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Old 2007-10-08, 01:47   Link #41
zalas
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mentar View Post
When I read "theoretically", I winced. Yes, in theory you're right. However, in real life, things are different. I mean, seriously now. Do you guys just sew your eyes shut? Do you REALLY not see the qualitative difference between a source like Shana or Kimikiss (both on MBS, and both "SD" in your opinion).
On the other hand, keeping your head in the sand about theoretical limits doesn't help your situation either. I did qualify my description of the results by stating the two main points which would derail the correctness of the comparison from theory.

Quote:
I just can't believe that you are really so blind. Why do you argue against the visible and obvious so much? I don't understand it.
My question is why you keep on insisting that there's more detail in an upsample when I've given you four different instances where there's barely any difference in detail using your examples. I'll give Kimikiss a look when I get a chance, though wouldn't the obvious thing to do be to compare the season 1 Shana from the DVDs with the season 2 Shana? The argument isn't about MBS; it's about the principle of airing HD stuff in SD. Therefore, if you compare Kimikiss with Shana, you're keeping the MBS factor constant but are allowing for other factors to be varied, such as the techniques and styles used by the animation studios. If what you claim is correct, then nothing I do can make the season 1 Shana video stream look as detailed as the season 2 one that was broadcast on MBS.

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Er, no. Just no. In general, the difference between 1) and 2) is significantly smaller than 2) and 4)
So you're saying that there's a bigger difference between a SD broadcast which uses HD masters as opposed to SD masters than between a HD broadcast using HD masters and a SD broadcast using HD masters? So Makoto Shinkai must have been smoking some good stuff when he encouraged people to watch the HD broadcast of Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho since it offers more detail than the DVD release?
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Old 2007-10-08, 02:10   Link #42
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zalas View Post
If what you claim is correct, then nothing I do can make the season 1 Shana video stream look as detailed as the season 2 one that was broadcast on MBS.
I actually suspect this will at least be apparently correct (not technically correct), because (as I stated earlier) the lines of the art/animation in Shana 2 reflect the larger canvas on which it was (seemingly) drawn. So Shana 2's cel art and animation will always "look more detailed", even on DVDs mastered at the same resolution. But if what we're all assuming about the upscale is correct (and they don't somehow goof up the DVDs), you should be able to make the Shana 2 DVDs look as good as the MBS broadcast.

(You people (in general) really do get wrapped around the axle when it comes to "technical reality" vs. "apparent reality" debates, for some reason. )
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Old 2007-10-08, 02:14   Link #43
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mentar View Post
Oh, and all those people in the channel and on the boards who said "whoa, looking amazing, so much better" were of course paid by me, of course.
They could also be blind. Considering that many people easily believe that a clean upscale at high resolutions equates to 'high definition.'
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Old 2007-10-08, 02:44   Link #44
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I'm not an expert encoder, but even I know you can't recover lost information by upscaling. If a show airs in SD upscaled then you will never get more than SD resolution from that source.
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Old 2007-10-08, 03:08   Link #45
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zalas View Post
On the other hand, keeping your head in the sand about theoretical limits doesn't help your situation either. I did qualify my description of the results by stating the two main points which would derail the correctness of the comparison from theory.
See Fluffy's screenshots, which prove that there IS quality loss by down/upscaling, disproving your theory. The softening and mild aliasing of the picture is exactly what makes a real difference when the softened-aliased part is re-upsized for fullscreen playback.

I'm very well aware of the theoretical limits, but there are some clear (also theoretical!) benefits to moderate upscaling, namely that while no "extra" detail e.g. in background animation can be invented, lines and gradients can be sharpened and slimmed, leading to a noticeable increase in visual quality. By interpolating between pixels you basically create "extra line detail" which hasn't been there before, and it works (the same concept is utilized in anti-aliasing scripts.

Or are you telling me that this isn't true? If so, please say so.

Quote:
My question is why you keep on insisting that there's more detail in an upsample when I've given you four different instances where there's barely any difference in detail using your examples.
Visual perception of HD sources is only to a lesser part related to "more (background) detail". Where the eyes stick to are lines and contrasts. Here, a correctly created upscale to the native playback resolution has a clear advantage - theoretical and practical - over a dynamic-upscale as overlay during playback. And this is what really matters.

Quote:
I'll give Kimikiss a look when I get a chance, though wouldn't the obvious thing to do be to compare the season 1 Shana from the DVDs with the season 2 Shana?
No problem, I have done both. And while the DVDs for Shana S1 were exceptionally good (I have encoded the first R2), no encode based on them could touch this S2 mkv. Good luck trying though. As you may or may not know, I've got a few years of HQ DVD encoding under my belt.

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The argument isn't about MBS; it's about the principle of airing HD stuff in SD. Therefore, if you compare Kimikiss with Shana, you're keeping the MBS factor constant but are allowing for other factors to be varied, such as the techniques and styles used by the animation studios. If what you claim is correct, then nothing I do can make the season 1 Shana video stream look as detailed as the season 2 one that was broadcast on MBS.
That's exactly correct (as long as you label lines/gradients as details). The reason however is relatively simple: As good as the Shana S1 conversions were, the source material which was captured had fewer details and thicker lines. Or, put differently, it was "more SD" than the S2 material. And this simply shows.

I can't tell at which resolution the original digital footage for Shana S2 was captured. I wasn't standing there when it happened. What I _can_ say is that the 1280x720 raw I took as basis for the release showed a level of detail and line precision which WAY exceeded what we're used to for "normal" SD releases. And yes, it also exceeded Shana S1 DVD.

Quote:
So you're saying that there's a bigger difference between a SD broadcast which uses HD masters as opposed to SD masters than between a HD broadcast using HD masters and a SD broadcast using HD masters?
In general, and in the real life, yes. Many 1280x720 raws hitting winny are mere upscales of clearly SD material. Even then, when they're station upscales they're still better than all-SD releases (mostly because the noise/artifacting in a big-res frame isn't as destructive as the same level of noise/artifacting in a low-res frame). These "station upscales" are much lower in quality than SD airings of HD material.

Good HD-quality material aired in SD can usually be recovered in a better way with proper upscaling techniques. If the material itself is SD, there's not much point in putting lipstick on a pig.

Quote:
So Makoto Shinkai must have been smoking some good stuff when he encouraged people to watch the HD broadcast of Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho since it offers more detail than the DVD release?
No, because here, the material itself was HD to begin with.
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Old 2007-10-08, 03:11   Link #46
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Branduil View Post
I'm not an expert encoder, but even I know you can't recover lost information by upscaling. If a show airs in SD upscaled then you will never get more than SD resolution from that source.
In this absoluteness, wrong. You can interpolate data during upscaling. Doing so has other kinds of limitations, and as a rule of thumb, the more detailed the original source is, the better you can do so.

As I wrote before, visual perception of HD is less linked to background detail, but to lines and contrasts.
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Old 2007-10-08, 03:12   Link #47
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Originally Posted by Narumi View Post
They could also be blind. Considering that many people easily believe that a clean upscale at high resolutions equates to 'high definition.'
Have you compared both releases?

Or are you just yet another theory rider without practical experience?
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Old 2007-10-08, 03:31   Link #48
Branduil
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mentar View Post
In this absoluteness, wrong. You can interpolate data during upscaling. Doing so has other kinds of limitations, and as a rule of thumb, the more detailed the original source is, the better you can do so.

As I wrote before, visual perception of HD is less linked to background detail, but to lines and contrasts.
It's not wrong. You can't recover lost information, unless you make it up. Due to the nature of anime, it is easier to use filters to make things sharper, since anime typically contains lots of contrast lines and few complex textures, but you're still not recovering lost information. However, if there are any scenes with highly-detailed textures or backgrounds, you won't be able to recover those details.
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Old 2007-10-08, 03:55   Link #49
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Originally Posted by Branduil View Post
It's not wrong. You can't recover lost information, unless you make it up. Due to the nature of anime, it is easier to use filters to make things sharper, since anime typically contains lots of contrast lines and few complex textures, but you're still not recovering lost information. However, if there are any scenes with highly-detailed textures or backgrounds, you won't be able to recover those details.
You understand the concept of interpolation, right? You take information from neighboring pixels, and based on these information on the spatial and temporal axis, filters can interpolate (or "guess" or "make up") information how the newly generated pixel should look like.

These guesses are usually very similar along lines. Which means that if the level of detail within the low-resolution original is low, interpolating on and on (too much) yields strange-looking color areas where lines are - usually grey with a blurry halo. Ugly.

Now if you happen to have a very crisp, clean and well-defined original source (down to many single-pixel parts in the example of the bell staff I linked first), these interpolations can yield very pleasing results to the eye. Also, as I wrote before, in my experience the rule of thumb is ~1.5x as upscale factor before the results become significanty flawed.

You don't "recover" information (you can't - you're right there), you interpolate/guess it. And the result is most certainly more pleasing to the eyes.
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Old 2007-10-08, 04:02   Link #50
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Well, I don't doubt you can get something close, at least with a medium like anime. I was just being technical.
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Old 2007-10-08, 05:06   Link #51
nyaa-san
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By your definition, if you take a 35mm cinemascope movie or better, an IMAX HD movie, buy the retail dvd, rip it and then use filters to resize it to 1280*720, you get a HD video as a result?
1) source : HD
2) broadcast : SD
2.5) capping : same as broadcast
3) ???
4) result = profit! err... MHD!
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Old 2007-10-08, 07:41   Link #52
RaistlinMajere
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I know some people that will be glad to hear they can get HD (or MHD, anyway) with their DVD players on their HDTVs. They'll be glad they don't have to buy Blu-ray or HD-DVD.
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Old 2007-10-08, 10:00   Link #53
Mentar
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I doubt that their standalones will play 1280x720 h264 mkvs with softsubs, Raist

But fine, you guys can laugh and have your fun all you want. I already said, it's all a hoax by trained monkeys. Strangely, these hoaxes are pretty much liked by the fans.

But what do these clueless fan critters know after all...
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Old 2007-10-08, 10:06   Link #54
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Originally Posted by Mentar View Post
I doubt that their standalones will play 1280x720 h264 mkvs with softsubs, Raist
Maybe not standalone DVD players, but it seems Crystalio already offers a solution. For a hefty price, that is.

Support the cause! Print this and stick it on your PC screen.
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Old 2007-10-08, 10:40   Link #55
Quarkboy
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Um, I hate to say this... but I agree with Mentar.

Sort of.

Say a show is produced at 1280x720. This means it was "meant" to be viewed at this resolution. The creators intended it this way, adjusted the line thickness/color gradients, etc... But then some silly television executives decided to downscale it and air it at an SD resolution.
While simply subbing the SD capture would be fine, I think a proper upscaling (including sharpening) would be able to reproduce the look of the show the creators intended better than the SD resolution would. Sure, you don't get the original high def (guess we'd have to wait for the Blu-ray release for that), but you can present the show in the resolution it was animated for.

You can debate whether it's really "HD" or not, fine, but that's just semantics. The simple fact is, it's the closest we can get to the way the anime is supposed to look.

You can also debate whether this is simply deluding oneself into a facsimile of higher quality... and maybe you're right about that.
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Old 2007-10-08, 10:42   Link #56
dimeat
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mentar View Post
I doubt that their standalones will play 1280x720 h264 mkvs with softsubs, Raist

But fine, you guys can laugh and have your fun all you want. I already said, it's all a hoax by trained monkeys. Strangely, these hoaxes are pretty much liked by the fans.

But what do these clueless fan critters know after all...
Most people are clueless after all.
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Old 2007-10-08, 10:57   Link #57
RaistlinMajere
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Originally Posted by Quarkboy View Post
While simply subbing the SD capture would be fine, I think a proper upscaling (including sharpening) would be able to reproduce the look of the show the creators intended better than the SD resolution would.
My TV upscales and sharpens, so it fits your requirements there. My TV is MHD ready.
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Old 2007-10-08, 11:02   Link #58
Quarkboy
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Originally Posted by RaistlinMajere View Post
My TV upscales and sharpens, so it fits your requirements there. My TV is MHD ready.
My point exactly. Would they bother making TVs that upscaled if it provided no benefit to the viewer?

Since most people watching fansubs don't watch them on upscaling TVs, it's the least we can do as fansubbers to provide the upscaling service for them. <- somewhat tongue in cheek.
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Old 2007-10-08, 13:14   Link #59
kintaro
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good job defending the term HD everyone. if there's a "standard" worthy of being protected at all, then it is obviously HD in all its glory (full-HD 24p anyone?)
owning a 32"ws TV myself, all I can say is: scaling is everything, HD is nothing.

the scaler of my TV is - truth be told - a worthless piece of cake(replace with appropriate term). while todays video-renderers' scalers are far better than my TV's, it is still not the best result you can get. so what I do is upscaling and some supersampled AA(yes, FAKE AA..), sometimes sharpening and/or contrast enhancing via ffdshow/avisynth. easily maxing out every CPU I owned so far (current being a 3800+x2) for plain SD playback. I must be an idiot for wasting all that CPU time for such a neglectible effect, bleh. thanks for making me realise.

honestly, if you have a raw which obviously went through some very decent scaling, why scrap it just for the sake of "but, but,... it wasn't aired in HD!11" ?!? if there is anyone here able to produce a better result by upscaling the SD version (or a downscaled version of the raw in general, no need for any disadvantage through xvid reencoding) I will gladly change my opinion.

until then I'll just keep the MHD version and tag it accordingly for future reference
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Old 2007-10-08, 13:20   Link #60
RaistlinMajere
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My point exactly. Would they bother making TVs that upscaled if it provided no benefit to the viewer?
Fixed pixel displays make it an absolute requirement.
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