American releases' video quality

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American releases' video quality

Postby Wyverex » Thu Nov 07, 2002 3:41 pm

I tend to buy original japanese DVD release only to get the best video quality but I'd like to know if the video quality of american releases (zone 1) is still proper for AMV making. Cause european ones are real crap...

Thanks.
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Postby RichLather » Thu Nov 07, 2002 3:49 pm

I've experienced no difference in quality.

While some, such as Manga Video's Wings of Honneamise are saddled with a less-than-pristine result, most American region 1 discs are more than adequate for AMV needs.
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Postby Wyverex » Thu Nov 07, 2002 3:51 pm

I really want a very good video quality... Not that I make awsome vids but I'm still testing some different way of encoding and a good source is always better.

I'm especially interested in buying the OAV DVD box-set of Battle Athletes, if the owners could let me know their opinion...
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Postby The Wired Knight » Thu Nov 07, 2002 3:52 pm

Outside of Pioneer's usage of Macrovision I have never had any problems with region 1s. The color is much sharper as well so your output cmoes out looking much nicer even if it's on VHS or a file. The only thing to watch out for are DVD rainbows which are something you can't fix and are a result of the time that the DVD was encoded.
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Postby Wyverex » Thu Nov 07, 2002 3:56 pm

What are DVD rainbows? My dictionnary translates that by "arc-en-ciel" but I don't really see what you're talking about...
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Postby Wyverex » Thu Nov 07, 2002 3:59 pm

By the way I was told american releases usually looks like european ones. In that case I'll keep buying japanese ones only... I have a european version of Jin-Roh and it's just unacceptable.
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Postby FurryCurry » Thu Nov 07, 2002 6:33 pm

It depends on the individual release. Some are excellent, some are terrible.

For example, I just ripped Love Hina, and the transfer is beautiful. I couldn't want any better.

Lain, on the other hand, looks awful in the american release, at least my two year old ones. I don't know if the R2 is better, of if they R1 discs were remastered for the Boxset release.

Here are some marked up example pictures, that show the rainbows, and how noisy the picture quality can get at times.

linked for size:

http://www.lastpole.com/furry/lainsux1.png
http://www.lastpole.com/furry/lainsux2.png

Now, here's a pretty good still from Love Hina. Note how clear the sky is, how little noise. I haven't once noticed a rainbow in Love Hina.

http://www.lastpole.com/furry/reallylovehina.png

The best way to cheeck on the quality of american releases is to read the disc reviews at http://www.animeondvd.com/

I hope this helps.
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Postby jonmartensen » Thu Nov 07, 2002 6:38 pm

Just to let you know, the American DVD release of Jin Roh looks very good, along with Akira and Ghost in the Shell.
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Postby Wyverex » Thu Nov 07, 2002 6:48 pm

The most annoying things on my european version of Jin-Roh was the constant "grain" and some shaking sequences. Is the grain also present in the american version?
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Postby jonmartensen » Thu Nov 07, 2002 6:49 pm

No, it's of a nice quality.
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Postby RadicalEd0 » Thu Nov 07, 2002 7:04 pm

If its in Region 2, its PAL, right? They dont sell NTSC stuff in europe... right?
If thats the case then there is usually a huge difference between R2 and R1 releases. R2's alot of the time come from R1's and the conversion to PAL will often screw up fields or show really bad deinterlacing every few frames if a bad IVTC -> speedup to 25fps job was pulled. As for the actual mpeg encoding I'd hope R1 releases use clean source material and arent simply re-encoding japanese dvd encodes, that would be teh suck :/
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Postby Fungie½ » Thu Nov 07, 2002 7:47 pm

As for your interest in the Battle Athletes OVA series, the american DVD's are quite nice, and at $15 each quite a good deal ^^
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Postby Zarxrax » Thu Nov 07, 2002 8:04 pm

From my experience, region 2 japanese DVDs are far better than region 1 dvds. Many of my region 1 anime dvds look attrocious, whereas the region 2 discs are pretty good. Take evangelion for example, while they both have horrid interlacing, the japanese discs are far superior in quality to the american ones, which have washed out color, compression artifacts, and the like.
The only region 1 dvd that I have seen where I have been truely happy with the video quality was Utena the movie. Still, they messed it up by not leaving it progressive :\
And on the Akria movie... wtf is up with all that grain?? It totally distracts me from the movie!

Some of the newer all-digital stuff being released in japan, such as Read or Die and Gatekeepers 21 looks just beautiful, with hardly any compression artifacts in sight. Hopefully these type of shows will be able to make a similar level of quality in the US releases, though I have my doubts.
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Postby Zarxrax » Thu Nov 07, 2002 8:14 pm

Oh yes, and I don't know if I would trust animeondvds words on video quality. Everything that they say looks great, I find to look like utter crap. Maybe i'm just too critical...

I have the battle athletes dvds too. The oavs have pretty decent quality, but there's rainbows and such. Its an older show, show you can't expect too much from the quality, and I doubt the R2s would be a whole lot better. For the price, its worth it. The tv series dvds have absolutely crappy quality. I'd imagine that they could have looked a lot better. Still, they are really cheap, got mine for like 80 bucks bout a year ago, and it's a really great series.
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Postby dokidoki » Thu Nov 07, 2002 8:41 pm

Zarxrax wrote:Oh yes, and I don't know if I would trust animeondvds words on video quality. Everything that they say looks great, I find to look like utter crap.

I'm not sure about the equipment they review on, but A/V equipment may have comb filters to reduce the rainbow effect. When ripping directly, it doesn't go through this process, which may be part of the discrepancy. However, you didn't say if you're basing your opinions on rips or watching on TV.

Anyway, the worst case I've seen is the first edition of CPM's Grave of the Fireflies DVD. (Note: I hear the new Collector's Edition is much better)

A frame from the Japanese DVD:
http://www.doki.ca/pics/misc/R2GotF1.jpg
(Since it's anamorphic, the image appears stretched. In short, that's a good thing, and the DVD player corrects the aspect ratio)

The same frame from the American DVD:
http://www.doki.ca/pics/misc/R1GotF1.jpg
Awful colours, rainbows, and a big black spot that's there for five frames!

I don't have the R2 pics handy, but you can see how awful this scene is in R1:
http://www.doki.ca/pics/misc/R1GotF2a.jpg
http://www.doki.ca/pics/misc/R1GotF2b.jpg

These are two consecutive frames. You can see a blotch of noise in the upper left of the first. If you flip between them, you can see how badly the rainbowing looks when animated.

But to reiterate, the new R1 release looks better, apparently.
http://www.animeondvd.com/reviews2/disc ... s/1453.php
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