Comparing 1999 to 2003

Tab. · Post by **Tab.** » Tue Aug 12, 2003 7:56 pm

Well, as some of you may know from this thread, a few days ago I stumbled upon some '98 and '99 encodes of Sailor Moon by ErMaC and a guy named Jonathan Lipscomb. They were made from VHS (and possibly Laser Disk) sources, encoded with RVG2 at extremely low bitrates. They basically were the best of their time. Well, having 3 Sailor Moon S DVDs of my own, I figured it would be interesting to see how today's best codecs could compare to those of old.

I chose episode 100, "Retire from the Sailor Soldiers? Minako's concerns", just because Minako is hot :O

This old version was probably captured in from LD (looks too good to be VHS) directly at 316x236 (blending the telecine). It's got hard subs, framerate halved to 15fps.
The video was encoded at 140 kbps with RealVideo G2. Audio was mono 8kbps cook-0 realaudio 8.

The encode I just did was ripped from the R1 DVD, IVTCed, filtered, lanczosresized to 320x240, and encoded in RealVideo 9 using helix producer 9.2 milestone 5 with encoder complexity at very-high (90). Framerate reduction was dynamic based on duplicate frames using the dupedrop plugin for helix.
The audio is 16.5kbps stereo cook-17 RA8. It's stored in a Matroska container with soft subtitles and chapter points.
For more information about RealVideo 9 and Matroska take a look at this thread.

In order to play back both files you'll either need RealOne installed or the codec pack alternative described in the thread I just mentioned. To view the soft subtitles in the 2003 encode you'll need to install VSFilter and directvobsub. Chapters can be accessed in The Core Media Player and Media Player Classic.

You can check out the old encode at:
http://digitalinsanity.ath.cx/~tab/sms100_99.rm

and the new one at:
http://digitalinsanity.ath.cx/~tab/sms100_03.mkv

Check out the difference.

Tab. · Post by **Tab.** » Tue Aug 12, 2003 8:17 pm

Klinky2000 (8:58:38 PM): UH OH! :O
Klinky2000 (8:58:40 PM): ILLEGAL ANIME DOWNLOADS!
Klinky2000 (8:58:53 PM): :p
Taberis 17 (8:58:54 PM): :\
Klinky2000 (8:59:05 PM): FREE SAILOR MOON EP100
Taberis 17 (8:59:07 PM): EDUCATIONAL LOOPHOLE

AlanClontz (9:11:21 PM): i dont think it was wise to post full episodes up :\
Taberis 17 (9:11:30 PM): EDUCATIONAL LOOPHOLE

EDUCATIONAL LOOPHOLE

just wanted to clear that up

jonmartensen · Post by **jonmartensen** » Tue Aug 12, 2003 9:08 pm

BELEETED!

ErMaC · Post by **ErMaC** » Tue Aug 12, 2003 11:58 pm

Was that my encode of the Sailor Moon episode or the other guy's? I'm too lazy to download it right now.

And FYI my captures were from Master VHS tapes, despite how good they look.

Tab. · Post by **Tab.** » Wed Aug 13, 2003 12:16 am

>_> I know yours were from vhs.. they look a couple gens old. At least for R, I didn't look at any of the others. S is the other guy, whom it looks like used LD due to no tape based analog artifacting that I can see.

Tab. · Post by **Tab.** » Wed Aug 13, 2003 2:03 am

btw, I'd just like to say, that new encode looks and sounds DAMN good for 150 kbps, which is less than a decent mp3

ErMaC · Post by **ErMaC** » Wed Aug 13, 2003 3:26 am

The R tapes were a gen old at least, since VKLL no longer distroed those tapes at the time I was collecting. However, all my S, SuperS, and Stars were from master tapes and look much better.

AbsoluteDestiny · Post by **AbsoluteDestiny** » Wed Aug 13, 2003 7:03 am

I didn't see this thread and I was never here.

Just thought I'd clarify that

Pwolf · Post by **Pwolf** » Wed Aug 13, 2003 8:16 am

what thread... AND WHERE AM I!!!!

Pwolf