Quality Discussion HD/SD (Offtopic posts from Shana II Ep 1)

[xris]

Originally Posted by grunty

xris, any way of closing this thread until DVDs are out or something? I believe everyone already said what they wanted about these TV encodes and now they're just jumping at eachother.

I don't see why this thread should be closed. There are some difference of opinions here but if there is nothing more to be said then the post activity will go down on it's own.

(Mentar's "true but unfriendly statement removed" edit reason is not one bit better than spitting in ones face.)

I think you are confused about this. The comment "true but unfriendly statement removed" was added by Mentar not me. He (Mentar) edited the post himself and removed a comment that he wrote previously but then later thought was unfriendly. I have not touched or edited that post at all.

Last edited by Mentar : Today at 10:01. Reason: (true but unfriendly statement removed)

[grunty]

Originally Posted by xris

I think you are confused about this. The comment "true but unfriendly statement removed" was added by Mentar not me. He (Mentar) edited the post himself and removed a comment that he wrote previously but then later thought was unfriendly. I have not touched or edited that post at all.

I did not say you edited it. But are you saying that if I said something rude about you, you noticed it but then I somehow managed to edit it with a "TRUE but unfriendly statement removed" reason before you banned me, you wouldn't mind a single bit?

[N-Bomb]

Originally Posted by grunty

we have a win-win situation - those who say it's not HD are happy, those who say it's HD - well, the non-HD sayers can laugh in their face, and those who say it's "excellent quality" can still say it's "excellent quality".

Indeed. No one was questioning the quality of the release, just the way it was labelled.

And speaking of HD, High Definition, to me says that there is more detail, more information, more depth - what have you -in the video. REAL detail. It's optical zoom vs. digital, people.

[N-Bomb]

Originally Posted by Mentar

1) The HQ raws which more than half of a dozen japanese cappers put out are all in 1280x720

2) SS-Eclipse and Ayako-YM both put out their hi-quality release in 1280x720 aswell

Do you really expect people do downscale a raw that they found that way? I mean, if you see it aired upscaled on TV, you're still gonna capture it in the airing resolution. Especially if you're only a capper, what do you care what others do with it?

If it's an aired upscale, that's what you'll capture, and you'll leave others to deal with it.

Again, I applaud you for making an SD version as well, but the point is that just because the show is captured in 'HD', it doesn't mean the source is HD. Or whatever I mean.

Wasn't Gurren-Lagann an SD upscale? I know all the raws we grabbed for that were 720, but I'm fairly sure it wasn't aired in HD. I feel this is the same situation.

[Hanxue]

Originally Posted by N-Bomb

Do you really expect people do downscale a raw that they found that way? I mean, if you see it aired upscaled on TV, you're still gonna capture it in the airing resolution. Especially if you're only a capper, what do you care what others do with it?

If it's an aired upscale, that's what you'll capture, and you'll leave others to deal with it.

I thought that the original argument was that it airs as SD (as the OP says), which seems incorrect given what I (and Mentar) said about sharpness and different cappers.

[cyth]

Originally Posted by Hanxue

I thought that the original argument was that it airs as SD (as the OP says), which seems incorrect given what I (and Mentar) said about sharpness and different cappers.

OK, I did forget about the TV sponsor credits and the logo. My bad for overstretching the argument. However, the issue on everyone(else)'s mind is the ammount of details that we're used to seeing in HD tagged video. After some thought I'm thinking Mentar is right about the production and the airing (actually, I didn't have any doubt about the former in the first place). It's probably HD-produced, and probably aired at an HD resolution, however I hope we can all safely agree that the quality of this particular Shana II broadcast isn't what we're used to when it comes to the 'HD anime' label.
I'm thinking there was a downscaling step involved, somewhere between the final touch of production and the TV broadcast. The most likely scenario I can think of is that the Shana II production team created a downsampled copy of the show (for whatever reason) for MBS to broadcast, which they gladly upscaled. But it seems MBS was 'fair' enough not to label it HD in their timetable. This little fact also says a lot about the Japanese broadcasting industry and what they think of quality labels such as HD. Clearly not in line with Mentar's, if that's truly the case.

[Quarkboy]

Well, after thinking it over, there is a simple resolution to this entire issue (pun intended).

We should all just agree to release all 16:9 shows at 1280x720, regardless of whether they are "HD" or not, whatever that means. Then we can simply have long threads debating which releases LOOK better, instead of how they are labeled.

Also, this makes the whole mod16 aspect ratio debate moot as well! Two birds with one stone!


Well, even though this post is somewhat tongue in cheek, it's probably what will happen eventually anyway. Raw cappers are already moving towards this (it seems like the better cappers always release 1280x720 or higher now, because if they don't someone else will and they don't want to "lose").

[grunty]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Well, even though this post is somewhat tongue in cheek, it's probably what will happen eventually anyway. Raw cappers are already moving towards this (it seems like the better cappers always release 1280x720 or higher now, because if they don't someone else will and they don't want to "lose").

The only raw capper which I rather trust (3ziw), does not seem to be doing this (yet?), but he's not doing that much anyways so... bugger 4 me.

[Mentar]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Well, after thinking it over, there is a simple resolution to this entire issue (pun intended).

We should all just agree to release all 16:9 shows at 1280x720, regardless of whether they are "HD" or not, whatever that means. Then we can simply have long threads debating which releases LOOK better, instead of how they are labeled.

That would make alot of people with less-than-optimal hardware really happy

Seriously though, there isn't really a problem to begin with. Most fansub groups make reasonable decisions which releases deserve a high resolution release and which ones don't. In fact, it's pretty obvious in almost all cases. Shana S2 was such a case where it would have been a crime to release it only in 704x400.

If the usual detractors feel the need to harp about this decision, I usually let them. Because it REALLY doesn't matter what those people think. They don't like it? Let them produce something better - and with their better knowledge, insight and experience it shouldn't be too difficult for them (and hey - competition is good for the fans too!)

However, I wanted to defend this point, because these releases a'la Shana - be them called HD, Hi-Quality, MHD, HD-Upscales or whatnot - reach a visual quality which exceed what has been the norm in fansubbing AND DVD-encoding. And that releases of this kind should receive an extra tagging to make it easier for fans to spot them.

So, I'm not trying to defend the "HD" label at all costs or anything - I said so right away - but I'm definitely against pretending that they're "only SD". The technical discussions of this thread have been pretty worthwhile IMHO. And the rest *shrug* ... if you enter the jungle, you gotta be prepared for mosquito bites. I'll live. And I'm sure, the others will, too.

[Zero1]

Don't forget that we aren't just tied to square pixel resolutions. If you think 640x352 or even 704x400 doesn't do it justice, and you don't feel the urge to go to 1280x720, remember that there is always 720x480 anamorphic or 720x576 anamorphic (also 1024x576 which is sometimes fairly common among raws, or was).

Maybe a year or two ago I would have downscaled 720p to 1024x576/720x576 as a trade off between quality and system requirements (hopefully only needing to put one version out); but these days I think HD is becoming fairly accessible. CoreAVC is damn fast, and capable hardware is pretty cheap (God knows how old my A64 3400+ is (RIP)), but that was able and now should be cheap). Also, but not as flexible as a PC, is a hardware H.264 player such as the KiSS 1600. I believe there are other models coming out soon from other manufacturers which will most likely have more features, but it does a sufficient job for HD fansub viewing, for about the same price of a Wii or maybe less.

Coincidentally, I'm typing this on my Wii with my USB keyboard. This update is pretty handy

[Nicholi]

You could have just said in the first place that the raw was not SD broadcast, and no one would have been confused. You let the trolls lead you right on into the core of confusion talking about SD broadcasts and you screaming "compare my final encodes".

As I don't think anyone still believes you can take a 704x396 SD broadcast and turn it into 1280x720 bootiful encode :P.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Mentar

This is a gem ... especially combined with a comment like this:

bayoab, if you really don't see a noticeable difference between the mkv and avi releases, then you just disqualified yourself from ANY quality discussion. Let's simply agree to disagree then. There's no point in discussing music with a deaf person, either.

But, if you noticed, I never actually claimed it was HD or SD. The studies are about asking people "Are you watching HD or SD" and then checking their setup and what they are watching; or "This is HD" and then showing them a video and asking if they believe the statement.

I only claimed that it looked like the XviD copy but upscaled and sharpened. I never said I didn't notice any differences. There were clearly edges which had blurring and some edges were sharper and more detailed. I don't have a computer which can actually watch the 720p release in anything but a slide show so it isn't like I have much to go on beside what little parts of the OP actually showed video.

It isn't like I really care that much about the resolution of my anime as long as I can watch it. I just object to this whole "zomg HD, it's better!" fad that seems to be sweeping fansubs when the majority of releases that are claimed to be HD are really upscaled somewhere along the way.

And these captures look nearly identical - not only the MBS captures, but also the TBS version, which Ayako-YM used. They also have the same flaws. The probability that 12 capper-upscales by different encoders look so similar is near-nonexistant. Also, as many people have pointed out, the credit pages are HD aswell. Therefore I believe it almost certain that technically the airing resolution was 1280x720 after all.

Wait... are you saying the MBS and TBS captures are both in 720p? TBS does not broadcast in HD so something is clearly wrong here.

[Mentar]

Originally Posted by bayoab

But, if you noticed, I never actually claimed it was HD or SD.

...

Originally Posted by bayoab

Too bad the show doesn't even air in HD.

...

Originally Posted by bayoab

That said, what little of the .264 release I could watch (slideshow!) looked like a sharpened upscale of the XviD.

...

Originally Posted by bayoab

It isn't like I really care that much about the resolution of my anime as long as I can watch it. I just object to this whole "zomg HD, it's better!" fad that seems to be sweeping fansubs when the majority of releases that are claimed to be HD are really upscaled somewhere along the way.

You know... maybe being able to watch HD releases in the first place might give you a new perspective. I mean, just a suggestion.

Originally Posted by bayoab

Wait... are you saying the MBS and TBS captures are both in 720p? TBS does not broadcast in HD so something is clearly wrong here.

Where do you have all that from? See the Ayako/Y-M mkv release, timecode 21:40ff. I somehow have a hard time believing that they've been watermarking the TBS station logo (with the guy's single-pixel-width antenna line) into their release for fun.

I recognize the frames from the TBS airing all too well, especially the interlacing errors in several scenes (e.g. when Friagne fires his Regular Sharp cards at them - lots of interlacing there). They're not in our release because I yatta'ed them away, but they are EXACTLY the same.

Why is this relevant? Because most upscaling/sharpening techniques require antialiasing to make the frame look stable, but those would have affected these interlaced frames aswell. Instead they're still identical. Which is extra evidence that both stations obviously received the same original copy of 1280x720 footage and aired them.

But if you have a different plausible explanation, I'm all ears.

[Unearthly]

Originally Posted by Mentar

I'm only waiting for the first decent DVD encode of Shana S2 (which can never look as good as this version)

I don't think it's that cut and dry. While it won't be as sharp and may even be missing some detail, there are some problems that crop up in capped releases that are fixed in the DVDs (visual problems, not fixed scenes etc). I have some examples from Eclipse's 720p encode that show these problems.

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/4...block01ri3.png

Here we have something that I want to think is a broadcast error. It is a low motion scene, so you wouldn't expect an encode to block but it is there and very obvious.

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/8...block02sn7.png

Here we see a more common problem, a high motion scene which has been killed (most likely) by the raw capper. It has blocking and weak/broken lines, quite different from the very sharp and clear in the slow high contrast scenes. However on the DVD, while you might get some MPEG-2 blocking, it will have a much less pronounced effect compared to the frame that I have shown here. Though this release isn't as bad as some others, see the Gurren Lagann MHD releases for a real extreme case (lots of high motion and dark scenes).

So, I don't think you can say that this release will look better than the DVD in all aspects. While the 720p release may excel in some areas, the DVD will excel in others.

Now, if you could start getting your hands on the transport streams...

[Nicholi]

Originally Posted by bayoab

Wait... are you saying the MBS and TBS captures are both in 720p? TBS does not broadcast in HD so something is clearly wrong here.

TBS does in fact broadcast in HD...so I'm not sure who is smoking what now n_n. Is it you, or is it me? Whether Shana S2 was broadcast in HD on TBS I have no idea...but TBS does have HD broadcasting.

[pichu]

Originally Posted by Harukalover

So that proves his point. Mentar didn't do the upscaling. It was just upscaled at some point (either the station did it or almost every capper did it and did a good job on it as well). So downscaling it to an SD resolution wouldn't have helped any.

Again, that wasn't my point. That short presentation is to demonstrate that he's been using a fallacy to backup his claims. In this case, that example is no good, as I have shown the result is similar comparing upscale->downscale to downscale->upscale. It's more to the algorithm than the implementation.

[Mentar]

Originally Posted by pichus

Again, that wasn't my point. That short presentation is to demonstrate that he's been using a fallacy to backup his claims. In this case, that example is no good, as I have shown the result is similar comparing upscale->downscale to downscale->upscale. It's more to the algorithm than the implementation.

Hm? "Fallacy"?

I'm sorry, I have read through your last note, but I still don't understand your reasoning, could you please elaborate?

I'll try to restate my point to make it clearer: Let's assume that we have a clean 720x480 source. We upsize it to 1280x720 and then we resize it back to the original 720x480. This transformation to and fro can be made nearly lossless (not completely, but nearly).

Now, to revert this reasoning: If a source were merely a 720x480 upsize in nature, then to downscale it to 720x480 and then rescale it up to 1280x720 would be possible nearly without quality loss too - however, THIS IS NOT THE CASE, as Fluffy's subtract-Frames show.

The reason in my opinion is that the source isn't just an upsize, but also handled by hi-quality image enhancement (interpolation, line mending, antialising, mild sharpening), creating the (in)famous "MHD" source, which may not be "HD all the way", but which then offers 1280x720 with "more" than just SD. Back then I wasn't sure if this step had been done by the cappers or by the stations, but by now I think it's 99% clear that it has been done BEFORE the airing, most likely by the Shana studio itself (since two independent stations aired EXACTLY the same frames).

There's one more indicator: Look at the subtract-frames and ask yourself something: If you were to take a 720x480 source of this and apply upscaling, antialiasing and sharpening to make an upscale - where would the filtering trigger? Primarily around the lines with clear contrasts, and that is EXACTLY where the "differences" show in the subtract frames.

And to complete the circle of my argument: Does that mean that you can take any source and just use the same technique to create MHD out of a SD source? In my opinion, no - you can apply the same technique, but the quality gain depends on the detail grade of the source. If the source itself has been created HD, the MHD trick works, because there are enough details for the upscale to trigger, and to avoid making the upscale look like a mere oil painting. If the source itself is merely conventional SD quality, it does not.

Hope that helped summing things up on my end.

[PEDOS_GRANDE]

jesus tapdancing christ.

http://www.shanatan.org/mhdphail.png

[martino]

Originally Posted by PEDOS_GRANDE

jesus tapdancing christ.

http://www.shanatan.org/mhdphail.png

Is this supposed to prove something, or be some kind of a deeply logical post...?

[RaistlinMajere]

Originally Posted by martino

Is this supposed to prove something, or be some kind of a deeply logical post...?

Doesn't look like it has much definition to me.