A Logical Argument Re: Why FUNi's DBox Quality Will Suffer

isucamper · Post by **isucamper** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 4:07 pm

I just hope they don't waste any space on advertisements or trailers or anything like that.

penguintruth · Post by **penguintruth** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 4:41 pm

isucamper wrote:I just hope they don't waste any space on advertisements or trailers or anything like that.

Expect to see ads as soon as you put in a disc. Really, really bad Funimation ads.

SparkyPantsMcGee · Post by **SparkyPantsMcGee** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 4:51 pm

I really don't think anyone should worry to much about this. I know some of you have your fears but I don't think the compression issues would be bad enough for the naked eye to notice anything. I guess its all just a waiting game for now.

Wait a sec though, what about the video shown when the Dragonbox was first announced. Is it possible for that to be the video clips from the American Dragonbox? If so, how well does that compare to the Japanese version?

I really hope this goes well because for once I want everyone in the Dragonball community to be happy.

Kendamu · Post by **Kendamu** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 4:55 pm

SparkyPantsMcGee wrote:I really don't think anyone should worry to much about this. I know some of you have your fears but I don't think the compression issues would be bad enough for the naked eye to notice anything. I guess its all just a waiting game for now.

Wait a sec though, what about the video shown when the Dragonbox was first announced. Is it possible for that to be the video clips from the American Dragonbox? If so, how well does that compare to the Japanese version?

I really hope this goes well because for once I want everyone in the Dragonball community to be happy.

It probably comes from the same source video FUNimation is using to make the US Dragon Box. For a YouTube video, it's extremely nice quality.

SSJ2bardock · Post by **SSJ2bardock** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 4:57 pm

Question: For a casual fan like myself who doesn't know anything about what you guys are talking about with compression and what not, nor do I care about it, is this going to effect me and will I notice it?

-edit-

I'm being completely serious... in case anyone thought I was being sarcastic.

jjgp1112 · Post by **jjgp1112** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 5:00 pm

Honestly, the bitrate issue won't be a big deal to me if the difference between them is as miniscule as the difference between the Funi GT singles and the GT Dragon Box:

GT Single:

GT Dragon Box:

SparkyPantsMcGee · Post by **SparkyPantsMcGee** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 5:05 pm

SSJ2bardock wrote:Question: For a casual fan like myself who doesn't know anything about what you guys are talking about with compression and what not, nor do I care about it, is this going to effect me and will I notice it?

-edit-

I'm being completely serious... in case anyone thought I was being sarcastic.

From what it sounds like, You shouldn't notice anything at all. In fact from what it sounds like so far, unless its REALLY bad the only way to tell any sort of difference between the American version and Japanese version would be to get both versions and watch them side by side. I really wouldn't worry about it to much.

Kendamu · Post by **Kendamu** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 5:06 pm

SSJ2bardock wrote:Question: For a casual fan like myself who doesn't know anything about what you guys are talking about with compression and what not, nor do I care about it, is this going to effect me and will I notice it?

-edit-

I'm being completely serious... in case anyone thought I was being sarcastic.

From what was said on the podcast, 99% of the people watching the US DBox won't notice or care. People who care comparing these side-by-side and looking at deep techno-babble stuff will probably notice, but it's not going to be a night-and-day difference like Orange Bricks and the JP DBox.

Captain Awesome · Post by **Captain Awesome** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 5:21 pm

jjgp1112 wrote:Honestly, the bitrate issue won't be a big deal to me if the difference between them is as miniscule as the difference between the Funi GT singles and the GT Dragon Box:

For a proper comparison they need to be high motion scenes, screen caps of still images aren't really indicative of anything. Also there is a big difference between the two, the season set is interlaced and the Dbox is progressive.

Acid_Reign · Post by **Acid_Reign** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 5:47 pm

biohazard wrote:Besides, since the MPG2 codec creation, it's algorithms have been improved a lot. Am I right? If you configure properly the MPG2 output, you should receive better results even if you are using the same MPG2 codec at the same bitrate.

No, the algorithms have stayed the same. You can configure the settings of the encoder to achieve better/worse results at the same bitrate, sure, but you don’t configure them in relation to the output; the output is what is produced after the configuration is applied to the input.

Hujio wrote:I know Acid_Reign mentioned this in his opening post, but since it got glossed over in the previous thread, I'll reiterate. The MPEG-2 codec hasn't changed in years. There have hardly been any updates to it since 1994, or at least nothing major. If you look at all of the codecs used for DVDs, you'll see they're all lossy, including the AC3 codec. Really, DVD technology hasn't come that far in years... that's why we have Blu-rays now with MPEG-4 and PCM encoding, which are nearly lossless.

Well, one slight correction: MPEG-4 has a lossless mode, so it can be either lossy or lossless. Simply encoding something as MPEG-4 does not make it near-lossless, but you get more efficient compression than MPEG-2 at the same bitrates.

PCM is just uncompressed, which means that there is no compression going on at all. It is lossless assuming you don’t change the audio in some other way (resampling, etc.) but you wouldn’t call it that because it could be confused as a lossless compression scheme.

EricM wrote:MPEG2 compression improves all the time. There isn't going be a massive jump in quality these days but saying it hasn't improved since 1994 is just stupid. I guess none of you had DVDs in the late 90's, they were always riddled with tons of compression artifacts. These days a quality encoded DVD with have only light macroblocking.

MPEG-2 encoders have improved, but the MPEG-2 standard hasn’t. MPEG-2 can’t improve or it would destroy cross-compatibility. That’s the whole point of “finalization”: so that hardware and software engineers have a unified specification to reference in their implementations of the technology. If the spec was always changing then anyone investing in MPEG-2 would have to constantly upgrade their devices, which is costly and time-consuming.

For instance, I have a 1998 Toshiba DVD player that still plays a discs I bought 10 years later. If the standard had changed in that time then this would be impossible; I’d have had to have bought newer and newer DVD players each time. And that’d only be a minor pain in the ass considering most of digital broadcast television is MPEG-2, which would mean new TVs for consumers and new equipment for broadcasters. People would much rather invest in something that is still likely to be relevant a few years down the road. If MPEG-2 were erratic, it would fail to gain industry adoption and subsequently wouldn’t be as widespread as it is today.

Although, as I said, encoders have gotten better (at implementing the unchanged specification), and that’s a valid point to bring up, but they can only ever be as good as the algorithm they’re based on. And some people here seem to think that because it’s been a few years, we can now cram twice as much information on the same DVDs using the same technology with no drop in quality. Which is just not so.

One major problem with low bitrate encoding of grainy material like the Dragonbox masters is that it might macroblock like crazy. You can get away with encoding super-DNR'd still images like the Orange brick video with low bitrates, but the grainer you get, the more bitrate you need. The grain on these Dragonbox could be turned into a rubble of artifacts with not enough bitrate.

This is a good point. I hadn’t considered that.

And it's not that rare on DVDs, concert and music DVD often have PCM stereo tracks.

Yeah, but how much of the overall DVD market is comprised of concert and music performances? AC3 has definitely been the more popular choice for feature films. It hasn’t been until the advent of Blu-ray that PCM is becoming standard.

Kendamu wrote:That's kind of where I've been sitting, too. From what I understand, FUNimation's probably being given super high-quality masters that nobody outside of their offices will ever see. What I thought I was hearing on the podcast was that, in using that master to make the FUNi DBox DVDs, even if the bitrate or whatever was different they're not just coping the Japanese DVDs onto US DVDs and slapping on subs and dubs. The transfer itself is different and so there should be space leftover without killing the picture quality or anything.

Well, it’s possible they got the digital masters (created from the film masters), which whatever format they’re in probably wouldn’t fit onto a DVD raw. I kind of doubt that the DVD-level bitrate MPEG-2s are the best thing Toei has. MPEG-2 is more of a delivery format than an archival format. And using an un- or low-compressed source in an encoding will yield better results than reencoding a highly-compressed source. And hey, maybe they’re doing that with everything, allocating different bit space to each element than they did with the Season Sets.

But regardless, it’s still a lot to fit onto a single disc. I guess the best we can hope for is that FUNi wasn’t lazy.

Captain Awesome wrote:For a proper comparison they need to be high motion scenes, screen caps of still images aren't really indicative of anything. Also there is a big difference between the two, the season set is interlaced and the Dbox is progressive.

Really? Didn’t they advertise the Season Sets as being 24p? Were they just lying?

Kendamu · Post by **Kendamu** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 6:21 pm

I never meant to imply that the master would fit onto a DVD as-is, but I agree with what you're saying.

MajinVejitaXV · Post by **MajinVejitaXV** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 6:28 pm

Hujio wrote:Actually, and I hate to do this to ya buddy, but the opening credits rarely changed throughout the series..

Oops! For some reason I thought there was information in the credits that changed each episode, but maybe I was thinking of the movies (like Castor mentioned) and how the opening for Movie 1 was used previously on FUNi's releases, much to the amusement of those who could read Japanese.

Thanks for the correction though!

I only really went by what was said in the Podcast, where the impression I got was that there was still room left on the Japanese discs, but FUNimation likes to max their discs out.

I'm not sure which podcast you're referencing, but I'm almost certain when we did the whole "season set" review a couple of years back we talked about how the DragonBox discs were basically packed to the rim (further confirmed in the previous locked thread, and cited here again by Acid Reign). FUNimation has actually had a habit of just the opposite in the past: not making full use of the DVD's capacity.

Honestly, the bitrate issue won't be a big deal to me if the difference between them is as miniscule as the difference between the Funi GT singles and the GT Dragon Box:

I agree with the previous posts that a high motion scene would be a better way of evaluating the two. Compressing a still frame with hardly any motion is extremely easy and not indicative of how good an encode is. If you want to capture something to that effect, I'll get you the DragonBox frame to compare it to.

-Corey

Captain Awesome · Post by **Captain Awesome** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 6:30 pm

Acid_Reign wrote:
Captain Awesome wrote:For a proper comparison they need to be high motion scenes, screen caps of still images aren't really indicative of anything. Also there is a big difference between the two, the season set is interlaced and the Dbox is progressive.
Really? Didn’t they advertise the Season Sets as being 24p? Were they just lying?

The Z and DB sets were both encoded progressive, but the GT sets got shafted, which I'm guessing is due to the masters they were given by Toei.

I would have gladly picked it up if they kept the next episode previews and encoded it progressive, since it would have essentially been a perfect release.

isucamper · Post by **isucamper** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 6:44 pm

jjgp1112 wrote:Honestly, the bitrate issue won't be a big deal to me if the difference between them is as miniscule as the difference between the Funi GT singles and the GT Dragon Box:

GT Single:
http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/9117 ... 034gd8.png

GT Dragon Box:
http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/6053 ... ndevw8.png

I have a hard time believing that first shot is a Funi disk. Perfect colors, no dirt or damage, and no zooming? Is that for real?

.:PoetikaL:. · Post by **.:PoetikaL:.** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 7:02 pm

isucamper wrote:
jjgp1112 wrote:Honestly, the bitrate issue won't be a big deal to me if the difference between them is as miniscule as the difference between the Funi GT singles and the GT Dragon Box:

GT Single:
http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/9117 ... 034gd8.png

GT Dragon Box:
http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/6053 ... ndevw8.png
I have a hard time believing that first shot is a Funi disk. Perfect colors, no dirt or damage, and no zooming? Is that for real?

The Funi Image has a bit of a darker tone, and notice the left and right edges, you can see the edge of the frame. (I'm picky lol)

Acid_Reign · Post by **Acid_Reign** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 7:10 pm

Kendamu wrote:I never meant to imply that the master would fit onto a DVD as-is, but I agree with what you're saying.

I know you didn’t; I was just kind of thinking out loud. I assumed that they would be “copying and pasting” the files so to speak, since that work had already been done for them, but now that you mention it, using a digital master makes a lot more sense to me.

Bussani · Post by **Bussani** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 9:19 pm

SSJ2bardock wrote:Question: For a casual fan like myself who doesn't know anything about what you guys are talking about with compression and what not, nor do I care about it, is this going to effect me and will I notice it?

-edit-

I'm being completely serious... in case anyone thought I was being sarcastic.

It depends on a lot of things. We won't really know until we get it. Best case scenario, someone like you (and me, if it's not bad) probably won't even notice.

The thing is, this is meant to be the Dragonbox, the best quality version possible. I don't blame people who are buying it for that reason for being concerned over potential quality drops. It almost seems like it's defeating the purpose. Still, 4:3, uncut, Japanese; so long as they don't mess up really badly, it'll still be the best release the show has had in the US, right?

Kendamu · Post by **Kendamu** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 9:31 pm

Bussani wrote:
SSJ2bardock wrote:Question: For a casual fan like myself who doesn't know anything about what you guys are talking about with compression and what not, nor do I care about it, is this going to effect me and will I notice it?

-edit-

I'm being completely serious... in case anyone thought I was being sarcastic.
It depends on a lot of things. We won't really know until we get it. Best case scenario, someone like you (and me, if it's not bad) probably won't even notice.

The thing is, this is meant to be the Dragonbox, the best quality version possible. I don't blame people who are buying it for that reason for being concerned over potential quality drops. It almost seems like it's defeating the purpose. Still, 4:3, uncut, Japanese; so long as they don't mess up really badly, it'll still be the best release the show has had in the US, right?

It's safe to assume that this will be worlds beyond anything we've seen released in the US no matter what.