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NEWS: Crunchyroll Launches 1080p High-Definition Streams

cyberbeing wrote:

... They would have been much better of just going with high-bitrate 720p. But hey, if the placebo of 1080p streaming attracts new subscribers who don't know better, why not.

As above, they couldn't have "just" increased the 720p bitrate without squeezing out existing 720p viewers who are near the edge of what their systems allow.

As far as doing frame animation in 540p and upscaling that against 1080p backgrounds, with 1080p post-processing ...
... if Bleach, a long-running early evening Shonen Jump series, is presently working that way, that suggests its a pretty cheap way to produce anime for eventual BD release, so it would not be surprising if a lot of seasonal anime series are working along similar lines.

With lower res frame animation upscaled against 1080p backgrounds, is it necessarily the case that doubling the 720p bitrate would indeed be superior in perceived quality on a big screen TV to 1080p at that same doubled bitrate? Unless "720p HQ" at the higher bitrate (somewhere around 3Mb/sec to 4Mb/sec), the simplicity of communicating "720p" versus "1080p" would argue strongly for the 1080p stream.

...One other thing it says that is worth remembering is: "7 months ago". Summer 2011 and Winter 2012 are not the same anime production projects, and what was true of the projects in Summer 2011 is not necessarily true of all of the projects in Winter 2012...

Quote:

Note: Anime is commonly drawn between 480p and 720p, and 1080p are most often upscales from those. Certain non-animation assets are sometimes rendered at the higher resolution.

That says something quite different than "anime is made in 480p or 720p, the rest are upscale except very certain exceptions"...

...Reading is fundamental: "Anime is commonly drawn between 480p and 720p" simple does not mean the same thing as "either 480 or 720p"...

...Obviously in those series it would be silly to render the frame animation at either 480p or 720p, when 540p will upscale to the 1080p background more cleanly than either 480p or 720p would do...

I would agree that everyone should read it, but read it, do not project your own biases and misconceptions into it.

The only visual benefit that Crunchyroll subscribers potentially have with 1080p vs high-bitrate 720p, would be if the resize algorithm they use in their flash player is really crappy when viewing in fullscreen, or conversely, if the resize algorithm they use to downscale from 1080p to 720p when encoding is too soft.

The uptick in quality from the 1080p option is certainly legit, contrary to what some have said. Screenshots, surprisingly, don't really do it justice--the difference is noticeable when you watch the video itself. I'd also contend that the audio quality is better, too, though ultimately, the overall benefits of 1080p largely rest on the productions themselves.

Here's the problem: nobody I know of broadcasts over the air in 1080p, even in over-air terrestrial broadcasting. I believe in the USA (using ATSC) and Japan (using ISDB-T) the maximum resolution is 1080 interlaced (1080i), and I believe many Japanese broadcasters use 720p as their HD broadcast resolution standard.

As such, it's way overkill to offer 1080p. Also, unless you have cable Internet that can do at least 12 megabits/second sustained download speed or Verzion FIOS, the bandwidth requirements for 1080p is too much for most broadband users here in the USA.

For those declaring these must be upscales (and if indeed they are, it is the licensor that is doing it, not CR), then you must also be declaring that every single anime BD on the market is an upscale.

TheAncientOne wrote:

For those declaring these must be upscales (and if indeed they are, it is the licensor that is doing it, not CR), then you must also be declaring that every single anime BD on the market is an upscale.

Every single TV anime BD is an upscale, yes. Only movies are made in true 1080.

In the Fall 2011 season, Fate/Zero was the only show Crunchyroll was streaming which have an effective resolution above 720p.

However, if any original material is 1080p, then despite not being "true 1080", the 1080 material delivered to Crunchyroll includes more detail than will be in the 720p downscale made from it.

...whether downscaling their source material to 720p and then encoding it at the same bitrate they now use for 1080p would have a visibly superior result for all series across the board, now and over the next year or two.

As cyberbeing indirectly noted, if the upscaling used by the animation producer when rendering the production onto the 1080p or 1080i transport ~ which can be performed by high end digital processing equipment and can be fine tuned to the material being upscaled ~ is superior to the upscaling performed on the fly by the big screen TV when it upscales 720p to 1080p, then the end result can be a superior picture independent of whether the original source material is in 720p.

And cyberbeing has claimed Fate/Zero has source material with a resolution above 720p:

cyberbeing wrote:

In the Fall 2011 season, Fate/Zero was the only show Crunchyroll was streaming which have an effective resolution above 720p.

... you are claiming it doesn't. Is there some way to arrange for you two to fight it out in a corner to work out which it is?

The 1080p stream they do is only about 500MB, that's highly compressed.

And as far as i'm aware Naruto\bleach are not made in 1080p\720p, there is a reason why they are not released on blu-ray.

Tylerr wrote:

The 1080p stream they do is only about 500MB, that's highly compressed.

True MB or marketing MB? Is that over 22min? 25min? Assuming marketing MB, at 25min that's 2.67Mb/sec, at 22min, that's 3Mb/sec ... the 720p streams are about 1.5Mb/sec, so that sounds in the right neighborhood. The question is, would the stream be visibly better on a big screen TV if they streamed at that bitrate and at 720p resolution.

Unless the 720p stream at that same bitrate would be visibly superior, then the rest of it is angels dancing on a head of a pin type arguments.

Hotaru99 wrote:

I just started my free trial on a Roku Box yesterday, and I plan on keeping it so far. Definately much better than paying 400 bucks to see Fate/Zero in HD.

You do realize most of the people who want that Fate/Zero Blu-ray box (Like me) want to own it physically on Blu-ray, get those extras, and premium packaging, not just to see it in HD right?

If I wanted to just watch it in HD, I could stick with the 720P streams Aniplex USA is offering people still on Crunchyroll if I had the Anime Membership (I want one, I just don't have a Paypal, debit card, or credit card currently, and I know my dad wouldn't use his stuff for something like the Anime Membership on CR. Online shopping he'll use it (Even though the money comes out of what I worked for.), not CR.).

Anyway, glad to see this finally happen. Maybe more might go with CR instead of torrents, but you'll still have the "Why pay $5 a month for HD, no commercials, and an hour after the Japanese airing when I can download fansubs for free a few days later?" mentality.

agila61 wrote:

However, if any original material is 1080p, then despite not being "true 1080", the 1080 material delivered to Crunchyroll includes more detail than will be in the 720p downscale made from it.

Detail should be identical between 720p & 1080p for 95% of anime. That last 5% is made up of the rare high-budget anime with higher resolution lineart and/or background art assets.

agila61 wrote:

...whether downscaling their source material to 720p and then encoding it at the same bitrate they now use for 1080p would have a visibly superior result for all series across the board, now and over the next year or two. As cyberbeing indirectly noted, if the upscaling used by the animation producer when rendering the production onto the 1080p or 1080i transport ~ which can be performed by high end digital processing equipment and can be fine tuned to the material being upscaled ~ is superior to the upscaling performed on the fly by the big screen TV when it upscales 720p to 1080p, then the end result can be a superior picture independent of whether the original source material is in 720p.

There are two sides of the coin here.

A) All of Crunchyroll's encodes have problems with artifacts and banding. This could be solved with better encoding practices, higher bitrate, and potentially filtering.

B) Resizing the picture multiple times potentially softens the picture, even if no detail is lost doing 720->1080->720->1080. There is merit to keeping a high-quality studio upscaled source material as upscaled to maintain sharpness when viewed at 1080p screen, but only if Crunchyroll resolves problem A) in the process, which they didn't.

Crunchyroll has the advantage of better source material, but often has much poorer encode quality than fansubbers who only have access to lower quality mpeg2 transport streams.

This as you would guess, is a bit of a problem, and why many would prefer higher-quality 720p encodes which improve encode quality and show off the better source material, rather than studio-upscaled 1080p which has some of the same encoding issues as their present 720p streams.

"Solve the problem with higher bitrate"? What "problem" do you think is being solved, exactly? You crank up the bitrate, you crank up the bandwidth cost per episode, you reduce the revenue net of bandwidth costs available to be used to try to land more anime for more countries.

The "problem" is not to deliver fansub groups raw video sources that they can manipulate a bit to impress freeloader downloaders, the "problem" is how to keep growing the subscriber base to get more titles for more countries to grow the subscriber base to get more titles for more countries, etc., and repeat until you've "got them all"

cyberbeing wrote:

agila61 wrote: However, if any original material is 1080p, then despite not being "true 1080", the 1080 material delivered to Crunchyroll includes more detail than will be in the 720p downscale made from it. Detail should be identical between 720p & 1080p for 95% of anime. That last 5% is made up of the rare high-budget anime with higher resolution lineart and/or background art assets.

Yes, that's the theory, but that's not what the series by series review comparing the Crunchyroll 1080p streams to 720p Japanese digital television captures says...

...That is 0% with all material judged to be above 720p, but 55% with some material judged to be above 720p. So when you said "only 5%", maybe you meant "only 55%" and dropped a digit?

As far as "source material seems to be around 1600x900", that could be 1080p x 80%, or 1536 x 854, which would give a BD appreciably sharper than a 720p terrestrial digital HDTV broadcast, at 64% of the processing and storage cost of a 1080p process, and a 4:5 upscale to the transport medium. And the Prince of Tennis at 1440x810 ... 1080p x 75% ... that also seems quite plausible, since 75%^2 = 56% of the storage and processing cost, and a 3:4 upscale to the transport medium, and still allow for a BD release that can be seen to be sharper than TV capture RAWs floating around the internet ~ though not as clearly as the 1080p x 80% resolution.

"Solve the problem with higher bitrate"? What "problem" do you think is being solved, exactly? You crank up the bitrate, you crank up the bandwidth cost per episode, you reduce the revenue net of bandwidth costs available to be used to try to land more anime for more countries.

The "problem" is not to deliver fansub groups raw video sources that they can manipulate a bit to impress freeloader downloaders,...
...Crunchyroll is in the streaming video business, not the generate RAWs for bootleg downloaders business. Beggers can't be choosers.

Hell, if Crunchyroll beats 720p digital television captures without hard bitrate limits for a number of their new simulcasts in the first week of 1080p streaming, its sounds like they are doing quite well...