The US Maquia BD doesn't have French subs, so hopefully AL will author their own softsubbed FR/EN disc with better PQ.

Lu Over The Wall looks good.

[Thedoctor2016]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Well, let’s hope Liz isn’t like this... (Justin cornfirmed to me that the Shout disc of Perfect Blue is his exact same transfer, so that’s fine)

So ALs should be March or before...... (For Perfect Blue)
Unless its delayed for materials lets place bets I bet the book is why we don't have a date yet...

[Bobo1313]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Well, let’s hope Liz isn’t like this... (Justin cornfirmed to me that the Shout disc of Perfect Blue is his exact same transfer, so that’s fine)

I think GKids said they author their own disc and use Shout just for distribution or am I my usual wrong self. Maquia and Liz are Shout releases.

[chronoclast]

Does anyone here have the Haikara-san Part 1 BD that Eleven Arts released through Nozomi? I'm very curious to know if that was handled in a similar fashion to Maquia or not.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Bobo1313

I think GKids said they author their own disc and use Shout just for distribution or am I my usual wrong self. Maquia and Liz are Shout releases.

I doubt that, as their GKids releases are encoded with the exact same setup as Shout, with their “constant Bitrate” nonsense. However, as I don’t own any of them, I can’t say for certain.