Help with this anime / filters

[Soliloquy]

Hi all. I got the black lagoon BD's and was fiddling around with encoding them. Here (http://www.pallkars.net/~fred/BL_ex.png) is an image taken by just opening the m2ts with mpc. As you can see, backgrounds are sort of blocky. Or something. Check the lower left corner in any case. Should I do something about it? I personally don't like it. :P

What should I do? I'm pretty new to avisynth, but I'm guessing I should do some smoothing? Some tips on filters are appreciated!

[Guest]

As you can see, backgrounds are sort of blocky. I don't see that.

[Soliloquy]

I just made that term up at the moment, but I just thought it didn't look so good.

[osgZach]

Not seeing any blocks here.. That is a rather pristine source if you ask me.. Also if you grabbed it from MPC you should make sure its not applying any filters during playback that could be confusing you.. Best to examine sources in something like Vdub, or something like that.

Only thing I see are minor issues with color gradients (not sure what to call it, its not outright banding or anything).. but you pretty much get that in everything to some degree..


The lower left portion of the image in particular is too dark to see anything.. maybe you need calibrate your display?

[Soliloquy]

The reason I thought about it was because I saw an encoded version which had a, well, smoother look. : P

But
maybe you need calibrate your display?
If you guys say the source is fine it likely is. It's probably my monitor then, hehe.

[Nightshiver]

Don't judge by other encodes. That doesn't mean they knew what they were doing.

[Soliloquy]

I guess. I was mainly looking for ideas since i never have encoded anything before.

[julius666]

It's not blocky. There's a very light banding in the in the lower left corner and the source's aliased (most probably it is badly upconverted from 720p)

[Keiyakusha]

Well, that banding can be smoothed a bit if you going to make 1024x576 encode (this source doesn't worth more, maybe even 576px is a waste). But if you want higher resolution, its probably not good idea to touch it. Also I can't see anything there without maxing brightness on my monitor, but in this case you can spot similar things everywhere ^__^

(most probably it is badly upconverted from 720p)
Not that badly, there is much worse examples. Just in this case I believe it was from 480p.

[Soliloquy]

Also I can't see anything there without maxing brightness on my monitor, but in this case you can spot similar things everywhere ^__^

Yeah, it's probably this. My screen is somewhat brighter lower down compared to the top, which is kinda disappointing i think, even if this is a TN panel monitor. Can't remember it being this visible on my "old" random asus screen. I'm not even using 100 brightness...

Also, thanks for all the replies, guys. :3

Edit: Well, I did some minor tweaks to my monitor and gpu settings, and it sure made a difference.

[osgZach]

Don't know much about TN panels, but mine is LED back lit, and its great all over... Terrible view angle though. Still very nice, sometimes almost too harsh tho, like a TV in a dark room :p

My guess is if you turn up anything enough you'll find all sorts of scary stuff in the image.