looking for a cartoon source for the next codec comparison

[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.