You all know me, I'm pretty much a prick with sudden bursts of niceness. I am going to share my policies with you, and then you can flame me and call me a fag.
VIDEO:
- I will only be releasing 720p, unless the show is DVD only. Then I'll release 480p. I will never release upscaled DVD anime;
- everything I release will be mkv, h264. Everything I started in 8bit will be finished in 8bit, but everything new will be 10bit;
- I am a fan of ordered chapters, but I will not be using them. They are a lot of trouble, and the only two benefits form them (less HDD space and less encoding time) mean nothing to me. Also, I kind of like everything in one file;
- splicing in clean OP/ED will not be the default. I will do it once, for one episode, but that's it. There are two execptions: when the OP/ED is part of the story, and the text distracts (like Mitsudomoe 13), or when there is a different OP/ED each episode (Enma-kun). The reason for the later is that since there are more versions, I'm going to include them anyway, so I might as well splice them in.
AUDIO:
- Japanese audio only, no exceptions;
-
- change of plans: next show released will have AAC 320 kbps audio, and a separare FLAC file uploaded on MU that people who want can just download and mux themselves. Everyone should ba happy;
- for those curious, 16bit FLAC for a 25 minute episode is 120MB, while AAC/AC3 at 320kbps is about 60MB.
SUBTITLES:
- softsubs, of course;
- I am not a fan of facy fonts, so if vobsubs are available, I will use them. I am perfectly fine with vobsubs;
- no karaoke, just the song translation, as in no romaji unless someone already put them in. Never kanji.
OTHERS:
- I will alywas include chapters. It's stupid to not have chapters in .mkv;
- I will not provide DLL. Torrent only;
- I will always try to include an archive with the DVD/Bluray scans and extras.
wait, now I think I get it. You include two variants of the audio track, which differ only with the bitrate (since I am not one of the .1% of humanity, which can hear any difference between flac and ac3 on 320 when using $100+ hifi system). Am I right?
ReplyDeleteOh well, then everything will be reencoded to sth like -q6 vorbis for example before archiving.
Kind of, yeah. The reason I include both is because I CAN'T tell the difference, but I know that in theory, FLAC should be better.
ReplyDeleteI would just put only the aac in your place... I doubt even professional musicians would mind their anime having a little worse sound if they can dl the OST in flac. Then, of course, there are a lot of fans, who cannot really tell the difference, and still want to have flac; I wouldn't mind them.
ReplyDeletejust do AAC/AC, no one can even hear the difference. if anyone say they can, their just being fags and lying
ReplyDeleteif by you mean by the yellow font subtitle and the default position, then i will be facepalm.
ReplyDeletelol take out flac and save me an hour of download time please
ReplyDeleteI like the FLAC+AAC/AC idea, since if you are using digital audio output, and configure CCCP the right way, using Media Player Classic Home Cinema, with a ~$100 amplifier, you can get a nicely upscalled dolby surround. And with FLAC source, no noise will be in the upscalled rear channels.
ReplyDeleteThats how Im watching anime for more than a year now, and i can tell the difference this way. FLAC is a whole lot better...
If people really want the best quality, they should get the BD. But who wants to download 20GB for 2 episodes?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the purpose of an encode is to get the best video/audio quality to filesize ratio.
But FLAC destroys that purpose by increasing the filesize noticeably and only barely increasing the quality.
Actually, the increase in quality is hardly perceivable for the human ear.
To cut a long story short, go with AAC/AC3.
@Croix
ReplyDeletehm, since I hardly have $100 surround system (I rely on some $50 headphones), let me verify: any lossy encode will add noise on the rear channels? not just low bitrate ones?
Well... only if it HAS a rear channel. This is just stereo.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@erejnoin: almost every lossy audio format adds noise, but higher bitrate ones are bit better. Only FLAC doesnt add any.
ReplyDelete@Dmon: No, no rear channel needed. CCCP's settings with FFDShow codec, MPC-HC player along with my Sound Blaster Audigy soundcard and Samsung AVR-620 amplifier makes an almost perfect dolby surround out of a normal stereo source from an mkv file.
@Croix: I do believe you are wrong. Lossy audio compression works by removing perceptual redundancy, if you notice additional "noise" than you are just compressing too much or using a poor encoder.
ReplyDelete@Dmon: just go with AAC or AC3, FLAC is a waste of space. If encoded with proper settings, there is no way a human could perceive the difference. I'm studying signal theory but I won't go into technical speech, I'll just say that the point behind the lossy compression theory is "remove the stuff you can NOT hear". Then, of course, you will actually start to remove perceivable data (thus altering the audio) if you go for higher compression, since that is the only way to further reduce the size.
Jeez, I wonder why is everyone concerned in lossless audio tracks when:
1) the source audio has passed through microphones, samplers and filters before being encoded, so they will never match "perfectly" the original sound;
2) you can't, as a human, tell the difference between HI-QUALITY lossy encoding and lossless encoding, people who can is either lying or not doing a fair comparison (using LQ encoding for instance);
3) THE VIDEO IS ALWAYS LOSSY. Yes, H264 acts on the same principle, but NO ONE cares about that, and no one would say it's not worth it (lossless video would require an incredible amount of data anyway).
tl;dr: AAC, not FLAC. Give the extra bits to the video encoder for an overall higher quality release.
I think the people is just scared of the word "lossy" and think they are not getting the highest possible quality. Fear not, the quality will be as high as it can get.
Also Dmon, I truly respect your work and wish to thank you for your releases. I'd like not to have the FLAC track included, but I can remove them easily by myself, so no major problem (a bit of dload time wasted, but whatever :))
Keep up the good work.
@Toshiaki: You have a very good point. To be honest, I really agree with you, it's just that it's very hard for me to let go of that "but it might be better" mindset. Maybe I should just encode to 320kbps AAC and be done with it, it's not like I'll notice the difference. Maybe go 640kbps if I ever have a 5.1 source. BTW, do you think that 320 kbps would be enought for 2.0?
ReplyDeleteI encode my music for my player to 160kbps, after I didn't manage to hear any difference on numerous tracks between 160 and 192... I would say 320 is enough. Then again, my hearing isn't exactly the best.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this idea with the separate lossless track is really good, I approve it! Actually, if I was in your position, I would have done exactly the same.
I really like your work, but I have a few questions. Why don't you include the crc32 in your files? it makes it easier to find out if the files are corrupt. Also, I know you've said that you don't do 1080p, but can you elaborate on why is that. I would really like to get your stuff but 1080p is my preference. Lastly, why no DDL? Although this is not that big of a deal, I would prefer getting them from your site via DDL. I hope you don't mind responding to my questions, cause I really like your work. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI usually encode stereo audio with ogg and -q 8, which is considered 'insanely high.' (Really, I certainly can't hear the difference past -q 6, but fall victim to the "it might be better for archiving mentallity"
ReplyDeleteThat usually works out to an average of about 250kb/s. Technically, AAC should possibly be a bit better at the same bitrates as ogg, so 320 would be much more than necessary. I do prefer ogg, however, since the encoder by default uses VBR, so I don't have to waste space encoding at over 300kb/s just in case there are parts to the audio that actually need/use that many bits.
Gotta say i agree with tlacatlc6, love your work, and everything else tlacatlc6 said i was gonna say it but he beat me to it. So, please re-consider. And lastly, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete@tlacatlc6: Answers coming up my friend.
ReplyDelete1. The CRC this is quite simple: I didn't use to include the CRC in my first releases, but that was a long time ago. I'm not even sure I remember what I released without CRC. Anyway, I never release anything wihtout CRC now, so I think you came across a very old release of mine.
2. I don't do 1080 because of three reasons
a) Most anime is not prodeced in 1080p. It's usually produced at 720p, or in worse cases 576p. Sometimes we get lucky and get something in 1080i, but true 1080p produced anime is usually reserved for very high budget series (Gundam 00, for example). As such, I don't see a point in releasing a 1080p version.
b) 1080p raws are very easy to obtain, so if someone REALLY has to have a 1080p version, making one is as simple as asking someone who did a 720p release, like me, for the scripts. 9/10 times, it will match without any needed retimings.
c) I don't see much added quality to 1080p as opposed to 720p, and since these releases are actually meant for me, I don't do anything larger. This is purely subjective, but most claiming to see the HUGE difference in quality are usually suffering from the placebo effect. They know it SHOULD be better, so that's how they interpret it. Just like me and FLAC. I know is SHOULD be better, even though I can't pinpoint where.
3. This one's easy: my upload is a combination of weird and crap. It's fantastic while uploading torrents (1MB), but on sites like MU, FS,RS, etc, it's shit, and it would take much too long to upload stuff there. I have neither that time, nor that pacience.
Thanks again for answering my questions and keep up the good work. I asked about the crc32 because in your Tiger & Bunny and Dororon releases did not included them, so I thought it was weird.
ReplyDeleteAh shit... I forgot to add them to Enma and Tiger...
ReplyDeleteMight I suggest you use furk.net? It is free and allows you to upload files for DDL by just uploading a .torrent file.
ReplyDeleteWhy not aoTuV/Vorbis ? It's quality-wise [far] superior to AAC, and can get rather impressive results on lower bitrates.
ReplyDeleteAnd as FLAC is monstrual nonsense, lossy 320kbit is not much less of a nonsense either. It's not late 90s and bladeence's mp3s. It's 2012 and vorbis that will produce files at 120kbit - 160kbit which are indistinguishable from FLAC (as far as human ear is concerned) ...
meh, funny how this became a lossy/lossless rant XD.
ReplyDeleteDmon, 1st thanks for the encode, 2nd do what you want. XD
3rd, my opinion (you can ignore): most ppl won't be able to hear difference between high bitrate lossy compressed audio and lossless ones, but the difference is there and it's relevant. Too bad most pll saying the can hear it lie (referring to those 1k Hi-Fi fanboys that have to justify forking insane money for their HW), but we can't dismiss the fact that lossy introduces a loss and some can hear the difference.
I appreciate you using 320kbps aac btw.
Video: I don't think someone saw an uncompressed source, so it's just comparison between lossy compression; ence, just a matter of how much detail you are fine to lose, same as audio.
I reiterate point 1 and 3. If perceived quality is good enough, lossy is fine.