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edzieba
Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 704
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 Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:06 pm
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| Tony K. wrote: | | Well yeah, who wouldn't want the highest resolution offered to commercial consumers right now? But for American anime industries, I doubt they'd be willing to put the money and resources into any of their current titles just to upscale an already niche product into 1080p/VC-1/MPEG-4 with 5.1/6.1/7.1 PCM/TrueHD/DTS-HD MA for our viewing pleasure. It just wouldn't be economically sound for them. So in that case, I'd be willing to settle for 720p, which would be a lot better than some of 480p/i SD stuff I've tried watching on my TV. It's cheaper for them, and we don't have to see as much fuzzing and artifacts on-screen. |
The price difference between remastering in 1080p and in 720p is almost nonexistant, as the vast majority of the outlay is for the remastering process itself, not the final resolution.
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Josh7289
Joined: 27 Aug 2005
Posts: 1252
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Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 8:10 pm
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| edzieba wrote: |
| UtenaAnthy wrote: | | I thought that cell animation is easier to do in HD because it doesn't have any pixels, so it doesn't have a set resolution, it's just a matter of good quality production and masters. |
Cel animation, yes. But cel animation has rarely been used for the last decade or so, and has been replaced with Digital Ink & Paint (or digipaint for short). Digipaint has a fixed resolution, like all digital video, hence the upscaling problem. Now, here's the tricky part: The actual production work is usually done in HD or above resolutions, due to the difficulty of working with low-resolution images (alignment, aliasing, and so on and so forth). What determines whether a digipaint show/OAV can be 'remastered' in HD or not is whether:
a) a final master was produced in HD. If the show airs in non-upscaled HD, this will be the case, so no problem.
b) the working master is kept. This is less likely for 'older' digipaint shows, as the working master is HUGE, and storage space in those days wasn't as cheap. Even this may not be enough if editing was done in post-production (mixing interlaced and progressive footage, adding low-res overlays, etc)
c) the unmastered raw images were kept. This would essentially require re-animating the entire show (and often entirely re-creating effects), so is highly unlikely, not to mention prohibitively expensive
Basically, if the show was made before around 2006, it's unlikely a non-upscaled HD remaster will be possible. OVAs are slightly more likely (as their shorter length may increase the likelyhood the working master was kept). Movies can almost always be 'remastered' in HD, as they both had to be produced in HD (probably 2k) or at the very least transferred to a celluloid master, which can be re-captured in HD.
::EDIT:: To give some recent examples: The Yukikaze Blu-ray release is upscaled (Badly. From an interlaced source). Gundam Seed will probably never be remastered due to a horrible bastardised mix of interlaced and progressive footage and effects during the mastering process. Gundam 00, however, has a Blu-Ray release as the entire mastering process was performed in HD. |
That's so f'ing ridiculous that companies would throw away their masters. So so so stupid. There's no excuse for that.
It's like NASA losing the Apollo 11 tapes...
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Zoe
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 898
Location: Austin
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Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 8:29 pm
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| Josh7289 wrote: | | That's so f'ing ridiculous that companies would throw away their masters. So so so stupid. There's no excuse for that.
It's like NASA losing the Apollo 11 tapes... |
Storage is expensive, and even then, disasters can strike.
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bglassbrook
Joined: 29 Aug 2006
Posts: 1243
Location: Gaithersburg, MD
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 6:38 pm
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| Unearthly wrote: | | Utawarerumono? Upscaled? Are we watching the same BD? It has tons of extra detail, especially in the backgrounds. |
Why are we arguing PQ when the larger issue with the original post is that ADV lost the rights on both shows to Funi? Besides, if it gets companies more comfortable with the format (and encourages consumer adoption,) then I woudn't mind a short-term goal of *grits teeth* simply using the extra space to stick more SD episodes per volume on ... as long as the companies only use a set premium and don't expect the usual HD/BD premium.
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Josh7289
Joined: 27 Aug 2005
Posts: 1252
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 9:51 pm
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When it's that important, though, what's a few hundred dollars for a few good hard drives? It just seems like such an inconsequential cost for such an important thing, you know, the preservation of these works...
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Zoe
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 898
Location: Austin
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 10:41 pm
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I hope you don't work in the IT industry.
Proper storage is more than just "a few good hard drives."
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Mohawk52
Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 8202
Location: England, UK
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Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 4:46 pm
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| Josh7289 wrote: |
When it's that important, though, what's a few hundred dollars for a few good hard drives? It just seems like such an inconsequential cost for such an important thing, you know, the preservation of these works... |
Obviously wasn't born when film, and then video tape was king then, was ya? Back in those days a "hard drive " was a cheap car with no power steering and a manual gear box.
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UtenaAnthy
Joined: 27 Oct 2006
Posts: 694
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Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 11:29 am
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| melonbread wrote: | | This entire article is full of absolutely nothing new.
Wake me up when someone solicits some more Blu-ray titles, and even if the titles aren't produced in HD, if they're SD they could really be helped big time by a lot more bandwith from Blu-ray discs, Funimation in particular could reauthor a ton of their old shows that were encoded with shitty bit-rates and have tons of artifacts, likewise for any other company really. The Haruhi opening at a bitrate only made possible by Blu-ray would be incredible. |
I agree with you about Funi (I know, dead horse and so forth) but would prefer if they'd focus on making the quality of their DVD releases better, unless they plan to offer an HD TV and a Blu-ray player for $200/300 dollars including shipping & handling on their website. My point being that I'd like not for less effort to be put into DVDs just because there's a new format that the majority of people can't afford yet anyway. But I do agree that Blu-ray will make standard def look better as well as introducing HD (I'm aware that computers have been HD for years, I'm not sure what the word is, only now is HD moving towards becoming the standard *where possible considering the issues mentioned in edzieba's post* for home theater set-ups as opposed to just an option for internet streaming and downloads.)
| Josh7289 wrote: | | That's so f'ing ridiculous that companies would throw away their masters. So so so stupid. There's no excuse for that.
It's like NASA losing the Apollo 11 tapes... |
Not that I like when companies throw away masters, but I don't think it's quite the same thing as losing an important scientific and historical record.
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