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ANNCast - Mastering the Universe with Clarine and Matt


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CareyGrant



Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Posts: 453
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:04 pm Reply with quote
What difference am I supposed to be seeing between the screenshots? My untrained eyes aren't really seeing a marked difference besides some differences in brightness and color saturation.
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chronium



Joined: 25 Apr 2005
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Location: Canada
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:18 pm Reply with quote
Looking at the comparisons the original looks the best out of the three versions, especially when you look at the enlarged pictures.
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief


Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 1684
Location: Los Angeles, CA
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:19 pm Reply with quote
Takeyo wrote:
Just speculation from a layperson here, but that final disc might have only been a BD25 as opposed to BD50, which presumably has a higher production cost. I think S23 might have done something similar with it's Xam'd collections.


Pretty good speculation! Yeah, the per-unit price difference between a BD-25 and a BD-50 is pretty significant, way more than the difference between a DVD-5 and a DVD-9. Last I heard it was a difference around $2 per disc at low (<10,000) quantities.
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ljaesch



Joined: 03 Apr 2009
Posts: 299
Location: Enumclaw, WA
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 9:44 pm Reply with quote
While I understand what you're trying to say, I don't quite see what BD (Blu-ray disc) has to do with what I'm asking, since I was talking about a DVD box set, not a Blu-ray set. Wink

I did see Justin's response to you later, though.

Takeyo wrote:
EDIT:
ljaesch wrote:
I'm actually rather curious as to how they decide how many episodes go on each disc in a box set.

[...]

As an example, I pulled out my copy of the Dragon Ball Season Five DVD box set. It has five discs, with the following breakdown of episodes: 7, 7, 7, 7, 3. Admittedly, the final disc has the bonus features, but couldn't the sets have been broken up in a such a way where they weren't cramming a whole bunch on each one and then have three left over, especially since the only bonus features are a textless opening, a textless closing, and six trailers? I would have loved to have gotten an answer for that. Oh well.

Just speculation from a layperson here, but that final disc might have only been a BD25 as opposed to BD50, which presumably has a higher production cost. I think S23 might have done something similar with it's Xam'd collections.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2530
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:01 pm Reply with quote
chronium wrote:
Looking at the comparisons the original looks the best out of the three versions, especially when you look at the enlarged pictures.


Which is funny, because the "original"/orange box version is the one that gets the most hate due to the overuse of DNR and grain and noise reduction, not to mention the silly idea of widescreening the show. The second pictures, from the Dragon Box, are actually the real "original" versions, since that's what Japan got before we even got the orange box releases.

As for the BD pics, they look nice, since they have the better colors of the orange box release, but keep the original film grain and look of the Dragon Box release. It does look promising.
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Charred Knight



Joined: 29 Sep 2008
Posts: 3085
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:13 pm Reply with quote
Lord Geo wrote:
chronium wrote:
Looking at the comparisons the original looks the best out of the three versions, especially when you look at the enlarged pictures.


Which is funny, because the "original"/orange box version is the one that gets the most hate due to the overuse of DNR and grain and noise reduction, not to mention the silly idea of widescreening the show. The second pictures, from the Dragon Box, are actually the real "original" versions, since that's what Japan got before we even got the orange box releases.

As for the BD pics, they look nice, since they have the better colors of the orange box release, but keep the original film grain and look of the Dragon Box release. It does look promising.


Never really got the hate of the Orange box or at least never got the love the Dragon Box got. I mean MSG was made in 1979, and dvd pictures for that looked better than the Dragon Box. It just looked like Toei barely put any effort into making it look good.

The remaster for this version does looks good though.
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TarsTarkas



Joined: 20 Dec 2007
Posts: 5821
Location: Virginia, United States
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:41 pm Reply with quote
Charred Knight wrote:
Lord Geo wrote:
chronium wrote:
Looking at the comparisons the original looks the best out of the three versions, especially when you look at the enlarged pictures.


Which is funny, because the "original"/orange box version is the one that gets the most hate due to the overuse of DNR and grain and noise reduction, not to mention the silly idea of widescreening the show. The second pictures, from the Dragon Box, are actually the real "original" versions, since that's what Japan got before we even got the orange box releases.

As for the BD pics, they look nice, since they have the better colors of the orange box release, but keep the original film grain and look of the Dragon Box release. It does look promising.


Never really got the hate of the Orange box or at least never got the love the Dragon Box got. I mean MSG was made in 1979, and dvd pictures for that looked better than the Dragon Box. It just looked like Toei barely put any effort into making it look good.

The remaster for this version does looks good though.


Never saw the video, but based on the pictures presented, the Orange Box pictures are better than the BD pictures. The BD pictures are better than the DVD transfer picture, but it is no where near the quality of the Orange Box picture.

If that picture truly represents the quality of the BDs for this, I wouldn't buy it. Really can't understand why the OB got hate, as it looks better to the eye, than the DVD transfer and the BD.

Perhaps there is some error in the picture titling.
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Bonham



Joined: 20 Nov 2010
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Location: NYC
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:12 pm Reply with quote
TarsTarkas wrote:
If that picture truly represents the quality of the BDs for this, I wouldn't buy it. Really can't understand why the OB got hate, as it looks better to the eye, than the DVD transfer and the BD.

Perhaps there is some error in the picture titling.
Colors boosted to ridiculously oversatured levels and applying massive DNR (digital noise reduction) to reduce detail does not make the picture better. Also, cropping the image like that is never, ever good. Plenty of people who don't really care for the integrity of the imagery will disagree, but that doesn't make it right to do so. Sadly, companies will cater to those who feel that an unnatural, manipulated, "brighter" image is better, such as Funimation has in the past with their application of DNR and EE (edge enhancement) to their upscales, although this has (mostly?) seemed to be abandoned if favor of a more hands-off approach..

That was actually the issue with Funimation's release of FLCL. The Japanese master was problematic for a number of reasons, and can be seen in this thread. This specific post by hissatsu actually details why DNR, EE, etc. should not be applied to upscales (such digital manipulations were sadly applied to FLCL and others):

Quote:
The only thing an SD upscale should aspire to be is something like a "perfect DVD". Perhaps a tiny bit more resolution, none of the compression artifacts, lossless audio. Every effort to make things sharper, smoother, cleaner than the original animation before it was compressed just makes things worse.
If you don't have a problem with those kind of manipulations, that's fine. But it is obviously still a problem for others.
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xBTAx



Joined: 05 Mar 2010
Posts: 189
PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:14 am Reply with quote
It was really interesting to hear about this part if bringing anime over, but I'll have to relisten when I'm less tired, hah.

In any case, I don't think I've ever really had a problem with Funimation's releases. (Well, there was the back cover of Summer Wars' typos, but no disc problems...)
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Kakugo



Joined: 29 Nov 2007
Posts: 163
PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 2:53 am Reply with quote
Something that was (perhaps unintentionally) not made clear in the show: Spice & Wolf S1 is an upscale here in the states, but the Japanese release is a "real" HD transfer. Not a particularly good HD transfer, but with substantially higher resolution than FUNi's release none the less.

This is the second time FUNimation has upscaled an SD source when an HD master exists, and is kind of a big deal, even if it's not something that happens a lot. If HD masters exists and FUNi can't/won't get it, it should never be released as an upscale.

Otherwise this was pretty interesting stuff. I sure don't envy that nightmarish FUNi work load, and the DRAGON BOX vs Blu-ray images are... very interesting.
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JohnnySake



Joined: 22 May 2008
Posts: 582
Location: Auburn Hills, MI
PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 6:52 am Reply with quote
Zalis116 wrote:
Funny they should mention the ramifications of putting a Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne trailer on a disc for a rated PG-show. At Naka-Kon 2010 in Kansas City, MO, the convention ran into trouble with the hotel when a (front-loaded and not easily-skippable)...


Many times when I run into those Funi dvd trailers at the start of a dvd that won't let me chapter skip, I'll use that trick of hitting the "stop" button twice on my dvd controller, and then hit the menu button, voila, no more forced trailer. I don't know if there is a trick like that on blu-rays though.

There's a good request to Funi, to please stop making the intro credits and trailers unskippable. Wink
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machetecat



Joined: 06 Jan 2010
Posts: 396
PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 6:59 am Reply with quote
I've always been able to skip the trailers by hitting "title menu" on the remote. Both my Blu-Ray and DVD player have this option. Never been a problem for me.
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DmonHiro





PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:31 pm Reply with quote
OK, what have we learned: Adding English dubs DOES reduce video quality, as there will be less space for the video. So yeah... I was right all along. HOWEVER, in the other side of that coin, that space that was used for the English dub couldn't have been used for the video anyway because of spec limitation. If that wasn't true, that would mean that the Japanese Blurays would always be full 50GB, but they are almost never that. So what have we really learned? That the Japanese are DICKS who COULD put 3-4 episodes per disk, but don't so that they sell more volumes.
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Zalis116
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Joined: 31 Mar 2005
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Location: Kazune City
PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 2:03 pm Reply with quote
JohnnySake wrote:
Many times when I run into those Funi dvd trailers at the start of a dvd that won't let me chapter skip, I'll use that trick of hitting the "stop" button twice on my dvd controller, and then hit the menu button, voila, no more forced trailer. I don't know if there is a trick like that on blu-rays though.
It's true that that trick usually works, but convention video room volunteers usually have no instructions beyond "insert Disc A at Time B and play in Language C."

kakugo wrote:
Something that was (perhaps unintentionally) not made clear in the show: Spice & Wolf S1 is an upscale here in the states, but the Japanese release is a "real" HD transfer. Not a particularly good HD transfer, but with substantially higher resolution than FUNi's release none the less.

This is the second time FUNimation has upscaled an SD source when an HD master exists, and is kind of a big deal, even if it's not something that happens a lot. If HD masters exists and FUNi can't/won't get it, it should never be released as an upscale.
Out of curiosity, what was the other one?

Also, it wasn't covered in the podcast, but I know some of Clarine's convention panels have covered the reverse importation issue. The Japanese sometimes won't give Funi or other R1 companies the HD masters, forcing them to either do an upscale themselves, or just do a DVD-only release if they don't have the budget or permission to do an upscale. Another thing she's mentioned is that due to the cost difference between upscale Blu-Ray authoring in Japan vs. the US, the Japanese won't provide their own upscales for the North American release.

I do have to question all the "Blu-Ray upscales of SD material will never look as good as native HD transfers, but they'll still always be better than DVD" talk, though. Especially when I hear about Blu-Rays like the infamous old Samurai Champloo BDs, (Funi) Gungrave, (Funi) Abenobashi (JP), or Blue Submarine #6 that are said to look the same or worse than DVD.
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hissatsu01



Joined: 08 May 2006
Posts: 963
Location: NYC
PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 2:28 pm Reply with quote
Zalis116 wrote:

Especially when I hear about Blu-Rays like the infamous old Samurai Champloo BDs, (Funi) Gungrave, (Funi) Abenobashi (JP), or Blue Submarine #6 that are said to look the same or worse than DVD.


Abenobashi looks softer than the ADV DVDs, and presumbly even worse compared to the R2s. Released by Starchild/King Records, which on average probably has has the worst record of all when it comes to the quality of their upscales - FLCL was their work as well. Gungrave and the first Champloo BD set are much similar to each other, and not very good.

Blue sub #6 is definitely better than the DVDs, though it would have been better if less filtering had been done, and the R1 DVDs themselves look pitiful. Sadly, in the comparison shots Bandai Visual used pre-release, comparing their usual upscaling and the "high-tech" upscaling used for Blue Sub, I have gladly taken the standard upscale. Aside from some interlacing artifacts, which could have been fixed, it was better. Which makes sense, since almost all of BV's "standard" upscales have been excellent.
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