looking for a cartoon source for the next codec comparison

[Doom9]

No, no, it'll be a long while till then, but it can't hurt to start looking now.

As my Futurama source is actually not so great quality wise, I'd like to go for something else. It should be progressive, mainstream cartoon that not only kids like (so Little Mermaid and Lion King are out ;), and be reasonably hard to encode. There's a few animated movies that I found rather amusing, like Ice Age, Shrek, The Incredibles.. so something along those lines would suit me just fine. It has to be rather hard to encode though (target being 1 CD), so length is of importance.

So, now is the time where you may make suggestions ;) Also note that I don't like Anime and I'm not about to spend hours upon hours watching something I don't even like.

[Sirber]

The Incredibles should be pretty hard, with the scene in the forest. :)

[Tommy Carrot]

The iron giant would be good as well, and it's more or less a 'real' cartoon, not 3d animation.

[kappa]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
The iron giant would be good as well, and it's more or less a 'real' cartoon, not 3d animation.
Are we searching for "cartoon" material like The Incredibles or Shrek (solid colors), or more real stuff like Final Fantasy, Kaena etc? INO Ice Age has too much ice :) to be difficult.

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by kappa
Are we searching for "cartoon" material like The Incredibles or Shrek (solid colors), or more real stuff like Final Fantasy, Kaena etc? INO Ice Age has too much ice :) to be difficult.
I think The incredibles or Shrek are not really cartoon either, they are 3d animations, and their characteristics are closer to real movies than to cartoons (no sharp lines and edges, no truely flat areas, etc.), so we wouldn't learn anything about the cartoon encoding performances.

[iapir]

How about Ghost In The Shell ? Innocence (v2) has a good mix of 2D and 3D images and some vey high quality pictures with lots of details.

[Surco]

Originally posted by kappa
INO Ice Age has too much ice :) to be difficult.

I my self compressed this movie in the dev-api3 times and was really easy to compress, xvid had not any problem to compress it at cd size, so I don't think it's a good candidate.

And I'm with Tommy Carrot on this, the 3D movies you are talking about are more like real action films from the codec point of view than cartoons, so my vote goes for Iron Giant too (unfortunately I'm not sure if it is hard enough to compress :rolleyes: )

[iapir]

Also since Doom9 uses Matrix a lot, why not use AniMatrix too ?

[bot]

It's difficult to find good quality feature length traditional cell animations if you don't want to use the Disney catalogue.

I haven't seen the dvd version of Fantasia, but the film itself was restored in the early 90's and it looked good in theatres at least.

And Robin Hood still tickles my funny bone even if it's not ironic or iconoclastic like, say Shrek.



Edit: The different segments in Fantasia are very different to each other in movement and light and might prove revealing

[iwod]

it depends you want cartoon or Anime?

Or you simply want something, 2D, blocks of colour, (Cartoon/Anime like material )

Is 3D included? Like ice age or FF - Advent Child?

Or Ghost in the shell ( It is hard to encode, fast motion 2D charcter with some 3D / 2D background )

AppleSeed?

[Neo Neko]

Doom you really need to get over your irrational dislike of anime. We are not suggesting you go encode some ugioh or DBZ as they both suck and blow at the same time. Give something like Akira or Ghost In The Shell(one or two are both excelent) a try. Last time I encoded akira it was rather tricky to do on 1CD. Honestly unless you go with a 3D animation most american animation today is just to simple. If you want a challenging source you are almost going to have to look to the japanese. Or perhaps you could give the original Heavy Metal movie a try. Lots of dynamic animation going on there.

[Doom9]

Doom you really need to get over your irrational dislike of anime. Since when is liking or disliking ever rational? Taste never has been and never will.

Also, I'm looking for progressive sources so keep that in mind. Mix of 24fps and 29fps is no good.

[Manao]

I'm not an anime's fan but I really appreciate miyazaki's films. Mononoke Hime or Sen to Chihiro would be very good sources ( 2 hours long, detailed, and bright ).

But if you really don't want to spend money on these, and still want "not childish" cartoons ( which seems, if I understood you correctly, to rule out Disney's ), then you'll end up with CGI films. In that case, I think Finding Nemo would be the hardest. Monters Inc would be also interesting, with the monsters' furs very detailed.

[Gabriel_Bouvigne]

I'd suggest Finding Nemo because of the frequents "reflexions" of the water that made luma values sliding.

[Dali Lama]

I agree with Manao,

Disney animation DVDs are by far the best: easy to IVTC (progressive), noise-free, sharp, perfect color, etc., and they are widely available in the world. If you don't want a cinderella story, then look at Lion King. If you don't want a Disney story, then choose one of the Miyazaki films (adults and children love it, mostly adults). Miramax (Disney subsidiary) has their rights to distribute it in the U.S. so their DVD quality is excellent as well (similar to regular Disney releases).

In addition: I think Manao and Gabriel have suggested two good options for 3D animation (Nemo and Monsters Inc.). However, I feel that 3D animation encoding is quite different than regular animations encoding and test different qualitites of the codec. I personally, would like to see how codecs do against traditional animation. Interestingly, some of the Miyazaki films (esp. Spirited Away) have a mix of 3D animation and traditional animation (mostly traditional).

Sincerely,

Dali

[minolta]

'The Incredibles' or 'Shrek 1/2' are good choices for CGI (even most adults really enjoyed these movies). The "forest scene" of 'Incredibles' caused my bitrate to explode...my hardware mpeg4 player choked (started/stoped) all the way through it.

If you're thinking 'image quality' (no ringing, etc.) then go with non-CGI animation. Most folks here seem to love Japanese style (not always pure progressive, though).

[acidsex]

I agree with Finding Nemo or Shrek 2. Shrek 2 always gives me fits.

[babayaga]

If you want some really hard animation to encode, that's old hand-made disney movies that come to my mind : The Jungle Book, The aristocats, Robin Hood etc.
Another one, more recent movie, which is also very difficult is Kirikou and the Sorceress.
In my opinion, none of these fit correctly on only one CD without a proper pre-processing or heavy resize.

Shreck or Final Fantasy for instance are much simpler to encode on one CD. I've not seen an encoded version of Finding Nemo.
Myiazaki movies (Spirited Away and Princess Mononke, I've not tried Castle in the Sky) are also quite easy, but funny for the rate-control.

Note : when I say a movie is hard to encode, I mean that there is usually no need to look at the source to find the encoded version that has kept most details. Just like Spiderman or Saving Private Ryan on one CD.

[nicco]

My choiches:
***TRIGUN***
http://img144.exs.cx/img144/2528/vash4tl.jpg


***SAMURAI JACK***
http://img144.exs.cx/img144/2708/jack24zd.jpg

[DigitalDeviant]

You could try the Korean films Wondeful Days or Oseam. I found Wonderful Days to be pretty fun to encode. It blends 2D and 3D rather smoothly (it incoperates cel, CGI and minature animation) and is progressive. There is a fair amount of fog and rain as well fast and slow motion scenes to make it difficult. Oseam featured some nice details and colors. I'm 99% sure both are progressive.

[DeathTheSheep]

When I hear the word "animation," cartoons come to mind such as Futurama, Naruto, and the stuff on Cartoon Network. High-contrast edges, 2-3 color flat textures, and detailed backgrounds. Frankly, I DO picture stuff like "Yu-Gi-Oh!" and "DBZ" as being cartoons for these very reasons, and are therefore hard to encode.

Computerized content such as that which constitutes "Shrek" and those of its genre are NOT animation in any way as "viewed" by codecs. They are made very much like a normal movie and have very similar 3D textures/objects and fluid movements.

By contrast, mainstream "animation" is composed of drawings flashed repeatedly onto the screen, perhaps amids a textured background, with only periodic computerized effects.

For this reason, a seperate test under the title of "animation" is useless, as a Shrek/Nemo-like movie itself is computerized realism, or "virtual reality" which is assuredly NOT animation in a codec's eyes, and therefore provides only marginal encoding differences compared to "real" animation (Hate to say it, but "anime" is becoming a heck of a lot more popular, and a ton of people want to see a high-quality doom9 comparison with it as a source).

Therefore, a Disney movie or Anime film would provide unprecedented results most accurately correlating to the title of "animation" in a codec comparison. If you absolutely refuse to go near the stuff, cartoon source such as that on Cartoon Network would surely suffice.

[Sergei_Esenin]

Something like Shrek or The Incredibles, though, isn't really cartoon material--it's complex highly detailed and adaptively lit and shaded CGI with more in common with live-action material than with cartoon animation.

There really should be a distinction drawn between complex CGI and traditional animated material, because they require very different optimized settings and traditional animation shows certain artifacts like blocking and ringing more clearly.

EDIT: DeathTheSheep, you beat me to saying the above! Darn, I type too slow... Anyway...

While certain anime are definitely not "kid stuff"--even stuff marketed to kids like *Spirited Away* can be sophisticated and adult--if anime is out of the question there are still great traditional animation choices. Some newly remastered Looney Tunes DVDs are already out and judging by their quality the remastered Tex Avery DVD set due out this year should be suberb. You can't get much more adult than Tex Avery--his cartoons were always the most sophisticated and fun for adults of all the Golden Age animations, and several of his cartoons are banned from TV and not included uncensored on current DVDs due to sex or historically insensitive racial contexts. A newly restored and completely uncensored DVD set of his cartoons is due to be released this year.

[hellfred]

Originally posted by DigitalDeviant
You could try the Korean films Wondeful Days or Oseam. I found Wonderful Days to be pretty fun to encode. It blends 2D and 3D rather smoothly (it incoperates cel, CGI and minature animation) and is progressive. There is a fair amount of fog and rain as well fast and slow motion scenes to make it difficult. Oseam featured some nice details and colors. I'm 99% sure both are progressive.
You have forgotten to mention that it does have a nice plot, to make it easier for doom9 to convince himself give it a try and watch it. :)

Hellfred

[DigitalDeviant]

People will debate the merits of Wonderful Days plot, I'll just say it certainly doesn't interfear with the stunning visuals. The varied animation methods used would make it a great idea for such a comparrison.

I managed to suprise even myself with how well it looked as a 2cd XviD encode with virtualy no filtering and a HVS matrix. I'm looking forward to trying it with recode once I get the time.

[netchris]

My vote goes for Ghost In The Shell 2 Innocence

Superb visually, should be very hard to encode in one cd.

[Bogalvator]

Not really animation, but what about something like Chicken Run?

Might be interestesting..........

[akupenguin]

Originally posted by netchris
My vote goes for Ghost In The Shell 2 Innocence
Superb visually, should be very hard to encode in one cd. I'm quite happy with my 1CD H.264 encode of Innocence. But maybe that just means that H.264 is good.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Doom9
Since when is liking or disliking ever rational? Taste never has been and never will.

I can rationalize alot of my dislikes and likes. Those that I can't are irrational. I don't like ugioh or pokemon type cartoons because there is no real plot or story. The animation is often crappy. And they are little more than a marketing device to sell cheap stupid toys, games, trading cards, or trading card games. I don't like DBZ because for every minute of action you have 40 minutes of setup with characters grimacing and looking constipated. Not to mention the plot is rather repetitive. And then there is the horrendus milking funimation is making of the series. Most 3rd world countries had seen the entire dragon ball series all the way to GT and funimation had only released the first 20 or so episodes of Z in a time span of about a decade.

I like Akira and the Ghost in The Shell movies because they have deep stories, spectacular visuals, with excelent animation. Same for any of Myiazaki works. Excelent.

Originally posted by Doom9
Also, I'm looking for progressive sources so keep that in mind. Mix of 24fps and 29fps is no good.

Why? Actually I think it would be a rather good addition. Frankly not everything is going to be progressive. Or 24fps for that matter. Not even on DVD. Why baby the codecs with easy stuff like 24fps progressive? Put them through their paces. Give them 30fps mixed mode material interlaced or progressive and see how they fair. Frankly it is getting rather easy to get decent results on a single CD for almost any normal movie. Why not spice it up with what you might considder abnormal movies. ;)

[Doom9]

Why? Actually I think it would be a rather good addition. Frankly not everything is going to be progressive. Or 24fps for that matter. Not even on DVD. Why baby the codecs with easy stuff like 24fps progressive? Put them through their paces. Give them 30fps mixed mode material interlaced or progressive and see how they fair. Frankly it is getting rather easy to get decent results on a single CD for almost any normal movie. Why not spice it up with what you might considder abnormal movies. Well, it is not up for discussion so I'm not going to give an answer then ask everybody to stop discussing it.

Question for those who keep suggesting Akira and Ghost in the Shell: Are those progressive? And if so, I guess I'd need to see at least a trailer.

[sysKin]

Originally posted by Doom9
Well, it is not up for discussion so I'm not going to give an answer then ask everybody to stop discussing it.

Question for those who keep suggesting Akira and Ghost in the Shell: Are those progressive? And if so, I guess I'd need to see at least a trailer. All movies are progressive, even if they are anime ;)
Lost of GITS2:Innocence trailers here: http://www.themoviebox.net/movies/2004/DEFGH/GhostInTheShell2_Innocence/trailer.html

(edit) heh, the comparison between american and japanese trailers is, as usual, interesting.

My personal favorite would rather be Spirited Away, if only because it's the most classical animation you can get (and also because Miyazaki is the best animation author in existence, imho). Just to be clear, Spirted Away won an Oscar (best animated film) in 2003.

[BlindWanderer]

Hmmm sounds like people want Disney catalog..
well...
Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke are both in the Disney library (Disney holds the US distribution license). While Spirited Away won awards, Princess Mononoke IMO is the more difficult of the two to compress (there are some very high motion scenes). Both have plenty of detail and motion. While both movies appeal to the crowd who watches anime, they both have crossover appeal.

I was disapointed at how well Futurama came out. I don't think it was a hard enough source.

EDIT: (didn't see the post above, was writing for a half hour on and off)

Sprited Away (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/video/sen/) and Princess Mononoke (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/video/mh/) can be gotten in PAL or NTSC.

Trailers:
PM (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/mh/relmedia.html)
SA (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/sen/relmedia.html)

[plonk420]

wonderful days: AWESOME movie, freakin' eye candy
and nemo?! are you crazy? that would ... be quite problematic :\

i might suggest Fantasia 2000, possibly, tho i don't really remember if the content was well suited to emulate "most animation."

we won't mind waiting for you to come to your senses and start to like anime, doom9.

Cowboy Bebop as a starting point i'd highly suggest if you ever do ;)
edit: or, yes, Spirited Away

[Manao]

and nemo?! are you crazy? that would ... be quite problematic :\Why ? That's really the hardest thing I tried to put on 1 CD ( and I encoded Aliens extended version on 1 CD... ).

[RadicalEd]

My vote goes to Mononoke.

[Doom9]

actually, I have some Cowboy Bebop at home (one of my samples for the "the people who made this should be shot" category of screwed up mpeg-2 streams). I did not like it..

[Soulhunter]

Another vote for Animatrix...

Mainly coz it contains alot different animation styles !!!

Originally posted by Neo Neko

I don't like DBZ because [...] characters grimacing and looking constipated.

Guess you really love my avatar then... :p

Actually I found this "grimacing" very entertaining !!!


Bye

[Gabriel_Bouvigne]

Another vote for Animatrix...

Mainly coz it contains alot different animation styles !!!

Even if overall it is probably easier to encode than Nemo, I think that this is a good idea, considering the various styles featured in Animatrix.
Moreover, an advantage of Animatrix is that some parts are freely available. This would allow readers of the shoot-out to check for themselves what is inside those parts, and could be interesting along with Doom9's comments.

[dragongodz]

so some of the basic points so far are

1. CG is not the same as animation so using nemo or incredibles(whatever) would not tell you anything. maybe another test seeing as there are CG movies coming out regularly ? (Doom9 no doubt wonders if we think he should ever have a life :D )

2. the source needs to be fairly hard to compress, so really short movies etc are not really worth considering. people may want to remember that before just suggesting just movies they like. :)

3. Doom9 dislikes anime. thankfully he does appear to be willing to atleast consider it now since anime is the biggest source/styles of animation in the world IMHO.

Another vote for Animatrix...

Mainly coz it contains alot different animation styles !!!
and this would be indicitive of encoding a movie or even a series where the animation style stays the same ? no, so count my vote against it.

while Akira is an incredible film the animation is not up to todays standards so i dont think it would give totally useful results. maybe Mononoke but i havent watched that in some time either.

[Omni]

well why not split it in real cartoon and cgi movie?
both have some nice properties like cgi being very clean and noise-free with mostly lots of motion and cartoons consisting of mainly static backgrounds which is on the one hand easy to compress but on the other hand it's easy to find areas where the codecs differ.

for cgi i'd say to use either shrek, finding nemo, gits innocence, appleseed 2004

for cartoon/anime: Mononoke Hime, Spirited Away, Juuni Kokki

all have their up and downs on the various codecs.

[rushin_911]

Princess Mononoke.
Very clean sorce, progressive, more than 2 hours long, and one of the hardest anime movies to encode.

[Soulhunter]

Originally posted by dragongodz

and this would be indicitive of encoding a movie or even a series where the animation style stays the same ? no, so count my vote against it.

Well, you would see which codec copes best with a certain style... :)


Bye

[BlindWanderer]

The trouble is, most modern cartoons on tv *are* anime (all the stations that show cartoons show anime as well).

This may just be me but i find most cartoons are created by people interested in drawing cool stuff; they want to draw cool looking costumes, weapons and vehicles. They aren't interested in drawing backgrounds. In anime there is also this same tendency but usually you get good looking backgrounds; you see blades of grass in the background (and the wind blowing through them).

If you don't like anime, thats ok, we will have alto of trouble finding a non anime source. Iron Giant is an ok movie; I don't think of it as a high motion film but my memory isn't perfect (I found the child irritating). I don't really think we should use a pure CG source, that being a source that is at some level made to look real (a CG cartoon like GITS 2 Innocences is ok). CG is too close to a real film. Could do worse then picking one of the other series running on Cartoon Network.

(i was very tired when i wrote this so please show mercy)

The movies I recommended in the previous post I have watched many times.

[Lefungus]

I would choose Princess Mononoke. It's a great movie, far far away from usual anime crap. Myazaki movies (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/films/#film_g_m) are just the best animation movies.
Very hard to compress on 1CD. I have the Zone 2 PAL which is also, thanks god, progressive. You can't go wrong with this one.

Ghost in the Shell 1 could have been a good choice since there's no CGI in it either. But the Z2 is blended-interlaced crap. I don't know about other releases though. And some people just can't avoid sleeping while watching it so beware. GITS 2 contain too much CGI.

I would dismiss any CGI stuff like the Incredibles, or any Pixar stuff. Those movies are great but it's not animation, it's cgi. And most of the time, those movies are easily compressible.

[Mug Funky]

for Mononoke, you'll have to get the NTSC version i'd say. it's so hard to encode even the DVD has some troubles (at least the R4 one where unfortunately the storyboard feature comes as a multiangle, sucking valuable bits away from the film... that and it's a field-blend).

if you want flat colours and lots of action, try "Dead Leaves". short, but excessive motion, and progressive in both PAL and NTSC (thank you manga entertainment and their insistence on 24p HD masters). just so as not to put you off, there's NO plot, but there's a lot of violence and perversion. have a few beers and you'll love it (the director himself says to watch it drunk).

for western stuff, the earlier suggestion of Chicken-run is an interesting one - the main reason natural video compresses so much better IMHO is the motion-blur, which is completely absent in stop-motion (of course). this would be an interesting experiment, but perhaps not for the next comparison. when the spongebob movie comes onto DVD, i'd say that's just what you need - flat colours, feature length, and not disney!

maybe try "beavis and butthead do america" for a laugh (huh-huh)

i vote for Spirited Away - Mononoke is possibly too taxing for a codec. besides, Miyazaki movies are just so nice you can't not like them.

[edit]

as for CG movies, the best part of these is a guarantee that if you use a noise filter you WILL lose detail for no benefit whatsoever. impossibly clean sources are cool :)

[Lefungus]

Well, as I said Mononoke is PAL progressive, so there is more resolution than NTSC, and no interlacing :)

[Mug Funky]

oh, okay. which country is that one in? the PAL release in australia is a field-blend unfortunately. i might have to ebay your one, as i really like this movie.

[niamh]

How about Corto Maltese? It looks enough like anime, but it´s most definitely not anime ;). It doesn´t come in english though, you´d have to swallow the subtitles if you want to understand it :)
What it´s about (http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=5389)
Otherwise I can´t see anything that´s not going to be japanese. I don´t recall anyone mentioningJin-roh (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193253/).It´s a "real" story as opposed to constipated, grimacing people ;)

[Lefungus]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
oh, okay. which country is that one in? the PAL release in australia is a field-blend unfortunately. i might have to ebay your one, as i really like this movie.

Sorry. I forgot that there were more than one PAL release. I was talking about the french version. Hopefully, it's the same version for all european countries. This one (http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000634P5/qid=1105720866/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_11_2/171-0158681-9065876) or this one (http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000634P4/qid=1105720866/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_11_1/171-0158681-9065876)

[DigitalDeviant]

For more anime, I'd also recommend Satoshi Kon's Millenium Actress. It's got a good range of motion and colors, not to mention an extrodanry story telling style. It's almost a psudo-documentry of the history of Japanese cinema since most of the "movies" used to tell the story are based from old Japanese films. Tokyo Godfathers was good as well and hard as heck for me to compress, but I don't think my copy (R1) was progressive.

If I were doing a comparrison test using any Miyazaki movie, I'd use Kiki's Delivery Service. Despite being a bit older than either Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke but is still as well animated and detailed as either of them, plus it's quite a bit shorter if I remember correctly.

[Joe Fenton]

Here's a vote for splitting it into at least three categories: computer graphics animation (The Incredibles, etc.), traditional animation (Disney, Miyazaki, etc.), and cartoons.

I make cartoons separate from traditional animation because while traditional animation is known for it's complex and lush backgrounds, cartoons are the exact opposite - they are known for NO background what-so-ever. Examples of cartoons are Yogi Bear and PowerPuff Girls.

My choices -

CG: The Incredibles. New and state of the art CG. Good story line so you don't get bored encoding it 100 times. :)

Trad. Animation: HBO's Spawn. Kind of an odd pick here. The animated version of Spawn from HBO is a modern gothic horror drawn in vivid detail. The best of both worlds - old fashioned animation and modern story-telling. None of that mamby-pamby Disney cr@p here! :D

Cartoon: Dexter's Laboratory - The Mock 5 episode. Side-splitting parody of Japanese cartoons. You can't go wrong with the first two seasons of Dexter's Lab.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Lefungus
I would choose Princess Mononoke. It's a great movie, far far away from usual anime crap. Myazaki movies (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/films/#film_g_m) are just the best animation movies.

It is a good movie. But I will always wonder why the title was left half translated and transposed. Mononoke Hime(Vengfull Spirit Princess) would not ba a bad choice by any measure.

Originally posted by Lefungus
Ghost in the Shell 1 could have been a good choice since there's no CGI in it either.

There is CGI and then there is 3D and 3D photorealistic CGI. Ghost in the shell is chock full of CGI

Originally posted by Lefungus
I would dismiss any CGI stuff like the Incredibles, or any Pixar stuff. Those movies are great but it's not animation, it's cgi.

Actually it is animation, CGI animation. But still just animation. Actually most animation produced today is largely CGI. Even the cel animations etc are CGI. Most anime are created and compositied on a computer nowadays. Even on US animation. Ever seen any of cartoon networks "Adult Swim" originals. Many are generated in flash or other computer programs. It's all animation.

[Sagittaire]

If you want:
- anime source
- hardest encoding
- highest quality source

-> Steamboy ... it will undoubtedly be one of the sources most difficult for encoding on 1CDR.

GITSII is a good mix between 2d and 3d animation but very easy with MPEG4 ASP on 1CDR.

[PatchWorKs]

Mononoke is good (expecially the Ashitaka vs. Demon Boar sequences), anyway i suggest Akira's "Speeds off to Chase Clowns" sequences (awesome fast motion, colors and moving vectors)

http://www.bbakira.co.uk/stills/tetsuo/tetbike2.jpg
http://www.bbakira.co.uk/stills/kai/kaibike1.jpg
http://www.bbakira.co.uk/stills/tetsuo/tetbike1.jpg

I think are pretty hard to encode...

[Rumbah]

I vote for princess Mononoke, too. It has very fast motion scenes and detailed moving ones. I think it would be very hard to encode, but I only have low bitrate PAL DVB capture, so I could not test it. The film is very good, I liked it more than spirited away.

[CQ]

Man, but why not doing a special test DVDs. You get a few chapters from there, a few from there... 5 movies in 2 hours. Finding Nemo for fishy 3D :D The Incredibles for fast action 3D, Animatrix for anime, another anime movies that doom9's forum guys prefer, and a few chapters from a disney movie. In my test (that is still in progres: i`m waiting for 3 codecs and infos for them, analyzing diferent DVD's for the source...) I think I`ll do such a thing. Maybe 1 DVD (compile of matrix3, spr, and maybe a few superbit dvd's) and 1 DVD with 2D, 3D movies (a shark tale or finding nemo, road to el dorado <disney> or other one, animatrix, and another 2 cartoons). So 2 DVD's of this kind means less time to test, more complexity...hmm? Myabe you'll say that a normal movie doesn't have such a diversity of scenes but this is a test. A practical one but still a test.

And... don't shoot me! Just my HO :D.

[Lefungus]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
It is a good movie. But I will always wonder why the title was left half translated and transposed. Mononoke Hime(Vengfull Spirit Princess) would not ba a bad choice by any measure.


Well, here in France, "Wild Things" has been translated to "Sex Crimes" and "Cruel Intentions" to "Sex Intentions". I guess they kept mononoke in the title for the asian appeal.


There is CGI and then there is 3D and 3D photorealistic CGI. Ghost in the shell is chock full of CGI


Bad choice of words from me, ok there is cgi in every animation title now, but some of them keep the retro look of celluloid animation, and some other just display 3D stuff. Whether you like that 3D stuff or not is personal taste though. I do not like how GITS 2 was made where the 3D cgi just look ugly combined with celluloid characters. GITS 1 doesn't have this issue imo.


Actually it is animation, CGI animation. But still just animation. Actually most animation produced today is largely CGI. Even the cel animations etc are CGI. Most anime are created and compositied on a computer nowadays. Even on US animation. Ever seen any of cartoon networks "Adult Swim" originals. Many are generated in flash or other computer programs. It's all animation.

You are playing with words. I meant 'animation' as retro-celluloid-looking animation in this context. I'll blame this one on language differences.

[Omni]

mononoke hime is most probably the best choice...i think i should watch it again :)
i've the R2 PAL (german) here and the source is quite good and i like the backgrounds :)

[Doom9]

to get a bit more specific, where can progressive versions of the following movies be gotten (link to online stores, I usually shop at amazon which has R1 and R2 subsidiaries but if it has to be other stores are fine, too):
Princess Mononoke
Spirited Away
GITS
GITS2

[rushin_911]

Princess Mononoke: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00003CXBK/qid=1107586611/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1334894-4574422?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846

Spirited Away: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005JLEU/qid=1107586622/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1334894-4574422?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846

[Leak]

Originally posted by rushin_911
Princess Mononoke: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00003CXBK/qid=1107586611/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1334894-4574422?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846


USD 28.04?!? o_O

How about USD 16.04? (http://www.dvdpacific.com/item.asp?ID=7645)


Spirited Away: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005JLEU/qid=1107586622/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1334894-4574422?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846

USD 22.49

Okay, USD 20.49 ain't much lower (http://www.dvdpacific.com/item.asp?ID=49939) but IIRC the shipping costs should still be lower when compared to amazon.com...

Ghost In The Shell - USD 18.62 (http://www.dvdpacific.com/item.asp?ID=3857)
Ghost In The Shell: Special Edition - USD 22.23 (http://www.dvdpacific.com/item.asp?ID=613515)
Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence - USD 20.79 (http://www.dvdpacific.com/item.asp?ID=630018)

np: Roots Manuva - Colossal Insight (Awfully Deep)

[Doom9]

@leak, rushin_911: do you vouch for the "progressiveness" of those titles?

[Leak]

Originally posted by Doom9
@leak, rushin_911: do you vouch for the "progressiveness" of those titles?

Well, I don't have the R1 DVDs for Spirited Away (got the German one) or Innocence (they no dub - me no buy), and I don't have the GITS: Special Edition yet, but at least Mononoke Hime and Ghost In The Shell don't exhibit any comb artefacts in the few scenes I checked from each when played in MPC with deinterlacing set to force weave. Of course, both were theatrical releases to begin with...

Then again, the original Ghost In The Shell DVD, though celebrated as having top-notch video quality when it was released in 1999 or so, loses to Mononoke Hime in video quality hands down, especially when viewed on a TFT display. Dunno about the special edition, though.

np: Roots Manuva - Mind 2 Motion (Awfully Deep)

[rushin_911]

The R1 DVDs for Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away are progressive streams (Atleast the ones I have are;), to be honest though I didn't buy them from Amazon)
If you're still in doubt just wait for others to confirm it :)

[Shapierian]

Batman TAS can be an interesting encode because the backgrounds are drawn on black. I made the mistake of letting Nero Autocrop it, what a disaster.

[C0mPr355]

I would have to say Akira if you are willing to get the latest version made by pioneer on DVD. Remastered and cleaned up. I think it would be very hard for a codec to hit this one up as the oranges, browns, and darker hues seems to rape most codecs bad.

GITS and GITS 2 would be good choices but mixed 2d/3d doesn't ride well with me for animation.

Miyazaki films would be good as well...but still not as hard as Akira to compress.

[Doom9]

@C0mPr355: is it fully progressive and where can it be gotten?

[zettai]

Originally posted by Doom9
@C0mPr355: is it fully progressive and where can it be gotten?

If "it" is Akira then the PAL version is progressive and can be obtained from almost anywhere. In fact, it's often in sales.

[Mug Funky]

yep, i vouch for the progressivity of the Akira R4 PAL copy. it's a very good transfer (which is rare... often they just send us poor aussies an NTSC tape to feed to the field-blender).

it's quite grainy and very sharp (a little oversharp, as there's some ringing) - this will punish any codec severely.

mononoke will probably be nicer to watch though unless you play the akira drinking game (whenever someone yells a name like "TETSUOOOOOOOOOOO!" take a drink).

[dragongodz]

it's quite grainy and very sharp (a little oversharp, as there's some ringing)
which is why i said NOT to use it. its NOT representative of modern anime or american animation. so it will NOT give any indication how codecs will perform on such material.

mononoke will probably be nicer to watch though
and more representative of the majority of anime and animation being released.

so unless Doom9 wants to test 2 different types of source for animation then Mononoke is the better choice to use.

[C0mPr355]

Forgive me if I am wrong...but didn't Doom9 state that he wants something tough...not something that is representative of modern day animation? (Hence futurama being nixed)

[LordRPI]

Animusic

http://www.animusic.com/

Computer animated to music. Pretty addictive and strangely weird. I was lucky enough to be in a conference where ATI spilled the beans on the optimizations for their pipe dream demo for the Radeon 9700.

One of the directors made a comment that DVD authoring houses didn't want to touch it because of all the fine details, and admittedly the source can look like garbage.

IIRC doom9 isn't a big fan of anime.

It's definately not progressive though...

[dragongodz]

didn't Doom9 state that he wants something tough...not something that is representative of modern day animation? (Hence futurama being nixed)
yes, no, no. :)
or to quote from the very first post....
It has to be rather hard to encode though (target being 1 CD), so length is of importance.
so yes tough. mononoke is rather long and has some very good action scenes so wont be simply an "easy" encode to 1 cd.
It should be progressive, mainstream cartoon that not only kids like
mainstream...hmmmm...wouldnt that also mean the same as the majority of anime/cartoons being released ?
As my Futurama source is actually not so great quality wise, I'd like to go for something else
so futurama was dropped because it was not great quality not because it didnt represent modern anime/cartoons.

what would be the point of testing codecs against a source that doesnt represent a large percent of that type content ? what would that tell anyone about how the different codecs are going to perform when they go to encode their anime/cartoon collection ? for live action movies Doom9 uses several sources to show different situations but for anime/cartoons he (as far as i know) is just going to use 1. so it should be something that will tell us something useful.

oh an finally
Also note that I don't like Anime and I'm not about to spend hours upon hours watching something I don't even like.
Akira is 1 of those films you either love or hate and those not in to anime are more likly to not enjoy it so much. Mononoke is less likly to scare Doom9 away from anime in the future. :D

[LordRPI]

Originally posted by dragongodz

Akira is 1 of those films you either love or hate and those not in to anime are more likly to not enjoy it so much. Mononoke is less likly to scare Doom9 away from anime in the future. :D

Princess Mononoke just proved how girly anime can really be...

How 'bout some Bible Black? :ducks:

[LordRPI]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Or perhaps you could give the original Heavy Metal movie a try. Lots of dynamic animation going on there.

Hehe, nice. I missed this at first. Less naughty than Bible Black but naughty nevertheless. Many different animations styles as it is composed of shorts. In once scene I can imagine some rudimentary computer graphics as well as an explosion of a house at the end of the movie. I can't recall on the source quality, but I know this is progressive as it was subject to one of my early DivX 5 encodes.

[dragongodz]

Princess Mononoke just proved how girly anime can really be...
well its more mainstream but i would hardly call it "girly". its not as if its sailor moon or something. :)

How 'bout some Bible Black? :ducks:
duck ? i would run and hide in a closet. thats sick dude.

[dragongodz]

Why? It's actually a good idea, Bible Black contains plenty of action
and you think thats the kind of "action" Doom9 wants to watch ? i would have thought something like Shame of the Jungle since atleast thats funny. Bible Black is sick.

haha, just imagine as Doom9 explains the artifacts on a frame from the middle of an action scene
hmmm indeed.

EDIT: Doom9 i would not take any of these last choices serious by the way.

[LordRPI]

Originally posted by dragongodz

EDIT: Doom9 i would not take any of these last choices serious by the way.

I know, it's all sick. I don't know what I was thinking.

[Sagittaire]

Wait Steamboy DVD ... IMO perhabs the hardest encoding and highest quality for real anime ...

[dragongodz]

great, just what we need, another suggestion. instead of just throwing in ANOTHER title how about someone comes up with a good reason Mononoke wouldnt be a good choice. otherwise this thread is no longer being productive and gone well past its purpose of what Doom9 asked for.

[C0mPr355]

how mainstream is mononoke ?

Not very. Only reason you know about it now (meaning the general populace) is because disney brought it here for us to see. And even then not many people still know about it.

If we really wanted to go mainstream, go for family guy, edd, ed, and eddy (please shoot me in the head) - very tough to encode due to the way that the animation is drawn, or drawn together (another barf fest).

But that's just my two cents.

[Lefungus]

Originally posted by C0mPr355
how mainstream is mononoke ?
Not very.

Don't assume everyone lives in the USA.

[LordRPI]

Originally posted by Lefungus
Don't assume everyone lives in the USA.

Yeah, I have seen Princess Mononoke in a Blockbuster video store on many occasions... even in the New York Capital District :P <- C0mPr355, I have no idea how you still live there, although I have to admit that what is on the west of the hudson is much nicer than what you find on the east... *cough* *cough* Troy.

[dragongodz]

Only reason you know about it now (meaning the general populace) is because disney brought it here for us to see. And even then not many people still know about it.
and that statements based on what exactly ?
first off i knew about Mononoke well before Disney released it so please do not tell me what i know or how or when, you do not know me.
second, the fact is Mononoke is available in not only rental stores but big chain retail aswell and atleast where i live sold pretty well(according to 1 retailer i know) so saying many people still dont know of it is your belief only.

actually i love it when people try to deny anime is a huge business and growing all the time becuase it just shows they have no idea.
i can give you a little example for those in the U.S.A. aswell. have a look at the magazine Animerica some time. it has a section on monthly release titles. hmm how many titles from how many companies do you see ? or maybe these companies are not actually selling or making money off any of those....riiiiight thats why the number of releases have grown every year, because they are going broke. :sly:
oh and yes anime has grown here in Aus aswell with a huge selection of titles available.

but getting back to the real point.
how mainstream is mononoke ?
you fail to understand what i mean by mainstream, its not just that you can buy that 1 title. its that the type of animation used is consistant with a large percentage of animation being released. of course you can pick out individual titles that are different, look back at how Shapierian said Batman was but that will that tell us anything about most animation ? no. Mononoke will tell more about the majority, thus mainstream, animation.

[C0mPr355]

I never stated nor wished to state that YOU did not know about mononoke. I too watched mononoke years before it even came here to the US shores. I actually got a nice copy of it from a japanese friend...and though it was all in japanese I still enjoyed watching it.

I am saying average joe on the street will have no idea about mononoke. Pokemon, Dragonballz, Yugioh yes...cause they have made it to TV in large rotation. And of course cartoon network has brought about an anime revolution with its adult swim. You forget that not everyone spends their time on computers researching anime (from whatever country) or doing dvddecrypter rips, etc etc. ;)

And I was not assuming that everyone lives in the US. Ask someone who is either in their 30s or 40s and ask them questions about animation and what will be their answer? Bugs bunny, he-man, etc.

There are rare cases of people (other than in japan) who are older and know a lot about anime. But like I said the joe average of the population will have no idea what you are talking about.

But this is obviously pointless as Doom9 more than likely has obtained his copy of whatever by now.....so I am babbling on incoherently :|

[dragongodz]

I am saying average joe on the street will have no idea about mononoke.
even if you are right, which i still question how accurate that is, that still does not negate the real purpose of the choice. THAT i already explained in reply to your "how mainstream is mononoke ?" question in my last post.

you are right though, Doom9 surely has enough ramblings from us all to make his choice. ;)

[LordDethstar]

If you want a codec killer, you should get the first R1 Looney Tunes box. It is prograssive scan, it is a traditional cartoon, and I have yet to succeed in encoding it in such a way that it doesn't look like crap.

[Doom9]

I've just had a look at the R1 copy of Akira - Pioneer Signature Series and it's all but progressive. The usual nightmare of fucked up editing I associate with Anime :(

[zettai]

Yeah, the R1 is hard telecine. The PAL release is progressive.

[The Collector]

There's a new movie coming "A Scanner Darkly" it's also with Keanu Reeves just like the Matrix... and it's way of filming is very, well, interesting! I think it's a normal movie that has been overlayed with somekind of cartoon/anime filter. So maybe once the (superbit :) DVD of this movie is out it's a nice one for a codec-comparison. Just have a look at the trailer.

[Leak]

Originally posted by The Collector
There's a new movie coming "A Scanner Darkly" it's also with Keanu Reeves just like the Matrix... and it's way of filming is very, well, interesting! I think it's a normal movie that has been overlayed with somekind of cartoon/anime filter. So maybe once the (superbit :) DVD of this movie is out it's a nice one for a codec-comparison. Just have a look at the trailer.

Gotta second this. Although a link to the trailer (http://www.apple.com/trailers/warner_independent_pictures/a_scanner_darkly.html) might not have been a bad idea... :D

np: Rasmus Møbius - Vintage ([THN039] Silent Season Dub)

[Doom9]

so I'm almost through with my Anime course.

Didn't like either GITS and both Mononoke and Spirited Away are essentially Disney movies.. just in Japanese, and I didn't like those storylines either.

Encoding wise (XviD 1.1, same settings as for Futurama, target size 1 CD), GITS looked rather good (can't say anything about lack of detail because I haven't checked the source), GITS2 had some interesting scenes that exhibited problems, Mononoke probably was the most problematic on the average, but once again, we're far away from terrible results like the ones gotten in Matrix3. Same goes for Spirited away, which imho exhibited less problems, but night and rain scenes were just as bad as in live action.

I guess I expected something harder. Guess I have to reconsider Animatrix, spice up the size requirements and keep the sound AC3.. and since there's both animated and rendered scenes, that could be used as an indicator for both types of animated content that are popular these days.

There's a new movie coming "A Scanner Darkly" it's also with Keanu Reeves just like the Matrix..It's not even in theaters so the DVD is far off.. not really an option for something to take place in summer.

[WorBry]

Hi Doom9,

Any plans to use captured DV-AVI (TypeI or TypeII) sources in your future codec comparisons?

[Doom9]

Any plans to use captured DV-AVI (TypeI or TypeII) sources in your future codec comparisons?No.. it's all about DVD backups.

[Maximillius]

You could try something like Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust or Wicked City. Both are progressive disc and are quite enjoyable to watch especially if you want something that is aimed at a more adult audience. Not sure how compressible they are as I've never tried encoding them but VHD Bloodlust does have alot of high action scenes which may cause problems.

[rushin_911]

Originally posted by Maximillius
You could try something like Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust or Wicked City. Both are progressive disc and are quite enjoyable to watch especially if you want something that is aimed at a more adult audience. Not sure how compressible they are as I've never tried encoding them but VHD Bloodlust does have alot of high action scenes which may cause problems.

If my memory serves me correctly, Vampire Hunter D Blood lust isn't that hard to compress :)

[Sagittaire]

If you want really high quality and hardest DVD source wait the SteamBoy DVD: for me that will be certainely the hardest and most complex anime source in the world ...

[Doom9]

well... Akira turned out to be a nice blockfest. And I suppose once I compare it to the source there'll be a lack of details as well. It's about time.

Though the story, well, not for me.

[video]

(partly) off topic. Doom9 if you just wanna see the death march of our mighty mpeg4 codecs just go for a ride with Enya's caribbean blue. :D

[aeternitas]

If you want to try something relavent, try to find a source episode of Naruto or some other popular anime series.

Look people, what relevency is it to compaire how well codecs can compress an anime movie? Think about it. The stylies differ a great deal more than film of a real life scene across many manymovies. Anime and cartoons in general have differant styles between each, so there is really no reason for it.

You compess the movies once, at a high bitrate and put three of them on a DVD.

Downloading them off the internet? You compress them in Xvid useing h263 matrix at either 175 MB per episode or 149 (more relevent for storage and better for online downloading) in a H624 codec.

Its those two codecs and that matrix, or nothing. This has been tested and tested again in the anime community and youre not going to suprise anyone.


H264>xvid+263>everything else.

[Prettz]

The anime movies Akira and Metropolis are both extremely hard to encode with good quality (and impossible without good Avisynth filtering). I would suggest them. Princess Mononoke could also be a good choice for a difficult anime.

[dragongodz]

Didn't like either GITS and both Mononoke and Spirited Away are essentially Disney movies.. just in Japanese, and I didn't like those storylines either.
Though the story, well, not for me.
Doom9 - lets be honest here, how likly is it you are going to find an anime that you do like AND is good for the test , especially considering you dont like the stories of award winning and considered classic by many anime ? pretty unlikly isnt it ? still you dont REALLY need to like it for it to be useful. ok you may not like watching the comparison part over and over but thats more the nature of the beast and the task you have set for yourself. :D

Akira turned out to be a nice blockfest. And I suppose once I compare it to the source there'll be a lack of details as well. It's about time.
and its been said over and over that Akira is as noisy as hell so OF COURSE is hard to compress. does it represent 99% of modern anime or cartoons though ? no. so using it for comparison will tell nothing about them.

Mononoke probably was the most problematic on the average, but once again, we're far away from terrible results like the ones gotten in Matrix3. Same goes for Spirited away, which imho exhibited less problems, but night and rain scenes were just as bad as in live action.
animation,especially modern and a lot done digitally(digitally painted so very clean), is NOT live action so why do you think it should react the same ? if that were even close to true there would be no need of an animation comparison aswell. Mononoke is more like what most modern animation is like.

If you want to try something relavent, try to find a source episode of Naruto or some other popular anime series.
i agree a tv series may be better since it may provide more seeable differences(trying to get quite a few eps per cd). the rest of your comments i wont waste my time with. :sly:

Prettz - Doom9 has already looked at both Akira and Mononoke. start reading back and you will find his comments about them.

[Doom9]

animation,especially modern and a lot done digitally(digitally painted so very clean), is NOT live action so why do you think it should react the same ? if that were even close to true there would be no need of an animation comparison aswell. Mononoke is more like what most modern animation is like.I asked for something hard and problematic.. doesn't matter what problems it might exhibit (if you want, problems in Akira, though also end up in blocks, are likely to be caused by different issues.. after all the noise on the walls in Matrix1 is now handled reasonably well by most codecs).. but for a 1 CD rip, Mononoke looked rather good. Akira didn't. Now you're saying Akira isn't representative and Mononoke is.. so I really have to question the whole point of this thread.. you're giving me nothing to work with.. do this do that but nothing is okay. That's what you get for listening to people. From now on I'll do it on my own again, that works much better for me and doesn't result in me wasting money and time on a fruitless case :(

I can easily make any movie look bad using ridiculously low bitrates as some people seem to like for Anime.. but this is a darned DVD backup comparison.. not some "how can I get a movie on my 256MB memory stick" comparison. And with that in mind, from the 5 movies I looked at, only one really qualifies as hard for 1 700 MB CD is Akira.

[video]

Originally posted by Doom9
I asked for something hard and problematic.. doesn't matter what problems it might exhibit

go with enya's caribbean blue, not joking. allow 1Mbps video bitrate, and resize to 640x480. xvid exhibiting serious problems even at rate 1.5Mbps. so does ateme.

[dragongodz]

Now you're saying Akira isn't representative and Mononoke is.
of general animation today yes IMO. its up to you how you take that or not and whether the test is designed to represent the majority of animation or just the hard cases. oh and its not just "now" i am saying it isnt i said several times of the last pages and why.

you're giving me nothing to work with.. do this do that but nothing is okay
heaps have given you their opinions on what would or wouldnt be good sources to use buts it up to you to decide how you want to do the test and whats its meant to reprasent.

That's what you get for listening to people. From now on I'll do it on my own again, that works much better for me and doesn't result in me wasting money and time on a fruitless case
then why not just close this thread and do that instead of jumping up and down on people that have genuinely tried to help ?

[video]

http://imdb.com/title/tt0294182/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0179955/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0000350/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0245429/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0095327/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0107688/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0096438/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0167285/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0243017/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0158983/

and so forth...

[Doom9]

instead of just throwing in ANOTHER title how about someone comes up with a good reason Mononoke wouldnt be a good choice.Here is one: it's too easy. There is simply not enough action to make it really difficult to encode.

Frankly I'm beginning to seriously doubt that the content type matters.. an average DVD rip, 700MB for one movie with 128kbit audio.. doesn't seem to be a big deal after all unless the source is noisy, which also is a problem for live action. So, what's so complicated about anime? Messes up sources are a matter for an IVTC filter and not a codec problem, and what I saw in those Anime classics I encoded was not much different from live action. Edges, uniformly colored surfaces, rain, night scenes.. it's all there in live action.

[Tima]

Hmm.. then how about Duck Tales? The typical Disney cartoon, funny enough not to get bored while watching and rewatching.. IMHO. :)

[Zarxrax]

Originally posted by Doom9
So, what's so complicated about anime? Messes up sources are a matter for an IVTC filter and not a codec problem, and what I saw in those Anime classics I encoded was not much different from live action. Edges, uniformly colored surfaces, rain, night scenes.. it's all there in live action. [/B]

Of course its not going to be hard to encode a pristine dvd like Mononoke! A ton of anime out there is encoded like SHIT though. For example, something that is full of mpeg2 encoding artifacts, rainbows, etc. By far the most difficult problem that I have with anime is dark scenes. They just get sooo blocky even if you set xvid to quant 2! A lot of times with these anime, the blocks are present in the dvd source, so what are you gunna do then? Smooth it and lose the fine details?
Also these days, they make most anime with computers. The older anime which actually used cel animation was more difficult to encode.

Working with something like mononoke you ARERN'T going to see any sort of problems that people have with anime. Thats probably by far one of the easiest sources out there! I know Akira has been mentioned a lot, I'm not sure if you checked it out yet though. Long movie, LOTS of dark scenes, lots of action, lots of detail, a ton of film grain.
Although Akira has been remastered to excellant condition so it doesn't exhibit a lot of problems that many anime have, its still a good choice, IMO, because the film grain really kills the encode.

Edit: I see you've checked out Akira already. /goes back to read thread further

[Mug Funky]

if you're after noisy, and full of problems, then look no further than Dragon Ball.

but i hate that show, and i'm sure Doom9 would hate it worse :)

the r4 Mononoke is a field-blend with multiangle (multiangle restricts bitrate a fair bit), so it'll have more problems than the NTSC one. of course it still looks fine on a TV :)

Dead Leaves is pristine clean, and FULL of crazy action sequences.

FLCL (esp. the last 2 eps) is hybrid 30p/telecine and has shitloads of action in it too (also a very clean source in spite of that).

i'd go with Dead Leaves if Mononoke is too easy - it's full of hard edges and "earthquake" motion (which messes up any temporal smoother, so it's just as well no filtering is needed), as well as lots of flashing frames (gunfire and explosions) that'll kill anything that doesn't use multiple reference frames.

[Doom9]

For example, something that is full of mpeg2 encoding artifacts, rainbows, etc.That's why I'm looking for a clean source.. if problems are already there in the source (Futurama is such an example.. it could've used a higher bitrate on the DVD as we're skidding along visible blocks a bunch of times), then things can only degrade from there. And since it's not a contest on filtering...

is Dead Leaves progressive? Hybrid/messed up sources are not an option.. it's not an IVTC and "unmess" contest either. Crazy action sequences are good though.. Akira had by far the most action scenes, and naturally action movies are harder to encode than dramas.

[Zarxrax]

Originally posted by Doom9
That's why I'm looking for a clean source.. if problems are already there in the source (Futurama is such an example.. it could've used a higher bitrate on the DVD as we're skidding along visible blocks a bunch of times), then things can only degrade from there. And since it's not a contest on filtering...

Well, ok I see your point there. But in response to you wondering why people think anime is so much harder to encode, thats my point. Nearly every anime requires you to go through great pains to get the ivtc right, to clean the shitty encoding job thats been done on the dvds, etc. With many regular movies, it might be acceptable to just encode, but with 98% of anime, this is definately not acceptible, and thus why anime is hard to encode.

[video]

Originally posted by Zarxrax
But in response to you wondering why people think anime is so much harder to encode, thats my point. Nearly every anime requires you to go through great pains to get the ivtc right, to clean the shitty encoding job thats been done on the dvds, etc. With many regular movies, it might be acceptable to just encode, but with 98% of anime, this is definately not acceptible, and thus why anime is hard to encode.

I dunno why people think that. Conventional way of making of an animated feature (even if it's made in Japan):
a) having a backround, what is static
b) having key animators paintining the 2-3 caharcters into overheads
c) having panning, sky moving or other things by means of using overheads

still photographing the stuff described above

in case of computer assisted animations:
- better perspective
- having mass movement of characters, with a well defined, but little bit 'dithered' motion vector

look at the above a think it again. It's exactly the same, what mpeg4 thinks about what a movie is.

I think ivtc is not a hard issue in case of mpeg2. ivtc is:
- having exactly 12 frames in a GOP, as progressive has
- having 6 of them with flapped field order

You have to restore these 6 flapped field orders, and go for a ride. We have turnkey mpeg readers for this. The only thing is, that you have to spend half an hour from your life, to understand what 3:2 pulldown is, and to learn to configure DGDecode or whatever you are using to output 23.976fps progressive. Not a big deal.

[Lefungus]

Originally posted by video
[...]and to learn to configure DGDecode or whatever you are using to output 23.976fps progressive. Not a big deal.

You obviously haven't encountered the dreaded "field-blended pal crap" anime dvd. It's just impossible to recover from it
I must admit that restore24 avisynth plugin is able to make it viewable though.

[video]

Originally posted by Lefungus
You obviously haven't encountered the dreaded "field-blended pal crap" anime dvd. It's just impossible to recover from it
I must admit that restore24 avisynth plugin is able to make it viewable though.

okay. there's a lot of half-legal and even illegal stuff sold everywere. speaking anime a tons of sites are advertising and selling them. looking after the comany - you will find some chinese, noname ones. no offense I've shooted myself on foot in 2001 by ordering complete 'northern exposure' from someone on ebay. it was a crappy VHS transcribed shit advertised 'digitally enhanced' read: poorly filtered, color overcooked video, and DD5.1 made possibly from mono source.
What I've learned is:
a) look after your 'must have'-s on imdb
b) figure out where the official copyright owner released it on dvd
c) buy that from amazon

[Doom9]

well.. hard to ivtc != hard to encode.. I really must assume that the source is progressive. interlaced is a long overdue technology to end up in the graveyard of technology and I rather have no comparison that an interlaced comparison.

You can't equal hard to ivtc with hard to encode, especially with tools like dvd-rebuilder that preserve the "fucked up-ness" of the source.

If I were an anime lover, I'd go to great lenghts determining the properties of a source before making any investment into a sub-par release.

[dragongodz]

okay. there's a lot of half-legal and even illegal stuff sold everywere
that has absolutly nothing to do with it and trying to suggest it must be illegal or semi-illegal versions fore them to be crap shows you obviously dont know what you are talking about.
ask Mug Funky sometime about Astro Boy(80's version) that he worked on for the Australian release and what he had to go through with it.

If I were an anime lover, I'd go to great lenghts determining the properties of a source before making any investment into a sub-par release.
when there is only likly to be the 1 release as most series etc get then there really is not much choice.

[video]

http://forum.hwsw.hu/html/emoticons/offtopic.gif

Originally posted by dragongodz
that has absolutly nothing to do with it and trying to suggest it must be illegal or semi-illegal versions fore them to be crap shows you obviously dont know what you are talking about.
ask Mug Funky sometime about Astro Boy(80's version) that he worked on for the Australian release and what he had to go through with it.


when there is only likly to be the 1 release as most series etc get then there really is not much choice.

okay i may be wrong - or not. just wondering if a team produces animated features, speaking 20 min episodes may took a year to develop with an extreme amount of manual work. i cannot imagine that these guys will be happy seing their one year work on poorly authored DVDs.
i dunno how Mug Funky ended up with poorly interlaced, pulled down material as pristine source, because the (copyright) owner of the property is very much interested in having the best possible quality since they would like to earn some royalty - i think, and if the stuff is poor in quality, they are risking that people may not buy the discs.
since i've made (okay that's an eufemism - i worked with) animations, so i know, yes it happens, that we do less than 24 or 25 phases within a second, so some phase is shooted 2 or 3 times - but on film you will have exactly 24 or 25 fps. ok, i can imagine that there are puldown list writer junkies with the idea of compress these 2 or 3 identical frames with RFF - but for that you have to tamper with the film to video process - or cut off frames within your NLE suite. meaningless and superflous thing doing this. dvd has enough room - okay you may put 7 episodes up instead of 6 - what a big challange when pressing a dvd cost approx 25-30 cents (USD cents) today.

bottom line: Doom9 is damm good right on mpeg4 encoding has nothing to do with restoration of damaged/fucked up input...

please don't be frightened, angry or upset - i just talked among myself.. or... whatever...

[dragongodz]

i will let Mug Funky tell you about what crappy sources can be sent for conversion to/for PAL releases if he wishes. he actually does have experience doing this commercially.

bottom line: Doom9 is damm good right on mpeg4 encoding has nothing to do with restoration of damaged/fucked up input..
i agree the test is not about that. never said it was. i just disagreed with your suggestion that crap sources were illegal or semi-illegal versions when its not. i fully understand Doom9 not wanting the hassles of crappy sources. unfortunatly different releases of the same title in different countries can all be done...different.

[Lefungus]

Originally posted by video
okay. there's a lot of half-legal and even illegal stuff sold everywere

It doesn't need to be illegal to be bad. Ghost In The Shell, the zone 2 version released by Pathé is one of those crappy encodings. And it can be bought everywhere in France. I'm not really into anime series, but considering how "high-profile" is GITS, I'm sure I can find many other legal examples of badly encoded anime.

[Mug Funky]

@doom9:

Dead Leaves is progressive, PAL speedup, downscaled from HDTV master, AFAIK. Manga Entertainment seem to be giving all their new stuff this treatment (GitSAC is beautiful, and so is this). hooray for a licensor respecting PAL land!

it's great fun to watch, too. mix fortress with tank girl and maybe a bit of evil dead 2.

back off topic:

videoi dunno how Mug Funky ended up with poorly interlaced, pulled down material as pristine source, because the (copyright) owner of the property is very much interested in having the best possible quality since they would like to earn some royalty - i think, and if the stuff is poor in quality, they are risking that people may not buy the discs.

well, it wasn't just me doing that... but a team of people working almost round the clock. must... never speak... of it... again. it was worth it for the beer and pizza though.

in this case it was a difference between the american version (crap) and the japanese version (good). unfortunately, only the japanese version had been restored, and the US version looked like it was tranferred off 200 year old one-inch tape. noisy, old analog telecine (yes, even NTSC land can have field-blends when prism-style telecine is used) that had been run through an extremely aggressive temporal smooth, and blue was practically nonexistant. so what do you do? you edit the japanese video from one to fit the english audio from the other.

it's not a matter of copyright holders wanting the best product possible, it's a matter of them balancing the costs of remastering or at least sourcing good masters, and what they expect to make from the discs. most people watch the DVD after they buy it, and usually wont return it to the store just because there's field-blending in it.

authoring houses are unfortunately at the mercy of what they get sent. the remastering is supposed to happen before it gets to us, and sometimes it does.

i'd love to be able to run everything through Avisynth, but where things are at the moment, it's simply impossible, for a long list of reasons (Mac and Quicktime being the main ones).

still, don't cry about the quality - it's as good as we possibly can make it, and i actually mean that. everything gets watched, usually several times, and things get fixed if needed.

[Leak]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
Dead Leaves is progressive, PAL speedup, downscaled from HDTV master, AFAIK. Manga Entertainment seem to be giving all their new stuff this treatment (GitSAC is beautiful, and so is this). hooray for a licensor respecting PAL land!

Which version of Stand Alone Complex are you talking about here? At least the US and UK releases have lots and lots of ugly edge dishancement on them - you wouldn't happen to know of one without that?

Actually, I'd recommend Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex (the Ghost In The Shell TV series) to Doom9 (well, maybe not for the codec comparison), as it has almost none of the pseudo-philosophical babble of the movies *and* isn't as dead serious - it's a really good sci-fi cop show that's a lot closer to the manga than the movie (can't talk about Innocence) ever was. Yeah, and it looks gorgeous - except for the EE, of course...

np: Markus Guentner - Track 2 (In Moll)

[*.mp4 guy]

Well I don't watch many animated features, But one of my favorites is the Emporers new groove....(yeah yeah its a disney movie, but its hilarious) and the Animation is quite nice and it would probably represent the majority of animated content pretty well. The one shortcoming is I'm not sure if its dificult enough.

and theres a trailer here (http://www.disney.co.uk/DisneyVideos/groove/flash/index.html)

[edit] this (http://www.disney.co.uk/DisneyVideos/groove/flash/trailer.html) might bypas the flash

ps.First link is a flash site, the second goes strait to the quicktime trailer.

[dragongodz]

The one shortcoming is I'm not sure if its dificult enough.
if Mononoke at 2 hours 13 minutes long wasnt good enough i have doubt ENG at 78 minutes would be either. unless of course it was VERY noisy or had some really hard parts i am unaware of ???

[Doom9]

ENG is currently in the mail.. I ordered it a while back with a bunch of other, non anime, animated titles. But, GITS2 didn't really have less problematic scenes than Mononoke, and GITS2 is about 40 minutes shorter. In fact, a TV episode, clean progressive source with lots of action would be interesting, as it would not mean an additional time investment compared to the last animated source. But ideally, the results should be about as terrible as the Matrix3 ones.. that'll ensure that no changes would have to be made for a few comparison iterations.

[Shinigami-Sama]

I gave up at page 4...
but if you want you could an anime called "air" it;s currently unliceanced<sp?> and I could get "raws" in lossless. If you want I could hte raw also compressed in vble not suer why it;s in htat format though; clean source not to much ringing or noise. Thuohg I'm sure aobut your police on unliceanced anime here on the forums:rolleyes:

Also you could try "Blood the last Vampire" I only have the vhs verstion atm but I'm suprised no-one started it by the fourth page everyone was conectrating<sp?> on Mononoke-Hime and Gits. I hear Naruto will be come over N.America soon you could try that. IIRCH all aer progressive
lookig forwards to the test :)

[Mug Funky]

blood is simply too short i would think... it's barely 45 mins. and again, it's action interspersed with still, clean scenes.

about GitS SAC, i haven't noticed any edge-enhancement going on. if anything, the edges are quite soft.

i'll post a screenshot in a few mins... all i've got handy is the first episode from a sample disc (to be honest i've never done the attachment thing in this forum, so it'll probably be a small mess).

though i think doom9's requirement that it be representative of current anime, plus progressive will mean that literally nothing will tax the codec enough. the japanese don't have such a schizophrenic, MTV influenced editing style that the yanks (and indeed much of the western world) have, and as such there's lots of still scenes.

[edit]
hope this link works...
http://img59.exs.cx/img59/1489/still4pz.th.png

this is off a preview disc, meaning the bitrate is lower than the actual DVD, but it's from the same source as the r4 DVDs. frame saved out of DGindex, unprocessed. there's very very slight haloing on edges if you look hard enough, but i think that's from the resizer used rather than any edge enhancement.

[lamer_de]

http://img59.exs.cx/img59/1489/still4pz.png is the link to the fullsize image. The thumbnail is not clickable in mugfunkys post.

but if you want you could an anime called "air" it;s currently unliceanced<sp?> and I could get "raws" in lossless.1. It's "unlicensed"
2. doom9 wants to backup dvds, not stuff that is not available on DVD yet (and only in japanese at that)
3. Unless you work for TBS, there's no way you have access to lossless sources. If you have access to raws in lossless format (like VBLE), then those have to be conversions from avis.

CU,
lamer_de

[Shinigami-Sama]

Originally posted by lamer_de
http://img59.exs.cx/img59/1489/still4pz.png is the link to the fullsize image. The thumbnail is not clickable in mugfunkys post.

1. It's "unlicensed"
2. doom9 wants to backup dvds, not stuff that is not available on DVD yet (and only in japanese at that)
3. Unless you work for TBS, there's no way you have access to lossless sources. If you have access to raws in lossless format (like VBLE), then those have to be conversions from avis.

CU,
lamer_de
the Air movie comes out on dvd soon too. but I'm just tring ot bring more anime into here thats all

[Leak]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
hope this link works...
http://img59.exs.cx/img59/1489/still4pz.png

this is off a preview disc, meaning the bitrate is lower than the actual DVD, but it's from the same source as the r4 DVDs. frame saved out of DGindex, unprocessed. there's very very slight haloing on edges if you look hard enough, but i think that's from the resizer used rather than any edge enhancement.

:eek: :(

Non horribly edge-enhanced GITS:SAC makes baby jesus cry...

Look at this mess off the RC1 DVD:

http://140.78.145.103:8888/~kp/Stuff/GITS_SAC_01_RC1_31460.png

So I should've been waited and bought the R4s all along? :(

np: Sten - Eccentric (Leaving The Frantic)

[dragongodz]

Leak - thats nasty. goes to show though how the same anime/show/movie in different countries doesnt have to be the same. ;)

[Mug Funky]

DAMN! that's awful...

i can't believe the beautiful HDTV masters were raped like that for such a large market (the US anime market is gigantic... the australian one is comparatively small). you guys should send Manga entertainment hate mail.

i bet they'll release it HD as soon as there's a market for it, and boast huge quality increase (from what i see on the SD master, there's not going to be much difference but a larger frame size in R4 land).

not all of GitS SAC is out in R4 land yet. we're up to v4, and v5 will probably be coming in june. to be honest, i don't even know how many episodes there are in this series.

[Shinigami-Sama]

I;d pay for hd
and sac1 is like 24 or 26
then 2nd gig I'm not sure is out yet
just don't ask how I know k?
good
>.>

[video]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
DAMN! that's awful...

i can't believe the beautiful HDTV masters were raped like that for such a large market (the US anime market is gigantic... the australian one is comparatively small). you guys should send Manga entertainment hate mail.

i bet they'll release it HD as soon as there's a market for it, and boast huge quality increase (from what i see on the SD master, there's not going to be much difference but a larger frame size in R4 land).

not all of GitS SAC is out in R4 land yet. we're up to v4, and v5 will probably be coming in june. to be honest, i don't even know how many episodes there are in this series.

I dunno which snap is better. The first one has better edges and colours, but the second one is better on fractal-kind parts, i mean leaves and clouds. :)

[Mug Funky]

well, i suppose of you were to sharpen the PAL one you'd get the same result on the subtle details (that's what sharpening is for...).

of course, if you do it to the pic i posted you may not see as much detail, as it was encoded for a sampler disc rather than the actual DVD (the sampler is all i had handy... but gimme a day or so and i might be able to show you some pure unprocessed digibeta from a later episode :))

this is sort of OT though...

[edit] here's a frame out of (i think) episode 13 (possibly 14)
i tried my best to keep it at it's original bit-depth, but in the end After Effects didn't really tell me much about what it's doing, so it's been converted from 4:2:2 10-bit to RGB 16-bit and saved as a 16-bit png.

http://img146.exs.cx/img146/1402/gitssac10bit8rq.th.png (http://img146.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img146&image=gitssac10bit8rq.png)

[darkavatar1470]

Originally posted by Doom9
But ideally, the results should be about as terrible as the Matrix3 ones.. that'll ensure that no changes would have to be made for a few comparison iterations.
I think thats kind of hard, since the DVD source is very clean these years.
maybe you can try a higher resolution, higher audio bitrate, or duo audio tracks.

[Sagittaire]

I repeat ... lol

If you want:
- Hardest anime source
- Highest anime quality

Wait SteamBoy ... 06.04.2005 for DVD

IMO it's the highest/hardest anime source in the world ... very difficult to make good encoding with XviD 2 CDR ... this 120 min movie is a Codec Killer ...

With this source you can see the real powerfull of high performance codec for anime (MPEG4 AVC, VP7 or Real). IMO choose GITS2 or Animatrix for 1CDR test is unless: all codec are very good (DivX3 too ... lol) for 1CDR encoding with these anime ...

[Doom9]

@Sagittaire: you know that with such a recommendation, should I buy it and not be satisfied, I'll bill you:devil:

[Sagittaire]

lol ... :D

cheak your PM tomorrow ... I will upload big sample for you ...

[IgorC]

It´s taking 3 months to choose cartoon source. Just imagine how much it will take to buy a car :rolleyes: .... ages
P.S. I think porno anime will be great for this case. Very high motion. :p

[Koti]

With a car you only have to keep your family happy with your choice not a whole forum :D

Maybe we can help Doom9 pick his next car too tho ;)

[Shinigami-Sama]

Originally posted by IgorC
It´s taking 3 months to choose cartoon source. Just imagine how much it will take to buy a car :rolleyes: .... ages
P.S. I think porno anime will be great for this case. Very high motion. :p
hara for henati
<.<;
but full lenth henati movies are rare...
even for h-board mods to find
<.<'
and I don't it;s to apporoate for a codec compasison seeing as how there some younger kids here by the looks of it ;)

[dragongodz]

P.S. I think porno anime will be great for this case. Very high motion.
IgorC - you would no doubt like LordRPI's suggestion back on page 4 then.

and I don't it;s to apporoate for a codec compasison seeing as how there some younger kids here by the looks of it
i agree on both fronts.

[LordRPI]

C'mon guys. It was just a joke!

[Shinigami-Sama]

Why? It's actually a good idea, Bible Black contains plenty of action
uhh yeah.... easy to encode action thouhg mate
easy on hte eyes too but not a full lenth movie either :P


and you think thats the kind of "action" Doom9 wants to watch ? i would have thought something like Shame of the Jungle since atleast thats funny. Bible Black is sick.

doom9 might get a better idea of the anime world though, but bible black isn't that bad I;ve had far worse send to me by "friends" ><

haha, just imagine as Doom9 explains the artifacts on a frame from the middle of an action scene
hehehe
<.<;

anyways...
the "My-HiME" dvds are released in Japan NTSC R2 and that should be progessive and can be ivtc;d to 24fps but then again those are episodes so you;d have to put multiable ones per disk though I don't that thats what you want to do
I hav;t gotten them or plan to seeing as how I don't eraly care for it but I'll keep my eye out for feature lenth anime titles for a bit longer :)

[dragongodz]

C'mon guys. It was just a joke!
LordRPI - i know mate. since IgorC has a smiley at the end of his suggestion i assume he wasnt entirely serious either. ;)

doom9 might get a better idea of the anime world though
t*ts and tentacles view ? but anime is so much more than that. i think Doom9 has a low enough opinion of anime as is without these. :)

[Shinigami-Sama]

Originally posted by dragongodz

t*ts and tentacles view ? but anime is so much more than that. i think Doom9 has a low enough opinion of anime as is without these. :)
those aer how I converted 5 friends to watch anime so you never know mate..
'sides I;ve heard stories about doom9
<.<
j/k ;)

[video]

Originally posted by IgorC
It´s taking 3 months to choose cartoon source. Just imagine how much it will take to buy a car :rolleyes: .... ages
P.S. I think porno anime will be great for this case. Very high motion. :p
http://forum.hwsw.hu/html/emoticons/offtopic.gif This art actually has its own name, called 'hentai' so, basically this thing is nothing to do with anime(s) :)
however there's a damn good reason not using hentai(s). in that case Domm9 should apply an adultcheck (sic!) for his codec shootup - and he may would like avoid that ;)

[darkavatar1470]

Originally posted by Shinigami-Sama
the "My-HiME" dvds are released in Japan NTSC R2 and that should be progessive and can be ivtc
well, It's full of CG effects so it can be a hybrid nightmare....
but then again, you never known until you put your hands on them.

Worst one I have is "She, The Ultimate Weapon" DVDs, the telecide pattern changes whenever there's a scene change, and 30fps blend transitions over two telecided stream with different pattens....

why do they edit the clip after they telecided the cuts in the first place? Doing it the over way around would make life much easier.....

[Doom9]

forget about adult stuff.. it's not gonna happen.

BTW, what about the TV series of the guy who directed "the 2nd renaissance" from animatrix.. the few snippest I saw in the extras look like it's an action packed series.

[rawr]

You mean Gankutsuou? I really like the style, but 's pretty divisive issue. Not sure how much it'd stress the codecs, given that though the textures are complex, they're basically static. Akira seems the best bet so far if you didn't get on with the ghibli though, not much anime is high budget enough to have detail level and framecount that'll stretch codecs as much as film. This doesn't mean you should be using Disney or Pixar instead... ugh.
At any rate, as performace at lower bitrates does seem relevant, and traditional animation compresses well, I don't see the harm of setting stricter filesize requirements for this test than for film.

rawr.

[darkavatar1470]

I don't think Gankutsuou even started when Animatrix came out, it should be something else. The director of Cowboy Bebop ( who did the nearly B&W detective-trinty chase in Animatrix ) started a new TV series called "Souse no AQUARION" last week,(wrong, see below) and there's loads of action, yet the background is full of detail, not to mention fluent 3D-CG mecha battles. I think this is going to be one of the best TV anime of 2005.... actually, I think the CowBoy Bebop Movie might be a good choice, too, but I don't have it, so I'm not that sure.


there's a version of Evangelion Movie(s) that puts "Evangelion:Death"(60min recap edited from the TV series) & "the END of Evangelion"(90min "real" ending of the story) total run time of 2:37 on one DVD, and it looks ugly on an 1-CD encode i did yesterday. not really action-packed, but rapid scene changes and flashes b&w words between them (dont know how to describe that) every few seconds is a hard task for the codec, i think. first pass is 2Gigs on 704x396 24fps h263 quant btw

ppl are known to be disgusted by eva-movies though, but so does Akira, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem i hope....


Edit: My brain betrayed me and mixed up names... The director of "AQUARION" and most of it's staff are from the Macross series, not cowboy bebop.... that explains the great 3D & Backround, because the recent OVA Macross Zero is full of it.

[Mug Funky]

no go on Eva. doom9 will be wanting to kill that panty-waste Shinji by the time the 1st pass is halfway through. the only good bit is the "sticky hand" scene (hehehe).

Worst one I have is "She, The Ultimate Weapon" DVDs, the telecide pattern changes whenever there's a scene change, and 30fps blend transitions over two telecided stream with different pattens....

that series was the second saddest thing i've ever seen animated. good show, though. just a real tearjerker. i don't like the american name though... "saikano" is way catchier... hehe. you oughta see the r4 version. for some reason it's 4:3 letterbox, though the original source (that, alas, never made it here) was quite probably full-height anamorphic, 24fps. grrr japan. it's field-blended, too :)

[Shinigami-Sama]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
no go on Eva. doom9 will be wanting to kill that panty-waste Shinji by the time the 1st pass is halfway through. the only good bit is the "sticky hand" scene (hehehe).



that series was the second saddest thing i've ever seen animated. good show, though. just a real tearjerker. i don't like the american name though... "saikano" is way catchier... hehe. you oughta see the r4 version. for some reason it's 4:3 letterbox, though the original source (that, alas, never made it here) was quite probably full-height anamorphic, 24fps. grrr japan. it's field-blended, too :)
thne by the Japan R1 disks :P
and if you realy want quality jsut acquire a "backup" avaible through many groups and "borrow" their subs :P
maybe the RahXephon OAV would be a good choice but IIRC it;s almost 3 hours long

[Zarxrax]

Doom9, just something I happened to think about, this isn't any sort of attack or anything, just an open suggestion. Why add another dvd source to the comparison, animated or not? All the codecs have matured to the point where the images in your guides are practically useless, because the quality in them is so high you have to really strain to see any difference at all most of the time. With something like anime, the quality of the encode lies mostly in the filtering anyways, not the codec used.
So instead of adding another source that will probably show no new and interesting data to the readers, how about choose a source OTHER than a movie, which can truely show the faults of the current codecs. Music videos for instance. Perhaps bootleg concert videos. Lots of smoke and stuff, constantly moving unsteady camera. The toughest things out there to encode are probably Anime Music Videos, which are amatuer music videos created by hobbyists. These things really take the codecs to town. Imagine a 4 minute video with 50-100 crossfades. A 5 minute video with constant fast motion. A 3 minute video full of strobing. I came across one divx encoded video thats only 3:10 long, that clocks in at 374mb. Sadly I've done worse myself, creating a 5-second segment that was 45mb :D There are even some videos, such as the DDR Project, and the Retro Video Game Project, which clock in at over an hour in length!

[Mug Funky]

interesting point there, Osaka.

if we're adding more diverse sources to the list, why not something like homeshot DV - this stuff generally compresses alright, but a high noise floor yields some surprises (QuEnc went crazy in 1-pass mode when the picture went dark and all there was was low freq moving blur, plus heaps of grain, plus a near-back background. for some reason bitrate spiked at over 12mbps constantly during this dark scene).

it'd definitely be good to see some testing of sources that aren't perfectly smooth to begin with - after all, noise is signal too as far as a codec is concerned, and how it handles it is still important.

perhaps codecs could be tested on both their handling of typical sources (the ones we're enjoying now) and also "problem samples", like what we get with testing audio codecs. that means we can test both the peak and the average of codecs, so to speak.

these are just ideas btw...

[Doom9]

DV? Interlaced? Hell no. It's a DVD backup comparison people. I couldn't care less for DV (interlaced is evil) or music videos (don't like them).

[darkavatar1470]

Edited my previous post....make a big mistake....

that series was the second saddest thing i've ever seen animated. good show, though. just a real tearjerker. i don't like the american name though... "saikano" is way catchier... It's originally there as a sub-title,
and I thought more people could understand that
hehe. you oughta see the r4 version. for some reason it's 4:3 letterbox, though the original source (that, alas, never made it here) was quite probably full-height anamorphic, 24fps. grrr japan. it's field-blended, too hmm, what a coincidence...
the Taiwan R3 NTSC version is also 4:3 LetterBoxed,
but the fields are ok, I managed to YATTA them perfectly
I guess the source is made that way,
so R2 DVDs are probably the same...and if you realy want quality jsut acquire a "backup" avaible through many groups and "borrow" their subs :P
maybe the RahXephon OAV would be a good choice but IIRC it;s almost 3 hours long
I don't quite belive in the quality of those fan-sub groups, so I'd rather do it myself....and i remember there's a rule not to talk about that in this forum.

The Rahxephon Movie is approximately 1:56 , and i did a good-looking 1-CD encode some time ago, so it might not meet Doom9's demand of an ugly-looking encode. It has almost nothing to do with the TV series, they edited a totally different story line with less than 30 mins of new scenes, and turned a sort of eva-like-mystic-philosophy-thingie to a simple SF Love story. (compared to the original)
Personaly, I like both of them very much.

(uhrg, got into anime lecture mode again...sorry for the OT...)

[Doom9]

I don't recall the name of the series I mentioned a bit back.. I think it has a 7 or 0 in the name and from the looks at the few scenes they showed in the Animatrix extras.. it seems to be underwater and action packed.

I always figured there's a lot of action packed Anime (be it series or movies).. am I so completely off track? Looking at dramas and other "slow" stuff is a bad starting point for a codec comaprison.. that's the easy stuff.

[Shinigami-Sama]

@darkavatar
how is it illegal of you already have a legit copy?
and I like fan-subs better than corperate ones anyways more true translation not colliqulaized

back on topic
I;ve been thinknig of buying the ninja scroll dvd the movies is 94mintues or so it says on my vhs
but then again ninja scroll may be a bit explict for here
you can get it off hte manga entertainment webiste I can't ermbmer het url right now though I'll edit it back in when I remember

[zettai]

Originally posted by Doom9
I always figured there's a lot of action packed Anime (be it series or movies).. am I so completely off track? Looking at dramas and other "slow" stuff is a bad starting point for a codec comaprison.. that's the easy stuff.

Sure, there's a lot of action packed stuff... but none of the action packed movies or series are encoded progressive. This is the main limitation in what you want, not the variety that anime has to offer.

I haven't checked out the Dead Leaves dvd but for progressiveness but what I know about the anime suggests it is very action-packed and potentially hard to encode. Anyone here have that dvd and care to comment?

[darkavatar1470]

I don't recall the name of the series I mentioned a bit back.. I think it has a 7 or 0 in the name and from the looks at the few scenes they showed in the Animatrix extras.. it seems to be underwater and action packed.uh , maybe it's Blue Submarine 6. Lot's of underwater 3D action. It's a 4 part OVA, 30 min each, putting them all on one CD might be interesting.
I guess i'll get Animatrix and check it outI always figured there's a lot of action packed Anime (be it series or movies).. am I so completely off track? Looking at dramas and other "slow" stuff is a bad starting point for a codec comaprison.. that's the easy stuff.even action packed Anime can be compressed pretty well, and there's not much 2hr+ movies to make it hard enough.

If theres no limit on the number of source DVD's, then putting a 4~5 part OVA on one CD should be challenging, OVAs tend to have fast-paced story, more action, detailed background and characters are more complex.(more lines on hair, clothes ect.)
Encoding each episode sepreatly limits the rate control¢w it has less bits to distribute, so it should be a harder job.

I'd recommend Macross Zero, five 30 min episodes, flying 3D transforming mecha, lots of missiles, smoke and explosions all over the place, and everything have just too much detail...nice plot and music, too.

how is it illegal of you already have a legit copy?
and I like fan-subs better than corperate ones anyways more true translation not colliqulaized I live in Taiwan, and bought the legal R3 DVD about a year ago...and i buy R2 DVDs if there's no official version or if it's a bad master.
I know it's just a matter of taste, but the quality of chinese fan-sub traslation are going down the hill these days... on the other hand, major companies are doing a suberb job on video & trans quality, so I'm looking forward to it.

Sure, there's a lot of action packed stuff... but none of the action packed movies or series are encoded progressive. This is the main limitation in what you want, not the variety that anime has to offer.thats the main problem... you'll have to ask Mug Funky or anyone else living in PAL land on what's progressive....

[Doom9]

maybe it's Blue Submarine 6Yes, that name does ring a bell. Is it available on DVD?

And when looking at a series, I'd pick just one episode and encode it to a smaller size like I did with futurama (there I set the target size to 1/4 CD for one 22 minute episode). It also saves me some encoding time, which is a good thing.

[dragongodz]

i know Blue Sub 6 is avalable here in Aus on dvd(2 dvds to be exact from memory). havent bought it though so cant say what its like(progressive etc). :)

[Mug Funky]

@ dragongodz: who puts Blue Sub 6 out? i've not heard of it (it's not Siren entertainment, is it?).

it's by Gonzo and licensed by Geneon (IIRC), so it's probably a hybrid in NTSC land and a field-blend in PAL land. as far as i know, only Manga Entertainment bother with progressive PAL for series (and their titles can be counted on the fingers of 1 hand).

[edit]

originally posted by darkavatar1470 I'd recommend Macross Zero, five 30 min episodes, flying 3D transforming mecha, lots of missiles, smoke and explosions all over the place, and everything have just too much detail...nice plot and music, too.

wouldn't that be an atypical source? Macross is pretty old, and what i've seen of it is grainy as hell. unless Zero is a remake?

thats the main problem... you'll have to ask Mug Funky or anyone else living in PAL land on what's progressive....

sadly, both Japan and the USA don't appear to know what PAL is. as i said above, only Manga Entertainment seem to care about PAL land - not surprising for a UK based company - and everyone else just expects you to standards-convert to the format of choice (or, like ADV used to, do the conversion themselves and send field-blended PAL tapes... however, our standards converter is slightly better than ADV's, so although it's more work at this end, it's better for the DVD if they just send NTSC tapes).

it's too bad DVD came in before 100% of TVs can be 100% guaranteed to handle all formats. then standards conversion would be completely unnecessary. but alas, we don't live in those times yet, and probably wont for many many years to come.

[zettai]

Macross Zero is the new shiny OVA... but as it uses tons of CG and is designed for a video rather than a theatrical release it's probably fully interlaced.

[dragongodz]

who puts Blue Sub 6 out? i've not heard of it (it's not Siren entertainment, is it?).
http://www.ezydvd.com.au/mech/search.zml?f=title&q=blue+submarine&x=0&y=0

distributed by Shock(???)

Macross is pretty old, and what i've seen of it is grainy as hell. unless Zero is a remake?
prequel actually. made in 2002.
http://www.animenfo.com/animetitle,1129,ydnqvj,macross_zero.html
dont know if its been released outside of Japan though.

EDIT:
wow look at the time between each volumes release. :eek:
http://www.robotechcompanion.com/macnews.html

[Mug Funky]

distributed by Shock(???)

hey, i didn't realise they were into anime (get off my turf, dammit!). it'll be Kaliedoscope - a division of Shock records. they put out "Black Books" and a few other ABC titles.

(PS - sorry, doom9... i'll be more on topic from now on :))

[lamer_de]

Macross Zero is unlicensed and will stay it for a while, cause there's a quarrel between companies/persons involved afaik. I doubt doom9 wants to shell out 50 bucks for 1 episode (=250 USD for 5 episodes) with Japanese only language and no subs.

The Kenshin OVA (http://www.rightstuf.com/1-800-338-6827/catalogmgr/iDuvOntSMh5axwJ0Au/browse/item/59401/4/0/0) is supposed to be pretty good, should have some sword action and is at least available as R1 (don't know about a EU release, but it's rather old as well, so there's a chance). You can prolly get it cheaper as well, there are cheaper online retailers than rightstuf.

CU,
lamer_de

[iwod]

The Kenshin OVA is great. I have the orginal Janpaness one. So may be it is no use?

I don't mind sponsor / donate to Doom9 for money spending on Anime DVD. Just as long as he get a Anime and not a cartoon.

[LordRPI]

Ebichu - gotta love that show.

[Shinigami-Sama]

Originally posted by LordRPI
Ebichu - gotta love that show.
ecchi!
*smacks rpi*
no weird crap like that =_=
no weird hamster sex thing crap
hmm
ghost sweeper mikami mioght be progressive it's brought out my manga after all
and it about 60min
so..

[LordRPI]

Originally posted by Shinigami-Sama
ecchi!
*smacks rpi*
no weird crap like that =_=
no weird hamster sex thing crap


What about lamer_de?

[Doom9]

I have the orginal Janpaness one. So may be it is no use?It just has to be progressive and have at least English subs so I understand something (I don't mind not understanding the spoken language... I have a handful of original Japanese movies, as well as HK flicks and some Korean and Spanish movies where I have to rely on subs).

Oh, and they need to really stress codecs at reasonable settings (300kbit/s video bitrate is not reasonable). I'm willing to go up to 192kbit/s MP3 to make things harder, and put quite a few eps on a CD (more than 2h worth of video if it's a widescreen movie.. if it's fullscreen, might be a little harsh to put matrix-length 4:3 material on one CD with 192kbit audio). So this requirement basically means you have the DVD, have encoded it and can vouch that at the used settings (I need to know them obviously), it is really hard to encode (if you want a reference of something that is really hard to encode, use Matrix3 with the settings from my latest codec comparison).

[SeeMoreDigital]

Over here in the UK on Saturday 11:00 on ITV1, we are able to watch the new CGI version of Captain Scarlet (http://www.fanderson.org.uk/epguides/ncseg1.html).

It looks very good indeed :)


Cheers

[iwod]

Um... looking at those requirement i would have to seriously test some of my sample first. But i only have time after May ( June - July ) since i have got exam coming up....

[Doom9]

so Jin-Roh is quite okay.. Dead Leaves is, well, insane. I could imagine using this for torture (run stuff like that on all walls of a small cell and prevent the prisoner from sleeping). It fits the hard to encode criteria though. So far I've seen one out of the 4 standalone complex eps but it wasn't quite hard enough.

Is there anything with Dead Leaves complexity in TV ep length and that has a story that at least partially makes sense and doesn't drive you mad?

[Mug Funky]

Is there anything with Dead Leaves complexity in TV ep length and that has a story that at least partially makes sense and doesn't drive you mad?

i told you to have a few beers first :)

unfortunately, as far as complexity i can't think of anything that's not a hybrid, or anything that doesn't drive you mad (i'm thinking FLCL or Abenobashi for complexity and madness).

i guess it's part of the nature of anime that it'll be hybrid, at least for the next few years - it's made NTSC, uses motion-graphics (30p), and is made for TV (well, the episodic stuff is).

and the trend in anime movies is that they mimic regular movies quite closely - big sweeping scenes with simple pans - easy to encode - interspersed with quick action bits, which a good codec will have enough bits to spare to handle well.

[edit]

here's a thought - since you're after a difficult source, but modern codecs are handling anime so well that there are none, why not just try to fit more eps on a disc? like a full 6-episode DVD to 1 CD or something. that'll be more taxing i think.

[Doom9]

well.. my standalone complex rip has the following properties: 5 eps à 25 minutes per CD, along with 192kbit/s VBR audio in the AVI container for maximum overhead. Yet, the first ep I watched still looked way too good, and I don't really want to test codecs at 400 kbit/s.

I'm wondering about one thing though.. animated content is either created by hand or on the PC. Both are inheritently progressive.. then why is there so much hybrid stuff? Why not make the whole thing 30p for digital TV broadcast, and cripple it for crappy TVs?

[Leak]

Originally posted by Doom9
I'm wondering about one thing though.. animated content is either created by hand or on the PC. Both are inheritently progressive.. then why is there so much hybrid stuff? Why not make the whole thing 30p for digital TV broadcast, and cripple it for crappy TVs?

Well, just animating 24 frames per second (or 12, or 8, or...) is easier (and thus cheaper) than doing full 30 frames per second. Also, it's easily converted to PAL (if someone doesn't just dump it into a blending standards converter... :().

That's the two reasons I can think of off the top of my head...

np: Autechre - Part 6 (XLTronic Radio 25.01.05)

[Doom9]

well.. 24fps animation stuff is also progressive ;)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Doom9
Why not make the whole thing 30p for digital TV broadcast, and cripple it for crappy TVs? I wonder, can 30p content actually be correctly decoded by receiving and display equipment?

I only ask because over here in the UK there has been some technical debate as to how (the proposed) 720p media should be broadcast ie: at 50fps or 25fps!

Over here in Euroland we have already have DVD players and display equipment capable of correctly reproducing 25p video, so we know it can work.


Cheers

[Shinigami-Sama]

720p scares me it has more verical res than my hd tv... which realy only has 540
if you raly want you try hte newly released naruto movie thats about an hour and a half long not sure if it's progressive or not though but being naruto I get it can be compressed easily enough, could try Kai DOh Maru thouhg it;s only aobut 45 min long and I think I ivtc'd it to 24p not sure though that was a long time ago and I don't wanna have to look thouhg my pile of backups..

[darkavatar1470]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
unfortunately, as far as complexity i can't think of anything that's not a hybrid, or anything that doesn't drive you mad (i'm thinking FLCL or Abenobashi for complexity and madness).
...and there's something new to add to that list... Futakoi Alternative - it's even crazier than FLCL and there isn't any meaning to the plot either... good directing & scene cuts makes me think its acually GAINAX in disgiuse..... Originally posted by Doom9
I'm wondering about one thing though.. animated content is either created by hand or on the PC. Both are inheritently progressive.. then why is there so much hybrid stuff?for some unknown reason, they like to use 30fps for the CG effects, but the rest is still telcided from 24...and post-production editing is usually done after the telcide....
i do have one "Elfen Lied" R2 DVD thats totally progressive... i think it uses repeat frame instead of telcide though...
Originally posted by Doom9
Why not make the whole thing 30p for digital TV broadcast, and cripple it for crappy TVs?
i guess since the directors & storyboard plotting were all trained to do everything in pseudo-24fps (mainly 8fps), and telecide it for TV broadcast, it should take a while for the industry to produce true 30p stuff.

[lamer_de]

Again, as doom9 said before, he won't get stuff without subtitles, so proposing stuff like Naruto movie, futakoi alternative or even EL (there will be R1 DVDs for that one, at least) is pointless because you can't buy it with subs yet. It's nice and cool that you all watch fansubs, but that's not really helping here ;) KaiDoMaru is only 47 mins long, so probably won't be much of a challenge either (although I only watched excerpts of that yet).

CU,
lamer_de

[Mug Funky]

leak:
Also, it's easily converted to PAL (if someone doesn't just dump it into a blending standards converter... ).

hey! i do that...

unfortunately that's the state of the industry until HDTV gets the kinks ironed out and gets wide adoption by consumers. the only anime i'm aware of that is progressive PAL is the new stuff from Manga Entertainment, and that's because they're getting some of their stuff in HDTV and scaling down - the PAL speedup and downscale is a trivial matter with HDTV equipment, but still frighteningly difficult and expensive in the SDTV world. in most other ways, Manga Entertainment aren't all that good - their subs are dodgy, and they love to cram way, way more audio tracks than anyone will ever need, killing the movie (look at the US release of the remastered Ghost In The Shell - it's got 2 DTS, 2 5.1 AC3, and 4 2.0 AC3, plus loads of subtitles. needless to say the video looks kinda bad).

also some of the PAL masters that get sent to the authoring house will be pre-blended, often using a less advanced standards converter (the one ADV used before they started sending NTSC to us wasn't all that good).

as for why there's so much hybrid out there... because programs like FCP and After Effects will output NTSC rather than telecine. so all effects and edits will take place on NTSC frames, rather than pulled-down 24p.

there isn't enough of a PAL market for anyone in Japan to bother outputting 25p as well (which would be quite simple to do). just like if i were working on a movie, i would take pleasure in shooting overcranked at 25fps, then slowing down for the NTSC world just to get them back for doing the same to us...

[darkavatar1470]

I'd rather shoot in 24, and repeat a frame every sec for a Pal transfer... it wont be visible in anime because not much is acually 24fps...
because programs like FCP and After Effects will output NTSC rather than telecine
It should be able to output in 24fps, right?

and i'm wondering if the HDTV spec is gong to have an unified frame rate or not... having everything in the same fps makes life easier for all of us.....

[Mug Funky]

I'd rather shoot in 24, and repeat a frame every sec for a Pal transfer... it wont be visible in anime because not much is acually 24fps...

even on anime it's surprisingly noticable. as soon as there's a pan, you're stuffed. some form of scenechange detection (or static-scene detection) would be good. this doesn't work for live-action though, because any jerk will be seen. a speedup is fine, so long as you don't have perfect pitch (timestretch screws up temporal response, even more than ac3 does).

unified frame rate would be good. i'm not yet sure it'll happen, but at the very least HDTV means everything can play every other thing, which is enough. IMHO the main problem with field-blending from a consumer point of view is that it hurts compression a fair bit, so blocks are more likely. for a field-blend, it's best not to go below minimum 4mbps, even on sugoi-tastic hardware encoders designed to take anything you can plug into them.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by darkavatar1470
...and i'm wondering if the HDTV spec is gong to have an unified frame rate or not... having everything in the same fps makes life easier for all of us..... Yes, a unified frame rate, say 24fps (film speed), would be very useful indeed.

But because we living in an mixed analogue and digital equipt based world, it wont be happening any time soon!


Cheers

[Shinigami-Sama]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
sugoi-tastic
lmao sugoi-tasic:D

anyways what about vampire hunter d: blood lust?
it;s in english and no it isn't a dub it had japanese subs when it was in Japan or atleasts thats what animeantion said...
anyways it should be a good one to test on, theres a bunch of fast motion parts some paning and such, thouhg I havn't been able to find a copy in any of my local staores yet so I can't tell if it;s progressive or not

[rushin_911]

Originally posted by Shinigami-Sama
lmao sugoi-tasic:D

anyways what about vampire hunter d: blood lust?
it;s in english and no it isn't a dub it had japanese subs when it was in Japan or atleasts thats what animeantion said...
anyways it should be a good one to test on, theres a bunch of fast motion parts some paning and such, thouhg I havn't been able to find a copy in any of my local staores yet so I can't tell if it;s progressive or not

I had encoded Vampire Hunter D Blood lust some months ago and it wasn't hard to compress (although I did apply some smoothing filters which might explain atleast a part of this ease) and as I recall I think it was progressive... :)

[Shinigami-Sama]

REaly? hmm I ifugred it would atleast make a codec get winded hmm or I'm jsut not keeping up anymore ~-~

[darkavatar1470]

Originally posted by Shinigami-Sama
anyways what about vampire hunter d: blood lust?
it;s in english and no it isn't a dub it had japanese subs when it was in Japan or atleasts thats what animeantion said...
There is a japanese dubbed version, and the Taiwan R3 has both dubs... maybe a 1-CD dual audio track rip would produce something ugly enough... but they made some modification to the dialogs so an non eng/jap person would need two different subs for each track...

[iwod]

Ok, i don't normally purpose stuff like this since i don't classify it as Anime.........

But FF7 - Advent Children looks like have what we want..... :devil:
( Sorry for the Advert.... but it looks awesome. As well as MANY fast moving action )

Otherwise i had another upcoming Anime that looks to fit in.. but i don't know its english name........ :scared:

[Shinigami-Sama]

Ok, i don't normally purpose stuff like this since i don't classify it as Anime.........

But FF7 - Advent Children looks like have what we want..... :devil:
( Sorry for the Advert.... but it looks awesome. As well as MANY fast moving action )

Otherwise i had another upcoming Anime that looks to fit in.. but i don't know its english name........ :scared:
it;s it all CGI?
if it is then it doesn't count, to many fine gradients and stuff like that

[iwod]

it;s it all CGI?
if it is then it doesn't count, to many fine gradients and stuff like that
yes i know... that is why i sad it is an advert....

( intensinally bumping the thread ) :cool:

[Doom9]

since we've already entered IVTC territory, would there be any TV series that can be properly IVTCd (without having half the frames blended) that would also qualify? Encoding a 20 minute source is obviously preferable to a 50 minute source form a resources standpoint (even when I get the Athlon64 X2 )

[iwod]

since we've already entered IVTC territory, would there be any TV series that can be properly IVTCd (without having half the frames blended) that would also qualify? Encoding a 20 minute source is obviously preferable to a 50 minute source form a resources standpoint (even when I get the Athlon64 X2 )

Totally off topic.... You mean you WILL get a Athlon 64 X2?? :angry:

I want one too! :devil:

For TV it is harder coz , no english subtitle , harder to find a "special ep" inside the series. And normally they are not so good quality.......

Just when i was saying that.... something pops up to my mind that may have what you want. I go and check now. Back in a few hours.

[Leak]

For TV it is harder coz , no english subtitle , harder to find a "special ep" inside the series. And normally they are not so good quality.......

Just when i was saying that.... something pops up to my mind that may have what you want. I go and check now. Back in a few hours.

I don't think he meant fansubs or TV captures - there's enough anime TV series out on DVD that he wouldn't have to resort to such a source.

[GIR]

since we've already entered IVTC territory, would there be any TV series that can be properly IVTCd (without having half the frames blended) that would also qualify? Encoding a 20 minute source is obviously preferable to a 50 minute source form a resources standpoint (even when I get the Athlon64 X2 )
My avatar :D Invader ZIM. I'm sure the DVD's are of reasonable quality although they are NTSC :( but the good thing is most eps are ~12min long AND there are some that are 24min long too, it's NOT anime either.

[LoKi128]

Hate to add to the thread without reading it, but it IS kinda long. Anyway, has anyone suggested Clone Wars? Just bought the DVD and I think it's pretty high quality with good still scenes and also good action scenes. If you've seen it, you know its not "CG" but it seems to be digitally animated, so its not as "gritty" as some anime out there. Dunno.

[iwod]

ARHHH!!.. Always no time when you really need it.!
I am on my finaly year project as well as packing. So i don't know where all my DVDs have gone.

But from my memory GaoGaiGar Final may fit. So if anyone have the DVD or seen it before may want to give your opinion?

[darkavatar1470]

It's worth a try, lots of action and effects....but any one that hasn't seen the TV series won't be able to understand it....anyway, I'd suggest ep 2 & 8, which I remember has the most action...

[yokem55]

For more of a film, I might reccomend the Bambi DVD for a possible source. The background artwork has a lot of detailed and complex textures to it, and there are several scenes with a lot of compex motion (rain, snow, fire, etc), not to mention there is some film grain in there to top it all off. The film is only 70 minutes long, so there isn't much trouble getting it onto one cd, but there is still a lot of room for the codecs to improve in how it handles everything on that flick...

[riggits]

I'm a little surprised that nobody's mentioned Howl's Moving Castle (due in November, looks tricky), Escaflowne, Ninja Scroll (maybe too short?).

[shpitz]

i can upload a dvb sample on an anime for you guys to play with if needed.

[Shinigami-Sama]

ninja scroll has to much nudity for doom9's preferances,

[Mug Funky]

I'm a little surprised that nobody's mentioned Howl's Moving Castle (due in November, looks tricky), Escaflowne, Ninja Scroll (maybe too short?).

it's not on DVD yet.

though it will be a lovely lovely PAL speedup, which is beyond rare for Ghibli. it's out november in the US too? cool. looks like one of those simultaneous worldwide release things. i saw a subbed japanese 35mm version in april :)

as far as complexity, it will be about equal to mononoke in encoder difficulty i reckon. also, the story isn't as nice as mononoke IMHO.

the animation is pretty damn good though.

[Shinigami-Sama]

hmm
what about vampire hunter D:Bloodlust?
I havn't gotten ahold of a dvd yet to check, I forgot when I rented it a while back ><

[ToiletDuck]

My vote is for shrek 2. Brights and darks, individual hairs on the puss, and lots of pores on all the characters.

[Shinigami-Sama]

animated not rendered
shrek is to realistic, the codec can't tell the diff

[Haze_NZ]

My vote goes for Family Guy :P

[CZroe]

I really like Princess Mononoke as a quality comparison choice but I would have to give Steamboy my new "top honors". There is WAY too much detail and stuff going on in the background throughout the movie. Not to mention LOADS of steam for transparancy artifacts to rear their ugly head. Sony already sells the movie in h.264 on PSP UMD.

My vote goes for Family Guy :P

Ha! Family Guy CAN have some encoding quality nightmares (http://www.humanstuffing.com/1/AHA!.avi) though.

[hellfred]

I really like Princess Mononoke as a quality comparison choice but I would have to give Steamboy my new "top honors". There is WAY too much detail and stuff going on in the background throughout the movie. Not to mention LOADS of steam for transparancy artifacts to rear their ugly head. Sony already sells the movie in h.264 on PSP UMD.

Steamboy really should prove to be a hard one. And it is not offensive in any way, so there schould not be any problems for doom9 having to watch it over and over again.

Hellfred

[Episode]

My vote goes to "The Place Promised in Our Early Days". You can read the review of the movie in here http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/reviews/display.php?id=794. Basically it's 1½ hour scifi anime movie that has been fully animated with CGI... by one man and he's Powermac G5.

[Doom9]

Princess Mononokeis way too easy.. didn't I already say that? If XviD has no problem bringing it to one CD then there's really no point in using a source. And I'd very much like a TV series due to the length (which translates to encoding time). Right now I'm down to a 50 minute source which is already a major improvement over the 2h+ I was working with initially, but a 20-25 minute thing would be ideal. And in absence of a DVD (Steamboy) I find it kinda hard to judge how a movie can be compressed ;)

[Sgt_Strider]

Any idea when the next codec comparison will be completed?

[Doom9]

Any idea when the next codec comparison will be completed?Yes: when it's done ;) As a general rule that you should apply on this board: never ask for a deadline for a non commercial endeavor.

[Sgt_Strider]

Yes: when it's done ;) As a general rule that you should apply on this board: never ask for a deadline for a non commercial endeavor.

Okay..

[Shinigami-Sama]

at least he gave you a warning this time mate, I've heard stories of what he did one poor sod a couple comparises ago :P

[johnh123]

So is it harder to get a good encode with animation than with a regular movie?

[Shinigami-Sama]

dependant on the source yes and no

[darkavatar1470]

My vote goes to "The Place Promised in Our Early Days". You can read the review of the movie in here http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/reviews/display.php?id=794. Basically it's 1½ hour scifi anime movie that has been fully animated with CGI... by one man and he's Powermac G5.uhm, that was his last 30min OVA Whisper of the Stars..... (not sure, forgot the Eng name) This movie isn't done all by himself, he is the director and art supervisor.

The whole thing is animated by adobe premium from the booklet in my DVD

Its mostly consisted of stills & slow pans, I guess it won't be too hard on the codec unless we use a larger frame size and/or high audio bitrate=low video bitrate......I'm too busy these days, haven't been able to encode this, Steam Boy & Apple Seed, which I think are all good candidates.

[Smile2]

My vote goes to "The Place Promised in Our Early Days". You can read the review of the movie in here http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/reviews/display.php?id=794. Basically it's 1½ hour scifi anime movie that has been fully animated with CGI... by one man and he's Powermac G5.

I think this might be a good candidate, while the animation is slow paced, it has a lot of sudden light effect, make it hard to maintain the image quality.

[Doom9]

So is it harder to get a good encode with animation than with a regular movie?I have yet to find a source where I'd sign that statement.. I believe the reverse is generally true.

[Doom9]

well, I was going for Dead Leaves until this week-end when I encoded and watched Nausicaa, Steamboy and Blood. All taxed XviD pretty good so in the end I picked Steamboy. That means a lot more encoding time but I changed the comparison a bit to compensate for that..