Anime - 720p vs. 1080p

[sa547]

I feel that 1080p is great when it's a blockbuster movie that you even want to see the tiny details on a big screen (the pores and the sweatdrops on the actor's face, for example), but unless the viewer likes to take screencaps that are better than tracing them with Illustrator (back when everyone were watching 480p AVIs), or it's an anime epic movie with lots of painstaking detail and completely shot in HD, 720p seems to be more appropriate for most types of animation on TV.

[Utsuro no Hako]

Originally Posted by gsilver

The biggest problem with Crunchyroll's 1080p is that it doesn't really work. I've got an I5 2500k processor and a 20mbps internet connection, and playback still isn't very good. As a result, I only use their 720p streams.

As long as I'm not downloading anything at the same time, I have no trouble watching CR on my PC, but for some reason on my Roku I have to pause for about thirty seconds at the beginning so it doesn't have to rebuffer halfway through.

[Urzu 7]

I downloaded Dog Days in HD. Some of the episodes in 1080p had no seeds, so I went with 720p Blu-ray episodes. For a show such as this (not an anime film with very high quality animation and painstaking detail), the difference between the episodes for this particular series, between the 720p episodes and the 1080p episodes, should be negligible, correct?

[Alchemist007]

The upscale reasoning explains why I didn't notice a difference between animes at the two resolutions. Good to know I'm basically not missing out.

[Ryuudou]

What do you mean "almost as good"? They're objectively different.

It's not really a matter of taste.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Ryuudou

What do you mean "almost as good"? They're objectively different.

It's not really a matter of taste.

Well, as was explained earlier in the thread, they're not as "objectively different" as it might seem. If the original production was only made in 720p (which most anime are), any 1080p encodes you see will have been upscaled at some point in the production chain. So again, at that point, it's a matter of "is the quality of this upscale better than what my player/TV could do".

So I agree that it's not a matter of taste, really, but the effective difference may be negligible.

Originally Posted by Urzu 7

I downloaded Dog Days in HD. Some of the episodes in 1080p had no seeds, so I went with 720p Blu-ray episodes. For a show such as this (not an anime film with very high quality animation and painstaking detail), the difference between the episodes for this particular series, between the 720p episodes and the 1080p episodes, should be negligible, correct?

It seems that this show was produced in 720p, so this is one of those cases like above where the difference between the two should be negligible, barring the "what's the better upscale" factor.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Across a room when watching on a TV, or sitting in front of a computer monitor? For room viewing at normal distances, most every study suggests even people with excellent vision cannot really discern differences between 720p and 1080p content on reasonably-sized HDTVs. At a distance of, say three meters or 10 feet, you need a display that has a diagonal length of at least two meters, or 65", and some recommendations suggest a screen size in the neighborhood of 90" is preferable. Most people cannot afford televisions this size nor have the space in their viewing rooms to accommodate them. Here's a "mere" 60" Samsung model; it costs over $3,000 at Amazon. A little browsing at the high end of the price range includes displays that cost well over $10,000. This 80" Sharp looks like a bargain at "only" $5,000.

I tend to view my $200, 23 inch 1080P Asus IPS monitor from 30 inches... equivalent to 92 inches at ten ft. I find that I can't notice the difference unless I really concentrate, making it pointless - though this may just be the encodes I've tried.

I must, however, object to the use of the 60 inch Samsung as an example of pricing. I've seen 70 inch Sharps for under $3K in Canada (which is usually more expensive due to supply chain stuff) and I helped my uncle get at 60 inch LG Plasma set for $1300 last year.

Originally Posted by gsilver

The biggest problem with Crunchyroll's 1080p is that it doesn't really work. I've got an I5 2500k processor and a 20mbps internet connection, and playback still isn't very good. As a result, I only use their 720p streams.

As for fansubs, I've got a 2TB hard drive and a 20mbps internet connection... Even if the difference is slight, I'm going for the 1080p. Unless, it's something crazy like that 25GB Coalgirls encode of one of the Garden of Sinners movies.

Have you checked to see if the stream maxes out the CPU? I realize that CR is more CPU intensive than other 8 bit H.264 encodes due to my experiences with their 720P on a 2ghz single core laptop back in the day, but brining a 2500k to its knees would be quite something.

Also, IIRC Garden of Sinners is an upscale aside from the OVA, which is just fail for an anime movie series that came out from 2007 onwards.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

I must, however, object to the use of the 60 inch Samsung as an example of pricing. I've seen 70 inch Sharps for under $3K in Canada (which is usually more expensive due to supply chain stuff) and I helped my uncle get at 60 inch LG Plasma set for $1300 last year.

I just picked a couple of examples at random, though I could have chosen this set as representative of the large size class rather than the Sharp. I don't think it matters much what they cost, though. I can't see running out to buy a 60" TV just to watch anime upscaled to 1080p.

Have you checked to see if the stream maxes out the CPU? I realize that CR is more CPU intensive than other 8 bit H.264 encodes due to my experiences with their 720P on a 2ghz single core laptop back in the day, but brining a 2500k to its knees would be quite something.

I don't have that problem either. I'm using a Q6600, and though I have an NVIDIA card, I've had to turn off hardware decoding for H.264. Adobe broke the color space in its Linux player for Flash videos using the "stage video" technology like YouTube does. (A quick test shows no such problems for Crunchyroll, so they must not use "stage video".)

Even sending the CR stream over wifi to my television usually works fine. I occasionally encounter some stuttering especially during OP/ED sequences which typically place greater demands on the hardware than the program content.

[Dist]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Across a room when watching on a TV, or sitting in front of a computer monitor? For room viewing at normal distances, most every study suggests even people with excellent vision cannot really discern differences between 720p and 1080p content on reasonably-sized HDTVs.

Monitor because my TV doesn't support Full HD.

But really when it comes down to 720p vs 1080p .. If you have a Full HD monitor/tv and reasonably fast internet connection or can obtain the 1080p otherwise reasonably fast, why would you not go for the superior?

[Vexx]

If you've got a simply drawn series with mediocre art quality..... what's the point of 1080p? None. Its like having a blu-ray of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. o.O

So, as far as I'm concerned - I look at *what* the content is and whether the file sizes are much different (because 720 vs 1080 doesn't necessarily mean a 33% saving in file size ). I pretty much keep all the series I care about because I can't guarantee their R1 release, so like any library some choices depend on space management.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Vexx

If you've got a simply drawn series with mediocre art quality..... what's the point of 1080p? None. Its like having a blu-ray of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. o.O

Pretty much this. I only opt for the 1080p if the anime has great arts. For example, anime like Zeta Gundam, Macross Frontier, Gankutsuou, and Gundam 00 worth the 1080p download due to the artwork alone. While imo anime like Crayon Shinchan and Gundam SEED aren’t worth the 1080p due to the simple artwork (one could argue that the 480p is already enough for this kinda anime ). In the case of Gundam SEED, even after being remastered in HD, I found the image still not HD-worthy imo (in some scenes, they even zoomed the already-low-quality images by cropping the originally-square images into widescreen which only hurts the transfer even more ). If not for the new materials they added, I doubt anyone will care about SEED remaster.

[mangamuscle]

My big screen TV is 720p (768p in vga mode) so I am quite happy with 720p only (movies and OP/ED in 1080p since down the road I might get have a bigger screen).

[creb]

I personally scoff at the idea that anyone who isn't using a humongous tv actually sees any practical difference between the two. When this conversation spills over to viewing on normal-sized PC monitors/laptops, well...

I mean, many of us are 'nerds', so pretending we're OCD about minute differences in detail and making it out to be life-altering is par for the course, but I also like to think we're also fully self-aware that we're doing exactly that. :/

TL;DR: I generally stream/dl 720p when given the choice between it and 1080.

Then again, you can also chalk me up as one of those people that never noticed the difference in picture quality between 10bit and 8bit, outside of some 'oh, ok I think I maybe see a difference [not really] now that all the fansub groups spent months going into exhaustive detail about how much awesomer 10bit picture quality is', so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I guess.

On the subject of Gundam Seed, they cropped almost everything. It looks more vibrant, and fills up your monitor/TV now, but I can't help but think the original 4:3 was still superior.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by creb

I personally scoff at the idea that anyone who isn't using a humongous tv actually sees any practical difference between the two.

In the end, as I said before, even a "humongous TV" doesn't make any difference if the source material isn't greater than 720p, which most TV anime isn't at this point. And even people with large TVs probably won't notice it just because the screen is larger because, the larger the screen, the further away you usually sit from the display.

That said, scoffing aside, for actual 1080p source material (which, again, most anime is not), I can notice the difference between 720p and 1080p even on a normal 1080p monitor, and I also notice the decrease in banding from 10bit encodes. But this is also because I've done video production, so my eyes are drawn to those sorts of small details. It's one of those things that's like "once you've seen it, you cannot unsee" I think.

[0utf0xZer0]

Does anyone actually have a list of what anime is mastered at 720P v. 1080P?

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

I just picked a couple of examples at random, though I could have chosen this set as representative of the large size class rather than the Sharp. I don't think it matters much what they cost, though. I can't see running out to buy a 60" TV just to watch anime upscaled to 1080p.

Well, most of the guys I know who watch anime are using PC monitors rather than HDTVs in the first place, which largely renders size/viewing distance calculations moot.

The guys I do know who got new TVs in the last year - my dad and my uncle - went for a 50 and a 60 1080P set for $700 and $1300, respectively. Neither would have been interested in spending $3K+.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

Does anyone actually have a list of what anime is mastered at 720P v. 1080P?

One site that is useful is the AniBin Blog (Japanese), which analyses the TV broadcasts of shows to determine if they were upscaled and what the native resolution of the actual source appears to be (using FFT). There's a list of currently airing anime that's of relevance. Of note, other than pure CG works, the only anime airing now that contains full-frame 1080p/i content is the OP and ED of Hyouka.

Now, of course this is only the TV airing, and not the Blu-Ray, and a lot of Blu-Rays are mastered in 1080p. But, that doesn't mean they were drawn in 1080p. If they're targetting a 720p TV broadcast, I don't necessarily see why they'd actually draw in 1080p and then downscale it. Given that Hyouka is an example with full HD content along with the CG shows (meaning TV stations can handle it), I'm inclined to think that most shows just target 720p, and follow the same sort of logic as above -- that most people can't really tell the difference anyway.

(Some may remember Kyoto Animation's explanation of what it's like to produce anime in HD: you draw on bigger paper. Bigger paper means the drawings have to be that much more detailed/refined, which means increased time/cost, so that's why I doubt many are bothering.)

[Alchemist007]

I don't know much about the production process, but couldn't it simply be recorded at the higher resolution, leaving the art as is? If I could use this as an analogy, then how about my scanning a paper at 600dpi as opposed to 400? The quality certainly is better at 600 even though the picture isn't necessarily improved to any noticable degree for mere mortals. Well I suppose upscaling would certainly be cheaper regardless, even for transmission of the media.

[mangamuscle]

@Alchemist007 Scanning at higher resolutions is kind of self defeating if the original medium quality does not change. Tkae your average hanna barbera cartoon, even if you rescan the original drawings for a 1080p quality, the animation quality won't really change. That is why the drawings paper need to be bigger, so that more detail can be drawn in it.

[SeijiSensei]

With digital production methods, are there even "drawings" that can be "scanned?" Or are there 720p frames that are filled with pixels of varying colors? Upscaling from a pixel map just interpolates between the existing pixels to create more pixels. It doesn't really add any resolution. It would be the same process as upscaling a 1280x720 JPEG or PNG image to 1920x1080 with an algorithm like cubic or Lanczos 3, no?

That's why I cannot see the value in upscaling something like Chobits that was made in 640x480 unless they actually shot individual drawings onto film stock. Then I could see making a Blu-ray version by reshooting the film with an HD camera. Are there film masters for anime that were captured with telecine? How about something the vintage of Evangelion (1995-96)? Are there master tapes, like those wide VTR tapes I remember seeing on professional systems? I notice there's no BD version of the Eva TV series either in Japan or in R1. I can only find Blu-rays of the movies, though for Japan I only checked at amazon.co.jp and cdjapan.co.jp. What do you suppose the masters for Chobits were like? Better than the original 640x480?

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

With digital production methods, are there even "drawings" that can be "scanned?" Or are there 720p frames that are filled with pixels of varying colors? Upscaling from a pixel map just interpolates between the existing pixels to create more pixels. It doesn't really add any resolution. It would be the same process as upscaling a 1280x720 JPEG or PNG image to 1920x1080 with an algorithm like cubic or Lanczos 3, no?

My understanding is that the base drawings for TV anime are still drawn on paper a lot of the time, but of course everything from that point on is likely digital (compositing, colouring, CG, etc.) This is why there are a lot of shows from the 2000s that won't transfer well to Blu-Ray because you'd basically have to re-composite (and possibly re-color/re-grade) the whole thing (and that low-res CG is the worst offender; it would basically have to be redone). There have been a handful of shows that have not only been "re-mastered" in HD, but "re-shot" in HD (going back to the original drawings), which is certainly better than a simple upscale... but yeah, there has be detail there to work from in the first place.