Defective or Disappointing UK Anime Discs

Mangaranga said:
Just Passing Through said:
Aniplex said the reason for lossy eng audio was something to do with Bluray limitations, and going by Fate/Zero I'm guessing it has to do with the overall bitrate at one time or something
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Max total bitrate of the audio and video combined is 48Mbps. I would guess that might be what they meant.

Personally I don't think anime needs bitrates as high as that. I mean the image is clean, solid colours and solid lines. Lets say for arguments sake Fate/Zero was encoded at 40Mbps. If they had encoded using the same encoder and same profile at some where between 30-35Mbps, I bet there would be no difference. Could have then easily got both the English and Japanese audio on there as loseless.

There are live action Blu-rays that a lot of reviews and user would say are reference quality and the bitrate is no where near as high.

Sorry, went a tab off topic there.
 
Emulsion said:
Max total bitrate of the audio and video combined is 48Mbps. I would guess that might be what they meant.

Personally I don't think anime needs bitrates as high as that. I mean the image is clean, solid colours and solid lines. Lets say for arguments sake Fate/Zero was encoded at 40Mbps. If they had encoded using the same encoder and same profile at some where between 30-35Mbps, I bet there would be no difference. Could have then easily got both the English and Japanese audio on there as loseless.
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Fate/Zero is mainly dark scenes and grain though, and I don't trust any of the licensors to be able to encode properly without introducing things like banding except maybe Viz (based solely on Accel World). NISA usually does a good job, Funimation is hit and miss, but Sentai is the absolute worst offender. All their releases look terrible when it comes to a darker scenes. I find it stupid that a properly encoded 1-2gb file from a Fansub group will in most cases look better than the R1 BD equivalent. I sometimes wonder if they just use a preset encoder, set the file output to 4.34gb and just hit start without looking at the source, as that's what the size of most R1 files are. Because Aniplex use the Japanese masters, they're not touching the video, something I'm happy about and I hope stays that way. That's one of the reasons I buy Aniplex releases.

Another member on this forum (sorry for forgetting you!) mentioned that Aniplex could have used DTS HD MA for the Audio tracks as it takes up less space than LPCM, so that's always a way around it, and it may be something they're trying with the Blue Exorcist movie judging by the back of the box.
 
Mangaranga said:
Emulsion said:
I find it stupid that a properly encoded 1-2gb file from a Fansub group will in most cases look better than the R1 BD equivalent.
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I find that rather amusing as well.

I think, for me at least, I see it like this. The Japanese and American companys are on two ends of the scale. The Japanese encode at the highest bitrate they can, this way the can put out more discs and milk more cash. The Americans try to get as much as they can on one disc. As you know Funi and Sentai use one BD50 and one BD25 for a 12 episode series or the first part of a series. They then do 8 or 9 episodes on one and the rest on the other. I would like to see them use two BD50's and then 6 on each. Higher bitrate and they would still have room for the few extres they put on.

Not sure if someone else did but I mentioned the DTS-HD MA in another thread.
 
Mangaranga said:
Just Passing Through said:
I had a look at Sword Art Online Volume 1 last night, at least the first three episodes, and it looks as if Manga authored the Blu-rays themselves. It's got all the signs. Only the Manga logo at the head, no others, no chapter skips, and the same awkward subtitling where they can only show one subtitle caption at a time, so that you have to be quick on the pause button when there's on screen text and dialogue at the same time, as the subtitles flash by too fast.

It's odd that they've done this, as Madman are releasing Sword Art Online as Region B in Australia. Either Madman are using Manga's masters, unlikely as they have volumes 2 and 3 scheduled ahead of Manga's, or they're authoring their own (in which case I won't be surprised at an AU geolock). Might be worth seeing what extras AU has.
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You have to consider that one reason they may have done it this way is simply so that they can get it out quicker.
Manga have said a few times that their releases usually come at least 3 months after the AU date, and obviously with a series like this they'd want to get it out as quickly as possible.

Question from me, what's the audio on the UK BD like?
Obviously the Video will be degraded compared to the US release, but Aniplex's English audio was DD 640kbps whilst the Japanese was LPCM. Aniplex said the reason for lossy eng audio was something to do with Bluray limitations, and going by Fate/Zero I'm guessing it has to do with the overall bitrate at one time or something, since the eng audio on that is only 192kbps whilst the video is pretty much always going at a 40-45mb/s bitrate. (either that or they're BS'ing) This wouldn't have been an issue for Manga, so I'm interested to hear whether they went with lossless audio for both tracks.
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The UK BD for Sword Art Online has both English and Japanese in LPCM format, encoded at 2.3Mb bitrate.
 
Mangaranga said:
I find it stupid that a properly encoded 1-2gb file from a Fansub group will in most cases look better than the R1 BD equivalent. I sometimes wonder if they just use a preset encoder, set the file output to 4.34gb and just hit start without looking at the source, as that's what the size of most R1 files are.
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Pretty damn disappointing/disturbing to be honest that someone who is being paid is worse at doing something that a fan sub group. Strange thing is I know from the commentary of Heaven's Lost Property they put in a ton of effort on the 'flying panties' to make sure they didn't pixelate or cause other graphical errors when authoring, so they are making some kind of effort when authoring discs.
 
Rosencrantz said:
Pretty damn disappointing/disturbing to be honest that someone who is being paid is worse at doing something that a fan sub group. Strange thing is I know from the commentary of Heaven's Lost Property they put in a ton of effort on the 'flying panties' to make sure they didn't pixelate or cause other graphical errors when authoring, so they are making some kind of effort when authoring discs.
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You're talking about Funimation here who usually does a pretty reasonable Job.
My comment was directed at everyone, but more at Sentai as they put out the worst releases in every regard except cover design. Most of the time it's no Extras, Crap dubs, Crap video and occasionally crap subtitles. I personally also hate their massive yellow subs.
 
Mangaranga said:
Rosencrantz said:
Pretty damn disappointing/disturbing to be honest that someone who is being paid is worse at doing something that a fan sub group. Strange thing is I know from the commentary of Heaven's Lost Property they put in a ton of effort on the 'flying panties' to make sure they didn't pixelate or cause other graphical errors when authoring, so they are making some kind of effort when authoring discs.
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You're talking about Funimation here who usually does a pretty reasonable Job.
My comment was directed at everyone, but more at Sentai as they put out the worst releases in every regard except cover design. Most of the time it's no Extras, Crap dubs, Crap video and occasionally crap subtitles. I personally also hate their massive yellow subs.
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Sentai are starting to bug me as well to be honest. Particularly in the price to extras ratio. A limited edition box set from Funi is the same price as a Sentai BD release, but with Funi you'll get the DvD's, a couple of episode commentaries and maybe a selection of other extras. Sentai releases feel noticeably feel bare bones yet still weigh in at the same price as their competitor.
 
Mangaranga said:
Rosencrantz said:
Pretty damn disappointing/disturbing to be honest that someone who is being paid is worse at doing something that a fan sub group. Strange thing is I know from the commentary of Heaven's Lost Property they put in a ton of effort on the 'flying panties' to make sure they didn't pixelate or cause other graphical errors when authoring, so they are making some kind of effort when authoring discs.
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You're talking about Funimation here who usually does a pretty reasonable Job.
My comment was directed at everyone, but more at Sentai as they put out the worst releases in every regard except cover design. Most of the time it's no Extras, Crap dubs, Crap video and occasionally crap subtitles. I personally also hate their massive yellow subs.
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I have noted these kind of comments about a number of their releases of late, apparently they didn't even include the bridging OVA episodes with their recent Queen's Blade release.
 
I got fed up with waiting for Disney to even announce the US release of Kiki's Delivery Service on Blu-ray, so I cracked and bought the UK version instead. And wouldn't you know it, there's something wrong with it.

Specifically the English track. I wasn't planning to watch the dub on this occasion but I wanted to check it out and immediately noticed something wrong with the sound. The issue is hard to describe but it affects the dialogue, sort of like a crackle or echo or something. Perhaps someone with better equipment/ears/technical know-how than I can have a listen and see if they can come up with anything. All I've been able to find is this. EDIT: Also this. All I know is, it definitely isn't right.

Also, while I'm here, I wondered if anyone else noticed that Poppy Hill's subtitles are a split second too early? It was distracting enough that I switched to the dub (which, as luck would have it, is actually rather good).
 
fabricatedlunatic said:
I got fed up with waiting for Disney to even announce the US release of Kiki's Delivery Service on Blu-ray, so I cracked and bought the UK version instead. And wouldn't you know it, there's something wrong with it.

Specifically the English track. I wasn't planning to watch the dub on this occasion but I wanted to check it out and immediately noticed something wrong with the sound. The issue is hard to describe but it affects the dialogue, sort of like a crackle or echo or something. Perhaps someone with better equipment/ears/technical know-how than I can have a listen and see if they can come up with anything. All I've been able to find is this. EDIT: Also this. All I know is, it definitely isn't right.
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I'm not a dub fan, so I didn't give it the closest of attention. One thing I did note was that it was from the 2010 redub of Kiki, not the version that we had previously. The 2010 version removed the added music cues, and removed Jiji's extra dialogue at the end of the film, which changed the tone of the ending. We never got to hear the 2010 version in the UK (compare it to the English track on the DVD), and maybe something happened when they redubbed it. That first link is twaddle, as there is no speed-up between NTSC and film. No pitch alteration. NTSC plays at the same frame rate as Film, it just has to interpolate six extra frames of information per second to get 30fps. That's done by averaging it out. (A progressive transfer reverses the process and allows a compatible player to play an NTSC disc at 24 fps). The runtime of an NTSC DVD and 24fps Blu-ray will be identical.
 
The WakAnim 720p encode of Space*Dandy episode 1 is an utter mess with compression artefacts everywhere and wash artefacts
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Can we just have this thing work without a punch in the face every five seconds? Please?
 
Mmmm I did notice that there was a lot of artefacting on my stream too. The site has definitely improved since the last time I attempted to watch something on there in October at least, but there's still a long way to go.
 
Just Passing Through said:
Just watched the subtitle HD stream and there was nothing that egregious. In fact it was pretty DVD quality throughout.
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If it's HD shouldn't it be BR?

ANd yeaeh, I got the credits back and I went to buy the Dub in the Full HD and then bough the sub because the thing is poorly signposted.

About ready to give up on Wakanim, really am.

Edit:Following on from my previous escapades; after talking to the guys on facebook I got the credits to buy the HI HD (1080p) DTO Version and it's a far better encode. (But not after buying the Sub accidently because their website is a SNES Era translation horror house that kills my inner web designer and having to get another set of credits)

So yeah. That's how that went down.
 
fabricatedlunatic said:
I got fed up with waiting for Disney to even announce the US release of Kiki's Delivery Service on Blu-ray, so I cracked and bought the UK version instead. And wouldn't you know it, there's something wrong with it.

Specifically the English track. I wasn't planning to watch the dub on this occasion but I wanted to check it out and immediately noticed something wrong with the sound. The issue is hard to describe but it affects the dialogue, sort of like a crackle or echo or something.
Click to expand...
It is one of those cases where they've got the phase inverted? IIRC in that case if you can listed to the left and right channels individually they should each sound normal, but peculiar if listened to together due to phase cancellation.
 
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