New encoding?

I've been messing around with the filters all day yesterday, because honestly, the more I see the first 2 eps the more I keep feeling that the video quality is nowhere near up to par. Good news is, a day and a half later more than 360 people downloaded the first episode (*squeal*). Bad news is only 250 did so with episode 2, which means that some 100 people gave up after watching the first one. So come on, Hestia honey, we have work to do. *insert random anime scene of girl rolling up her sleeves to get to work*

Soo, here's a sample of the new filtering. Old encode first, new encode second (click on the pictures for a better view):




I think you can tell the difference already. Now, I just have to fool around with the sharpening filter a bit more, to get rid of the small artifacts around the character lines, and we're set!

However, if you see these and you like the old 'feel' better, speak now or forever hold your peace... *mwahahaha* No, seriously though, I keep getting these doubts that I'm ruining the series' aura or whatever. Hmmmm...

9 comments:

  1. Ξέρω ότι κάποια μέλη από διάφορα ελληνικά fansubbing groups συχνάζουν και στο www.anime.gr, οπότε ίσως να βρεις εκεί άτομα που να ξέρουν; Πάντως εμένα το δεύτερο μου φαίνεται πιο ζωντανό.

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  2. I think the old encode looks much better to be honest. For one, it retains more of the texture details. While I myself also like sharpness, I think the old encode was already quite sharp (in fact, there's a tiny bit of halo-ing around the lines in the old encode). I know you're working on this, but fixing the haloes and jaggies from additional sharpening may end up changing other parts of the image even more.

    The last difference between old and new encode would be the coloring.. it looks a little too saturated to me...

    BTW are you using a CRT or LCD monitor?

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  3. btw I didn't mean to be disparaging or such; it is great work that you're doing. I just don't like the new filtering. I dunno, maybe the old encode can be improved with different filter parameters or different filters, but to me the old encode already looks good.

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  4. @Kallia
    Thanks! Πήγα ήδη και γράφτηκα και φαίνεται πολύ ενδιαφέρον φοόρουμ!

    @np
    You know, those are the very same things that bothered me too. So, it wasn't too hard to get rid of the jaggies, but I'm afraid that livening up the color may not be fitting for this series. It's not mecha action, it's a romantic (as in idealistic) travel story. I was just checking the finished encode after the final touches, and even though it looks better as an anime encode job, it somehow doesn't seem to fit the story as much... I might try a few more times, but if more people agree on this I might just as well keep the old script.

    Thanks a lot for sharing your opinion though and don't worry about sounding disparaging. That's sort of what I need, heh. ^_^ Working alone means there are no people here to bounce ideas on and get feedback, so I'm kind of using you guys instead.

    And I'm using an LCD widescreen monitor. ^_^

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  5. I like the first one better, but seems you pretty much decided on your own :P


    anyway very nice work.. keep it up

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  6. thanks for the subs! also preferred the 1st encode pics.

    cheers!

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  7. @ Arcas and Anonymous
    Thanks for the vote guys, since this is supposed to look good to you too. ^_^

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  8. I was wondering if you'd put up a tutorial or something about how you encode. Because I see lots of people out there with 500MB 1280x720 encodes and I think that's excessive, when you can get such clear quality at 170mbs. I also have a project I'm working on as well and would like to see how and what you use to encode :3

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  9. @ Maverynthia
    I won't claim I know what I'm doing or anything, but I agree video quality isn't all about size. H264 is a great codec that allows incredible compression quality if you set your parameters right. Basically, depending on whether an episode has fast changing scenes and whatnot, one can tweak the x264 options and achieve maximum quality with minimum size. Now, although I lost the links to the guides I had been using when my computer went down, there are several x264 guides out there that anyone can follow.

    Having said that, I will admit that a 500 MB release will always have a slightly better video quality than my 178 MB ones. However, that difference is so slight that only people that know their stuff would notice anything. Not to mention that my releases should be able to easily play on lower end computers too. So I felt it was really worth the compromise.

    If you need any more details, feel free to e-mail me (seikisubs_at_gmail_dot_com) and I could give you more details on what I did for Porfy.

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