Rui said:
Have you ever been approached to do QC for the anime companies, JPT? It would be wonderful
(Thanks for the heads-up.)
R
Not for anime, although reviewers getting sufficient heads up on discs can often get feedback back to the distro in time to get a retail release fixed. I'm proud to say that a couple of anime releases have one fewer problem on the disc thanks to my input (alongside other people's), but usually by the time we get review discs, it's too late to do anything.
I have QC'd a couple of discs for another non-anime label as a favour. It is tedious work even when there's just one language on a disc, and by the very nature of my situation, it's a partial job at best. You go through the movie, keeping an eye out for video glitches, an ear on audio glitches, and check the subtitles for errors. And then check all of the menu options, all of the chapter selections from the main menu and from the pop-up menu, and go through the extras, and try to do everything to make the disc crash in the player.
I only have time for one pass through. Imagine doing it twice or more for each language track, each subtitle track, each commentary. A proper QC job would do it multiple times with a bank of Blu-ray and or DVD players, several from each major manufacturer, the current chipsets, and the older model chipsets. I suppose much of the process could be automated, but I'd pay a QC bod who could do it right a lot more than the BBFC charge for rating a disc. But even the big studios with the resources behind them can let a problem disc slip through, as I learned when I found that the X-Files movies Blu-rays were partially incompatible with my player. You can then understand then how Kaze's Ungo failed to work on Panasonic BDs as they are nowhere as resourced as Fox.
