(L) Legend of Galactic Heroes

[Relentless]

Originally Posted by Kail

If im remembering the first movie right it is basicly the same as the first cople episodes of the main serries. Where as the second movie covers what happened before the fist episode.

Don't quote me or anything, but I'm pretty sure the second movie was a retelling of the first four anime episodes from the 1st season, or maybe the other way around depending on which was animated first. They didn't recycle footage, but it was the same battle.

[Fronzel]

I'm rather interested, but it will cost something like $2000? That's a great deal, especially for a college-age schmuck with a part-time job like myself. How will it work? Will you pay in installments and receive discs intermittently, like you were subscribing to a magazine? And something mentioned that "further remastering and reanimating" (emphasis added) of the series was possible if they had enough support of this initial release. I'd be kinda irritated if a pretty, shiny version came out after I bought the original, unless a very generous trade-in deal existed.

[Rheinhard]

Originally Posted by Relentless

I believe the 1st movie is not based on the original novels, can anybody confirm? I read the first chapters of the first novel a long time ago, and AFAI remember, they covered the events in the second movie.

Is Golden Wings based on the novels?

... caution, some potential spoilers for the 2nd movie and first dozen episodes follow...

You are correct in that the first movie isn't based on the novels, but was an original story designed as a pilot concept. This explains my only problem with the movie, which became more apparent as I watched more of the series. At the end of the movie, when Yang tucks his ship in under the Brunhild, Reinhard exclaims "Attack! We can't sacrifice our victory for this ship or my life, Kircheis!" I later realized that that seems a bit inconsistent with Reinhard & Kircheis' larger goals, to overthrow the nobles and Goldenbaum dynasty and save his sister. He can't do that very well if he's all blowed up.

And Relentless your other observation about the 2nd movie is partially correct -- the 2nd movie recaps the Battle of Astarte in its latter half, which was also the subject of the first 2 episodes of the series (and some key plot points of subsequent episodes are summarized during the credits). However the first half of the movie gives a better background on staging the battle which helps understand a lot. It also gives the explanation of why Reinhard's name changed from "von Museal" to "von Lohengramm" between the first movie and the first episode. Plus it has one of the most emotionally powerful scenes I've ever seen in anime, the whole sequence where Lapp proposes to Jessica and then they and Yang go out dancing. The emotion and meaning is conveyed without any dialog, which I think is just a triumph of storytelling. And when Lapp and Jessica are in the cab, and he mutters "Yang...I'm sorry", and Jessica realizes he wasn't actually drunk at all... aw man. That scene alone made the movie worth it.


... end possible spoilers...


Not being able to read the original novels I don't know if Golden Wings is taken from there or not. I do however have all the manga, and the Golden Wings story did appear in manga form.

Oh, and Kail, I absolutely adore your little Mittermeyer/Reuental/Mecklinger animated gif to death!!! Can I borrow it from time to time on other boards?

Originally Posted by Fronzel

I'm rather interested, but it will cost something like $2000? That's a great deal, especially for a college-age schmuck with a part-time job like myself. How will it work? Will you pay in installments and receive discs intermittently, like you were subscribing to a magazine? And something mentioned that "further remastering and reanimating" (emphasis added) of the series was possible if they had enough support of this initial release. I'd be kinda irritated if a pretty, shiny version came out after I bought the original, unless a very generous trade-in deal existed.

Fronzel, I am in touch with someone with Wright Staff (who are working on the R1). They are well aware of the realities of the US market and I am quite certain people won't be expected to pony up $2000 up front. Until details are settled we can't be exactly sure of the release method though, so keep checking for more details. I can say you don't have to worry about a super-duper edition after you got this one. There has already been some substantial reanimation of some of the poorer episodes for the Japanese DVD, and any additional work on the R1 version will certainly happen before the final release.

[144M_HYPERION]

As I recall the novel starts in the beginning of the Battle of Astarte (TV-series and the 2nd movie, The new war overture)

Possible Spoilers ...

Spoiler:

The thing that really hit me is the death of Lapps. (I think the movie version is better than the TV-series version) Honestly, most of the Admirals in FPA are sort of useless. (With the exception of Alexander Buccock, Ulanfu, Borodin and Yang). The Battle of Astarte is a good example of my claim.

I love the classical music from the 2nd movie (e.g. Schuman 4th Symphony, Beethoven 7th Symphony)

[Kail]

"Oh, and Kail, I absolutely adore your little Mittermeyer/Reuental/Mecklinger animated gif to death!!! Can I borrow it from time to time on other boards?"

Sure i dont mind. If ya want the link to were i have it online jsut ask.

I myself havn't gotten the DVD's because of that $2000 doller price. Also are they acually making the R1 DVD's or are they still taking signitures?

[Ori]

Ooo LOGH is one of the best series I have ever seen. It is so brilliant. I first got into the series reading the first three comic books (I can't get my hand on the last few sadly). Kircheis and Reinhard were both so cool in book 1 and 3, I don't really know what to think when I heard that they are both meant to die.

It's too bad LOGH is so freaking long. I will never be able to see the whole thing. *sigh*

[Rheinhard]

Originally Posted by Kail

Also are they acually making the R1 DVD's or are they still taking signitures?

I believe they are still collecting signatures at this stage, but they are doing surprisingly well IMO. I think they are well past the halfway mark, possibly 3/4 by now. Much as I love the show I didn't think there would be that much interest among mainstream anime fans. Now if we could get word out to more American SF fans (like people who read Asimov or watched Babylon 5) I think we'd develop a real fan following for LoGH in the USA...

[Fronzel]

Babylon 5!

Heh, heh.


Sorry, you're quite right to emphasize it. It certainly pretty much sold me on LOGH. Someone should try trolling B5 fan places for support.

[Kail]

"I believe they are still collecting signatures at this stage, but they are doing surprisingly well IMO. I think they are well past the halfway mark, possibly 3/4 by now. Much as I love the show I didn't think there would be that much interest among mainstream anime fans. Now if we could get word out to more American SF fans (like people who read Asimov or watched Babylon 5) I think we'd develop a real fan following for LoGH in the USA..."

I agree any Babylon 5 fan would love it. If they did market it to the SF fans they would probly do better than doing it to the anime fans.

hehe reminds me i gatta finish Crusade tonight so i can start watching B5 serries agian.

[Rarity]

I just finished through episode 47. :b

Anything you can do to satisfy my fix is most appreciated.

[Rheinhard]

I just noticed that Central Anime has put up torrents for their new digisubs of the early episodes of Galactic Heroes through episode 4! Hurrah! If you haven't yet checked out this series, this is a good chance to do so, since previously for the most part what was available were rips from older fansubs off VHS tape.

Episodes 3-4 are where the real meat of the story of this series begins, IMO... we learn more of the background politics on both sides of the war and a bit more of the "secret origins" of our main characters.

(On a side note, episode 4 is especially important because it lets y'all see the basis of my costume! I still think the Imperial dress uniform is simply the most splendid outfit in all of anime!)

[exedore]

I'm also unsure of if Golden Wings is based on a novel (the events in it are, IIRC, spread out over several of the novels in flashback), but there IS a manga volume just for it. Also, while the first side series is based on novels, the second isn't (although Tanaka says he's going to write two more LoGH novels). I've got both Gaiden series on tape (raw), but have only sat through a substantial amount of the second one, which I found to be a bit dry...Yang spends 14 episodes investigating a murder or something.

As for the substantial DVD reanimation...it's OK in some parts (a few of the designs/art bits were really fugly in the original), but there's some aspects (the crappy CG panning shots, and the insane amount of blood added) that are real drawbacks. It would be nice to have alternative angles for both on the R1 discs, but I don't see that happening...

Ah well, guess I'll just have to hang on to my (pretty and in one case autographed) laserdiscs.

[Radd]

Just finished downloading all of the Central Anime fansubs, they're really nice. The video quality is good. The encoding breaks apart in a couple of spots, but nothing serious and it's still incredible when compared to the VHS rips we've been watching (again and again and again).

I'm very impressed that they did everything right with the subtitles themselves. They are yellow with a black border around the letters, and they're a decent size. I can still read them from across the room and they're never lost in the visuals. Beautiful work, other fansubbers could learn from this example (tiny white or yellow fansubs are BAD! BAD, BAD, BAD!).

Still, here's hoping the DVD set becomes a reality.

[exedore]

Originally Posted by Radd

I'm very impressed that they did everything right with the subtitles themselves. They are yellow with a black border around the letters, and they're a decent size. I can still read them from across the room and they're never lost in the visuals. Beautiful work, other fansubbers could learn from this example (tiny white or yellow fansubs are BAD! BAD, BAD, BAD!).

I *love* the JACOsub font and am sorry to see it go in this day and age. For those who are too new to subbing to know, in the olden days it was all done on Amiga computers, and the folks who made the main Amiga subtitling program, JACOsub, created a font especially for the program. It was designed to be easy to read and simple enough that genlocks could render it cleanly at low or high resolutions for the time (640x480 and 800x600 being high resolution), not to mention stand up to 3 or 4 generations of analog copying/degredation. Unfortunately, the folks who created the font were/are die-hard Amiga addicts and upon asking said that they have no desire to replicate the font for the Windows platform. The font really is quite distinctive, and anyone with a decent stack of VHS subs can tell you who made theirs on an Amiga vs. Windows, because the font is that distinctive.

That said, I've found that Century Gothic between 20 point (for small things like credits) and 30 point (for regular dialogue) works quite well when you give it a nice thick border and shadow in SSA (640x480 mode). The key is to use a simple, sans-serif font and keep it above the overscan margins.

[Fntc]

I dunno, I find the levels of blood to be more or less appropriate. I mean, when people are hacking eachother apart with axes you'd expect there to be a *LOT* of blood. I always thought the violence in LoGH seemed a little overly sterile (and in that sense unrealistic), so I actually welcome this change.

While I've never seen war before I *HAVE* seen someone with a severed finger and let me tell you even a relatively small wound like that releases a *LOT* of blood everywhere.

Regarding JACOSub... Well, AmigaOS 4.0 is coming out soon and given that it will be my primary OS I will be experimenting to see what I can do with it. Obviously the days of genlocks are over (except for a very few specialized live applications) but since subs are a big issue to me I'm going to maybe play around a bit to see if I can write an Arexx script to have JACOSub output overlays and timing info in a format that some NLE software will understand, making JACO capable of being used in a digisub-production process.

Anyway, back to LoGH, I really hope enough interest can be raised for a domestic release. Best case scenario would be an uncensored, subtitled run on US TV, but that's dreaming a bit I think. ^^;

[satsuke]

Originally Posted by Radd

Just finished downloading all of the Central Anime fansubs, they're really nice. The video quality is good. The encoding breaks apart in a couple of spots, but nothing serious and it's still incredible when compared to the VHS rips we've been watching (again and again and again).

I'm very impressed that they did everything right with the subtitles themselves. They are yellow with a black border around the letters, and they're a decent size. I can still read them from across the room and they're never lost in the visuals. Beautiful work, other fansubbers could learn from this example (tiny white or yellow fansubs are BAD! BAD, BAD, BAD!).

Still, here's hoping the DVD set becomes a reality.

This is Brian with Central Anime

Yeah, on the video encoding, most of the drop outs you see are from the fact that we are actually using an analog source for both the video and subtitling <Laserdisc through Amiga via genlock>. <Must note that XVID recreates the LD "race effects" perfectly. Those would be the horizontal lines that appear for 1 second or so when the LD hits a dirt speck, the visual effect looks like a professional VCR on fast forward>

We have the series done up through about episode 60 and have scripts in various states of work up into the 90s. "Various states of work" defined as anywhere from translated but not timed to timed, but still fine tuning the timing and grammer>. Since we've only up through 4 in the digisub release this obviously won't pose a problem for some time.

We've actually been working on this series since 1997 or so, the episodes beyond say EPS 40 were not very widely released because, as you might imagine, with the rise of digisubs and the sort of intermediate VCD / DIVX 3.11 trading days from 99-2001 it had killed our traditional distribution method of VHS tape exchange.

Have fun .. this is a great show <In case you didn't notice>

[Fntc]

Hiya Brian.....

Thanks for capping LoGH! Capping live from the genlock is an interesting way to do it but it appears to work OK. Incidentally what genlock are you using? What LD player?

A question though, why only 512x384? The lost resolution is really noticeable. :-( I know the print used for the telecine wasn't the best, but I'd like to see a higher resolution capture. Scaling to 384 vertical pixels does ugly things to stuff that came from an interlaced source. =P Also, while I realize the somewhat fuzzy telecine does not take advantage of the full resolution of the LD format, I think it would still yield an improvement to capture at a higher horizontal resolution.

[satsuke]

We actually capture to a prosumer grade standalone DVD recorder and process the video with avisynth and virtualdub<mod> for all video processing.

While the video off the laserdisc is interlaced, the encode done at the DVDr is progressive. As far as resolution ,. the 512/384 is about the actual line resolution of the LD source <DVD = 480, LD = ~380 - 400, VHS =190-220, SVHS =300>

I'm still working on some of the filters so we can release at an unscaled 640/480 .. for right now the tradeoff of XVID is visual artifacts at 640/480 or very few to no artifacts at 512/384 ..

If you are seeing a lot of artifacts ,. might want to consider updating to the latest xvid release .. 1.0 beta 3 is out.

and as with every group ,. still tweaking the output with each release.

Satsuke

Originally Posted by Fntc

Hiya Brian.....

Thanks for capping LoGH! Capping live from the genlock is an interesting way to do it but it appears to work OK. Incidentally what genlock are you using? What LD player?

A question though, why only 512x384? The lost resolution is really noticeable. :-( I know the print used for the telecine wasn't the best, but I'd like to see a higher resolution capture. Scaling to 384 vertical pixels does ugly things to stuff that came from an interlaced source. =P Also, while I realize the somewhat fuzzy telecine does not take advantage of the full resolution of the LD format, I think it would still yield an improvement to capture at a higher horizontal resolution.

[Anax]

Woo! Great to see Central Anime on the scene releasing digisubs. And great to hear that you've got so much LoGH in the pipeline.

[Fntc]

Originally Posted by satsuke

We actually capture to a prosumer grade standalone DVD recorder and process the video with avisynth and virtualdub<mod> for all video processing.

I hope you're setting it to maximum quality encoding. Realtime MPEG-2 encoders can be pretty poor in the limited bandwidth that DVD allows (just under a measly 10Mbps max). The tiny artifacts that you get from this form generational artifacts when you go to the MPEG-4 encode. You're always going to lose something from the intermediate MPEG-2 step, but if you set it to the maximum possible quality you can mimize it pretty well.

Originally Posted by satsuke

While the video off the laserdisc is interlaced, the encode done at the DVDr is progressive. As far as resolution ,. the 512/384 is about the actual line resolution of the LD source <DVD = 480, LD = ~380 - 400, VHS =190-220, SVHS =300>

I'm still working on some of the filters so we can release at an unscaled 640/480 .. for right now the tradeoff of XVID is visual artifacts at 640/480 or very few to no artifacts at 512/384 ..

LDs do indeed yield about 400 lines of square horizontal resolution without any filters, which works out to about 532 horizontal pixels on a 4:3 display... but these are not actually PIXELS. It's actually a gradual falloff. Good LD players have a high-frequency-gain circuit that boosts the falloff curve into more of a sudden cliff, and then applies noise reduction to compensate for the poorer SNR of those frequencies. It's basically the same thing as the "sharpness" control on your TV but it's tuned to only boost frequencies where there is actual information salvageable. (With the advent of pixel-based systems like DVD, high frequency gain has been much maligned since it just worsens image quality on DVDs... ...but the technique is there for a REASON because analog formats dynamic range falls off at high frequencies).

In short you can actually get something closer to 570 horizontal pixels of meaningful data. Most LD players with digital framebuffers output at the same resolution as DVD just to be on the safe side.

What's really killing the image quality though is the vertical scaling. It's REALLY messing up your chroma resolution hardcore. This is because you're doing TWO scalings of your chroma res. LDs do perfect vertical luma and chroma res at 525 scanlines (480 to 481 usable). By capturing to your DVD recorder, MPEG-2 is scaling your vertical chroma image to only 240 lines (MPEG-4 does this too!), and when you scale it in MPEG-4 to 384 you're actually only getting 192 vertical chroma pixels. What is also happening here is you are getting scaling artifacts from performing two scale operations on the chroma instead of one.

Coupled with the interlace artifacting (which is still happening, although it's heavily minimized due to what appears to be an EXCELLENT deinterlacer on your DVD recorder) and the lost vertical luma resolution, it's really hurting your image quality. ^^;

Originally Posted by satsuke

If you are seeing a lot of artifacts ,. might want to consider updating to the latest xvid release .. 1.0 beta 3 is out.

and as with every group ,. still tweaking the output with each release.

Satsuke

Well, I'm not seeing artifacts worse than really anything else in MPEG-4 at that resolution/bitrate. So it's not a problem. Really you should go to at least 640x480 though and jack up your bitrate to compensate though. The video is always going to suck somewhat since it has to be limited to the relatively-crummy bitrates that are transportable over the 'net (if I had my way everything would be lossless ) but you could be making it look a lot better.

Also any hope of using DVD sources? The remastered video on the DVD box is great. ^_^