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ANNCast - It's A Little Bit Funi, This Feeling Inside

From what I've heard, Guilty Crown is too soon to start production on, as the last volume was just recently released in Japan. We can expect it some time late 2013.

The Future Diary's dub is currently in production right now, so we'll probably see it this spring if everything goes well.

Then again, this is all just from what I've read around the forums. Whether it has any merit or not is beyond me.

As for what happened here, I can only guess. This could be as simple as a configuration mistake when the master tapes were captured or cloned in Japan. Black levels are also nowhere near as set in stone as fans seem to think they are -- Japanese NTSC spec puts it at 10 IRE higher than North American equipment, but in HD some masters follow that spec and some don't. Sometimes American gear is used by Japanese companies, adding effects that hit American black levels while the rest of the show has Japanese black levels. I can't tell you how much pain and headache that causes US distros.

[IRE levels should never be a factor for digital masters in the first place. Japanese DVDs and BDs do not appear any darker when played on North American equipment, because the IRE is automatically adjusted by the analog outputs of Japanese players (it's not needed for HDMI). So there should be no need to adjust the brightness of a digital master, yet there have been countless FUNi DVDs and BDs that are brighter than their Japanese counterparts. They've apparently been under the mistaken impression that they need to correct for NTSC differences when they haven't been relevant since the VHS era.

(Oh, and it's actually standard North American NTSC that has a higher IRE, and the difference is 7.5, not 10.)

Do you REALLY think everyone is just blindly applying filters without looking at a scope, or the image itself?

I've seen literally hundreds of master tapes from Japan over the years. You're welcome to argue with me on this, but at least 50% of them have come in with high black levels, from D2 to Digibeta to HDCAM. It happens ALL THE TIME. It just happened to me this week!

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(Oh, and it's actually standard North American NTSC that has a higher IRE, and the difference is 7.5, not 10.)

Ah, right you are. There must be some other reason why I've been getting tapes from Japan with black levels hovering around 10 IRE for the past decade, and a good half of the masters I and my clients work with have to have brightness correction applied downwards.

I've seen literally hundreds of master tapes from Japan over the years. You're welcome to argue with me on this, but at least 50% of them have come in with high black levels, from D2 to Digibeta to HDCAM. It happens ALL THE TIME. It just happened to me this week!

I wouldn't put it past FUNi, no. They've never particularly seemed to care about video quality.

Before I leaped into the bluray world, I allowed myself to get suckered in by those who read three lines of wikipedia, deemed themselves experts, then started to regurgitate nothing short of idiocy with their "expertise".

Zac called it: most of the issues are but a few frames of a very specific episode, as though this was justification to rip apart the entire series.

Well, at least I'll be here to challenge nonsense like this opinion. Their blurays are just fine, and as I hear it, are even better than what the Japanese get in some cases.

No. The banding is present throughout the entire series. It's simply more visible on digitally animated segments and dark scenes (which there are a lot of) than bright or cel-based ones.

And just what are these "even better" releases? Their Spice & Wolf season 1 release was an upscale when the JP release was HD, and FUNi's release had severe black crush to boot, rendering different clothing colors solid black.

Some of their older upscale Blu-rays (like Witchblade) are so bad that even the DVDs have more detail. Although with a lot of FUNi DVDs being bitrate-starved, it's a pick your poison type of situation.

What makes more sense: the banding issue is related to the master used or FUNimation has a history of banding issues with its catalog.

This depends on how the anime was produced. If the Japanese received the series in HD, that could be 720, which would be in line with the original resolution. If it was 1080, then the reason for our upscale is obvious.

As for "even better", can't answer that. As I said, it's "what I hear", meaning if I were to leave it to the internet to educate me, then the comment was as facetious as those taking 10 second clips and criticizing the entire series for it.

What? Are you saying that if it was 1080 rather than 720, then being an upscale is obvious? I can't even begin to make sense of this.

For one thing, nearly all digital anime is originally animated at 720p (major exceptions being Ghibli films and Children Who Chase Voices) but Blu-ray masters are 1080i or 1080p.

Nice backpedal. "Internet experts don't know what they're talking about, so it doesn't matter if I spread disinformation either."

It's still an upscale, while not as visually noticeable from 480. Basically put, unless the actual production is done in 1080 (and as noted, few are), every bluray sold is an upscale.

It is of my understanding FUNimation will get masters based on the contractual agreement with the licensor, which usually doesn't include HD in most cases.

If FUNimation is getting HD masters and there's video issues introduced not found in the same product in Japan, there's a possibility the distortion is intentional.

It wouldn't surprise me. We see this quite often in streaming.

For the record, Japan's Spice & Wolf was from an HD source, but FUNi's was SD. Neither was originally from full 1080p resolution, but FUNi's release is still objectively worse.

If they're only able to get SD upscaled masters for an HD show, then they shouldn't release it on Blu-ray.

Buster D wrote:

For the record, Japan's Spice & Wolf was from an HD source, but FUNi's was SD. Neither was originally from full 1080p resolution, but FUNi's release is still objectively worse.

How did this determination get made? I can't imagine there are people out there buying both products just so they can do side-by-side comparisons (though I wouldn't rule out some would do this).

If the determination is based on a few screenshots, we're right back at the position of "few frames rather than the entire series".

Most of those images posted I've seen are in jpeg format. I hope you can understand why I see this as an issue.

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If they're only able to get SD upscaled masters for an HD show, then they shouldn't release it on Blu-ray.

Two years ago, I would have agreed to this. No, I did agree to this, actually. It infuriated me, but unfortunately, there's got to be a compromise made in exchange for better visuals, and I decided to take this route rather than wait for an industry to share HD masters.

I want to say again I don't disagree there are obvious issues with upscaled blurays sold in R1, but they are still better than their DVD equivalent.

How did this determination get made? I can't imagine there are people out there buying both products just so they can do side-by-side comparisons (though I wouldn't rule out some would do this).

If the determination is based on a few screenshots, we're right back at the position of "few frames rather than the entire series".