R1 Scrapped Princess DVD's - Dot Crawl and Shimmering

Nearly all Scrapped Princess DVD's have pretty bad dot crawl (very visible during the title at the very start) and the sort of shimmering you'd only expect to see when watching very old anime.

Here are some R1 piccies an Aussie posted:

The R4 (Aussie version) looks better than R1 version, sadly:


On the above evidence, the Aussie version is the way to go for those with cash to spare.

My reason for making this thread is to ask if anyone knows why there are a few episodes here and there that don't suffer (or at least not badly) from these issues.
Example: Episode 1 & 2 show it and episode 3 & 4 don't.

I don't recall ever seeing these issues when watching the fansubs. I checked my (previously unwatched) [Lime] DVD-rips and can see the dot crawl/shimmering on them the same as on my DVD's. There's a few discussions here and there about the video quality of the DVD's.

It's a shame that such an excellent anime has such poor video quality. On the brightside, I only paid £17 (+ around 30p CC dollar>pound conversion) for the series, unlike others who spent shitloads on the individual volumes.

Well picking out on poor quality ep, I pick up Kare Kano, and the artwork just looked shabby.

or is it Gianax purposely making it look like it was produced on 35mm film?

I bought Scrapped princess a few months ago and only started watching it. The effect is weird as i watch it on my computer, it is certainly a bug in the encoding, as some eps dont have the issue. Its a shame, esp as i have fan subs which are better quality... i have the same issue with a few "legit" DVD's i have...

Well that is a shame, but unfortunately these problems are the case with many many R1 titles. If you've seen the likes of X-remix (or worse the original, or so I heard).

Generally, title screens have a lot of these problems. I don't exactly know why; maybe it's something to do with the fact that that sometimes the R1 producer/distributor makes their own English version of the title screen and so it will be not as high quality of the master? Or something, that's most probably completely wrong though, and probably the other way round.

Anyway, the pictures you've presented are not that brilliant; the title screen one is good, but the other comparison must have been taken when pausing the picture, and whenever a video is paused it does exactly what you can see. Try looking around the title screen of a DVD; whenever you change options or load another part of the screen, the stationary pictures will produce "line noise" as AnimeOnDVD calls it.
I think the correct term is aliasing though, I'm pretty sure it's not interlacing - having researched all this quite extensively myself. I still need to learn a lot more : D.

The problem with this aliasing seems to be quite apparent on a lot of releases. Picking some random ones out of the air - no pun intended - Air TV has this "line-noise" aliasing problem around the edges of all the characters' hair for most of the time, and around the rest of the faces, although the rest of the quality is just superb. FLCL also suffers from this problem quite badly as well - I posted some comparisons in the viewing thead a month or so back about it. KAA's rips don't have this problem though, where they used the same DVDs. It seems to be a lack of skill of the encoders for the DVDs. To be honest, actually, most R1 DVD encoders seem to be pretty incompetent when it comes to encoding.
I've heard lots of stuff about - blah blah they can only do what they can with what they're given i.e. the Japanese masters. But VERY clearly this is not the case, when a DVD-rip/fansub group does a near perfect quality job all the time, for free. A case with Gunslinger Girl too, in the OP the sound quality was completely useless, with some horrible horrible noise. KAA managed to sort this out completely, the encoder said it took him a long time to do it as well.

Anyway, I know this isn't what you asked, and you probably know this already judging from your post; I didn't read it fully before I started writing. So I'll leave what I've written for anyone else who doesn't know, or cares. In general though, a very tiny amount of people on this forum actually care about the quality. Quite evidently - no one ever mentions it other than me...

If you don't know already. AnimeOnDVD have finally put together a very comprehensive list of all the terms when talking about encoding problems, and a ton of other information. Four parts to it actually.

I'm too tired to read what I've written so apologies in advance if it sounds like nonsense. *keels over*

EDIT: Oh, and so I actually answer at least one thing that you asked. Well speculate anyway - I think if the quality of the R1's reflects the Japanese masters, I guess the Japanese masters were encoded differently each time. If it's a difference between say episodes 1+2, to 3+4 (and the Japanese release is two episodes a disc), and the dot crawl is a problem when using composite cables to encode (or so I've read many times). I can only assume the Japanese change the cables around as they encode - for some very very odd reason. This is probably not the case though, oh how it's fun to speculate...

Hokum said:

I bought Scrapped princess a few months ago and only started watching it. The effect is weird as i watch it on my computer, it is certainly a bug in the encoding, as some eps dont have the issue. Its a shame, esp as i have fan subs which are better quality... i have the same issue with a few "legit" DVD's i have...

Click to expand...

I only recall seeing the shimmering issue previously on my R2 Cowboy Bebop DVD's, and I don't think Cowboy Bebop had the shimmering issue as bad. I assumed it would only show on older TV series.

Scrapped Princess looks awful on my LCD monitor, near enough unwatchable due to how bad the shimmering makes everything look. I'm lucky my crappy 32" CRT is far more forgiving!

Melon said:

EDIT: Oh, and so I actually answer at least one thing that you asked. Well speculate anyway - I think if the quality of the R1's reflects the Japanese masters, I guess the Japanese masters were encoded differently each time. If it's a difference between say episodes 1+2, to 3+4 (and the Japanese release is two episodes a disc), and the dot crawl is a problem when using composite cables to encode (or so I've read many times). I can only assume the Japanese change the cables around as they encode - for some very very odd reason. This is probably not the case though, oh how it's fun to speculate...

Click to expand...

I was shocked to discover it's normal in Japan for 26 episode series to be sold as 13 volume series when I watched the extras on my Madlax DVD's; 2 episodes per volume. Does the average Japanese person get 2x the income of the average British person? That's the only way I can see anime selling in Japan.

Anyway. Out of all the episodes, only 3-6 don't suffer from the dot crawl/shimmering issues - 4 out of 24 episodes. Very odd.

Thanks to Scrapped Princess, I've found a very easy way to spot dot crawl - Look at the sides of the screen. If you you have nasty looking movement up the sides of the picture then the episode is suffering from it. I noticed it on Serial Experiments Lain and didn't know what it was caused by, originally thinking it was a fault with the DVD.

Aion said:

I was shocked to discover it's normal in Japan for 26 episode series to be sold as 13 volume series when I watched the extras on my Madlax DVD's; 2 episodes per volume. Does the average Japanese person get 2x the income of the average British person? That's the only way I can see anime selling in Japan.

Click to expand...

Japanese income is the same as our country, I should expect. It seems to be that buying anime in Japan is solely for collector's, as not many can afford to buy it (especially not students). They get it all on TV and all the other stuff we don't get, though; so it's all fair =).

melonpan said:

Aion said:

I was shocked to discover it's normal in Japan for 26 episode series to be sold as 13 volume series when I watched the extras on my Madlax DVD's; 2 episodes per volume. Does the average Japanese person get 2x the income of the average British person? That's the only way I can see anime selling in Japan.

Click to expand...

Japanese income is the same as our country, I should expect. It seems to be that buying anime in Japan is solely for collector's, as not many can afford to buy it (especially not students). They get it all on TV and all the other stuff we don't get, though; so it's all fair =).

Click to expand...

It is also worth noting that the video rental is much more common. also the number of episodes does vary quite a lot. As a couple of examples Shana was released over eight volumes in Japan at 3 episodes per disc. Bleach is released at an average of 4-5 episodes per disc (the same number as the US is doing right now but at twice the rate with one volume per month rather than one volume every two months). DearS on the other hand shipped the first volume with a single episode with the other 6 discs containing 2 episodes each. The length of the series is often a factor and the DVDs often ship with uncompressed PCM audio on single-layer discs meaning it is much better quality audio but takes up much more space on the disc. The prices of the discs often reflect the number of episodes contained on them so the discs with a single episode will mostly cost less than the volumes with 2 (or more), something that would not be a bad thing to happen in the west.

Gawyn said:

It is also worth noting that the video rental is much more common. also the number of episodes does vary quite a lot. As a couple of examples Shana was released over eight volumes in Japan at 3 episodes per disc. Bleach is released at an average of 4-5 episodes per disc (the same number as the US is doing right now but at twice the rate with one volume per month rather than one volume every two months). DearS on the other hand shipped the first volume with a single episode with the other 6 discs containing 2 episodes each. The length of the series is often a factor and the DVDs often ship with uncompressed PCM audio on single-layer discs meaning it is much better quality audio but takes up much more space on the disc. The prices of the discs often reflect the number of episodes contained on them so the discs with a single episode will mostly cost less than the volumes with 2 (or more), something that would not be a bad thing to happen in the west.

Click to expand...

Yup that's pretty much covered every single comment I've read everywhere else xD. I have to agree whole-heartedly that I'd love to see the same style releases as Japan get - released at least in R1. To some extent - actually - the R1 is on par with the Japanese release, if not better (Haruhi containing the broadcast version and all the most wonderous extras you could want).
One thing I wonder about though, if you know the answer Gawyn or anyone else.. Why are some released on a single-layer disc? Surely double-layer would allow for uncompressed audio, and even higher bitrate/quality visuals? For the Bleach thing; I think Viz are really picking up the nack that is needed for releasing media, though I think they should definately pick up the pace. Japanese Shounen Jump DVD releases seem to be extremely well presented and released. I guess Viz will just milk every series they have, though.
Oh, and I guess what I wrote was the opinion that a lot of people seem to have, with the comments they write (mainly on AnimeOnDVD...) - if the whole lower price for less episodes thing is a good idea, which should balance out the amount of volumes vs. price. and the release one per month makes it more or less exactly the same time to release a series than in R1, quicker I should think.
I had tons more to say but I wrote this last night and quite a bit doesn't make sense. Ah well, what I really mean is probably somewhere in there =).