Region 2 Platinum Issues

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Region 2 Platinum Issues

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Postby ObsessiveMathsFreak » Thu Jul 28, 2005 2:33 pm

Not sure if this is exactly a chit-chat issue or not, and considering the other platinum threads in this forum, it seemed a good enough location, though feel free to move at will.

The first of the Evangelion Platinum Edition volumes is finally within my grasp. I can hear the voices calling me already!

However, all is alas, not so well in the land of Region 2. As many know, due to the merciless whims of the Dark Gods of Engineering, NTSC and PAL televisions run at different framerates. 29.97 and 25 frames per second respectively. As you can imagine, this leads to certain problems when content made for one medium must be played back on another. Certain, unpleasant problems.

Turns out that this process, discussed in quite good detail elsewhere, has the unfortunate side effect of producing a kind of ghost frame effect by interleaving different frames. What you get in the end is a kind of fuzz surounding all motion. And as I had feared, Evangelion has not been spared this fate. The most noticeable example in platinum thus far is submitted for your consideration.
[URL=http://imageshack.us]Image[/URL]

Bad innit? It's not just this. There is a continuous fuzz that envelops all motion, which really grates on the mind after a while.

Anyway, apparently the problem is maybe somewhat correctable, and I was wondering if anyone has come across any solutions for this issue? I plan to try and fix this somehow, either before or during my intended Big Encode to hard disk. So has anyone tried to deal with this, if in fact anyone has been bothered by it.

A second issue with the Platinum editions is that they have only a 5.1 soundtrack. I suppose you can't really actually complain about this, so much as grumble about certain issues that arise while listening with two speakers. Certain sounds are far lower than they should be, though I imagine a good converter can take care of this.
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Postby Soluzar » Thu Jul 28, 2005 3:14 pm

Yep. I have this same problem. The process of conversion, which I believe is called "inverse telecine" really screws up the picture quality. It's really hard to get decent screen-caps from these DVDs. The translation is better than ever, though, so that might help to eliminate some of the factual errors that have been introduced into your thought-processes by poor quality translations. It's still worth buying, for that reason alone.
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Postby ObsessiveMathsFreak » Thu Jul 28, 2005 4:53 pm

It seems the wailing and gnashing of teeth can be soothed somewhat, with a few simple commands.

For reference here's the raw image I payed good money for. Note if you will the horizonal striations where the interveaved images overlap. This of course happens anywhere there is movement, and so where characters talk, walk or blink these lines can be quite noticable.

After a little googling I've found something to make the situation a little more bearable, but not perfect. Mplayer has several filters available. The first filter I tried "pullup" suceeded in completely removing the striations of image overlap. Unfortunately this came at the expense of very noticable frame skipping every second or so. As you can imagine, this ruled out "pullup" as a practial option.

The next filter I tried was mplayer's postprocessing filter. First I tried it with the 'pp=lb' option, and results were somewhat gratifying. The images are still noticably overlapping, however the striations have been completely removed. This makes watching the animation a lot easier as the lines are completely gone. The ovrelapping images are still a problem however.

The pp filter has at least one other option. 'pp=md' This filter gave some very interesting results indeed. You can see that not only have the striations been removed, the overlapping image effect has also been considerably reduced. However this has come at a price. You'll note that the edges of colours suffer from a slight fuzzing effect. This is slight, but was not present in the lb filter.

I'm going to prowl around for more filters or combinations of filters. I have to wonder though, considering ADV was supposedly working on the Region 2 conversion for six months, and in less than six hours armed only with mplayer and google I've managed to make a reasonable improvement in the viewability of the material, just why the hell have I been waiting so long and paying so much for this? The 'pp=lp' option alone is something that looks like it should have been done before the disc was finalised.
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Postby The Eva Monkey » Thu Jul 28, 2005 6:27 pm

Geez, this is the kind of shit I would expect from Manga Entertainment. I feel for you guys, I really do.

Wouldn't it be nice if we all lived in region 1, used NTSC, and spoke English? It would be a blast.

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Postby chiefen » Thu Jul 28, 2005 6:29 pm

Is it the same on the TV? I have the australian version (region 4, also PAL), and I haven't noticed any of this when I have watched it on the TV.

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Postby ObsessiveMathsFreak » Thu Jul 28, 2005 7:14 pm

chiefen wrote:Is it the same on the TV? I have the australian version (region 4, also PAL), and I haven't noticed any of this when I have watched it on the TV.

You've in fact hit the root of the issue. As it turns out TVs sort of carry out their own analouge deinterlacing. These effects are much less noticeable on a cathode ray tube television. it probably looks something like the 'pp=lb' filtered image on a TV.

However on a computer monitor, and in screenshots, this will be another matter entirely.
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Postby The Eva Monkey » Fri Jul 29, 2005 11:59 am

Now, first off, I know a minimal amount about video conversion...

PAL runs at ~25 FPS, NTSC runs at ~30. So there's 5 additional frames that have to be averaged into the other 25. Does every single frame have this ghost effect, or is it only every 5 frames or so?

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Postby ObsessiveMathsFreak » Fri Jul 29, 2005 12:45 pm

The Eva Monkey wrote:Now, first off, I know a minimal amount about video conversion...

PAL runs at ~25 FPS, NTSC runs at ~30. So there's 5 additional frames that have to be averaged into the other 25. Does every single frame have this ghost effect, or is it only every 5 frames or so?

Virtually anywhere there is motion, this interleaving effect is present. The ghost images seem to occur sharply every two or three frames or so, which as I understand is typical. Anytime a character talks you can see the lines quite visibly across their mouths. It's a continuous problem and is not unfortunately confined to periodic, intermittant behaviour.

Just to let you know, Mplayer has another postprocessing filter, 'pp=fd' which looks quite promising. Like the 'pp=md' filter the lines are removed and the ghost image considerably reduce. However the 'pp=fd' filter doesn't create that liny fuzz that the 'pp=md' filter created, so the image is much smoother. It seems to be a best of both worlds between the 'pp=lb' and 'pp=md' filters.

I also came across an unrelated filter. The high quality 3d denoiser, abbreviated to hqdn3d. It seems to do exactly what ii says on the tin, removing any "noise", i.e. grainyness in the movie. It works paticularly well in animation, reducing any slight grainyness in colours and cleaning them up into solid, homogeneous blocks. The results are slight, but appealing. I encourage anyone to try it. Again I have to wonder why this wasn't done as a matter of protocol before the release.
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Re: Region 2 Platinum Issues

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Postby drinian » Fri Jul 29, 2005 1:03 pm

ObsessiveMathsFreak wrote:A second issue with the Platinum editions is that they have only a 5.1 soundtrack. I suppose you can't really actually complain about this, so much as grumble about certain issues that arise while listening with two speakers. Certain sounds are far lower than they should be, though I imagine a good converter can take care of this.


Can't help you with the rest, but your DVD player, if it's anything like mine, probably has an option somewhere to set output for two-speaker stereo rather than 5.1.

ObsessiveMathsFreak wrote:I also came across an unrelated filter. The high quality 3d denoiser, abbreviated to hqdn3d. It seems to do exactly what ii says on the tin, removing any "noise", i.e. grainyness in the movie. It works paticularly well in animation, reducing any slight grainyness in colours and cleaning them up into solid, homogeneous blocks. The results are slight, but appealing. I encourage anyone to try it. Again I have to wonder why this wasn't done as a matter of protocol before the release.


The grain of the film is preserved to keep the final copy closer to the original format. This isn't usually as big a deal in anime as live-action, of course, but for the purpose of preservation it makes sense not to do it to the DVD master. Especially since you can apply it afterward if you really want to.

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Postby The Eva Monkey » Fri Jul 29, 2005 4:07 pm

Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a problem, but low frame rate animation simply exacerbates the situation. What would be the result if every fifth frame was dropped in the conversion? Would there be a sudden noticible jerk?

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Postby ObsessiveMathsFreak » Fri Jul 29, 2005 5:59 pm

The Eva Monkey wrote:Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a problem, but low frame rate animation simply exacerbates the situation. What would be the result if every fifth frame was dropped in the conversion? Would there be a sudden noticible jerk?

Very much so. This was in fact the problem with the otherwise sublime 'pullup' filter. It wasn't actually blatant, but you could tell it was there, happening every second, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.
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Postby Reichu » Fri Jul 29, 2005 10:20 pm

Import the Japanese DVDs and ask buddies to rip the Platinum subtitles for you. 8)
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Postby Soluzar » Fri Jul 29, 2005 10:40 pm

The Eva Monkey wrote:Geez, this is the kind of shit I would expect from Manga Entertainment. I feel for you guys, I really do.

Wouldn't it be nice if we all lived in region 1, used NTSC, and spoke English? It would be a blast.


Me? Use "Never Twice the Same Color"? :lol:


NTSC is a hideous video format, as is PAL. It's well past time they were both replace with something that does at least 75 FPS and at least 1000 horizontal lines. There's probably a HDTV mode that does that, but only games consoles and expensive cable TV channels use HDTV, right?
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Postby Digitalex » Sat Jul 30, 2005 12:37 am

Reichu wrote:Import the Japanese DVDs and ask buddies to rip the Platinum subtitles for you. 8)


You know. I was thinking about trying something like that for EoE if I could score the EoE Renewal version.

Does anyone know what EoE Renewal DVD I should be searching for? I came across a DTS Collectors Edition EoE on one of the Amazon.co.jp sites but don't know if it's Renewal quality.
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Postby drinian » Sat Jul 30, 2005 9:11 am

Soluzar wrote:
The Eva Monkey wrote:Geez, this is the kind of shit I would expect from Manga Entertainment. I feel for you guys, I really do.

Wouldn't it be nice if we all lived in region 1, used NTSC, and spoke English? It would be a blast.


Me? Use "Never Twice the Same Color"? :lol:


NTSC is a hideous video format, as is PAL. It's well past time they were both replace with something that does at least 75 FPS and at least 1000 horizontal lines. There's probably a HDTV mode that does that, but only games consoles and expensive cable TV channels use HDTV, right?


So I guess the moral of the story is to wait another 3-4 years for ADV to release the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray version of Evangelion.

You know they will.

At least twice.

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Postby Soluzar » Sat Jul 30, 2005 9:53 am

drinian wrote:
Soluzar wrote:
The Eva Monkey wrote:Geez, this is the kind of shit I would expect from Manga Entertainment. I feel for you guys, I really do.

Wouldn't it be nice if we all lived in region 1, used NTSC, and spoke English? It would be a blast.


Me? Use "Never Twice the Same Color"? :lol:


NTSC is a hideous video format, as is PAL. It's well past time they were both replace with something that does at least 75 FPS and at least 1000 horizontal lines. There's probably a HDTV mode that does that, but only games consoles and expensive cable TV channels use HDTV, right?


So I guess the moral of the story is to wait another 3-4 years for ADV to release the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray version of Evangelion.

You know they will.

At least twice.


Aye. What I also know is that Manga Entertainment will still be flogging us the same dodgy old VHS transfer of the movies, too. Plus ça change, eh?
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Postby ObsessiveMathsFreak » Sat Jul 30, 2005 10:19 am

Reichu wrote:Import the Japanese DVDs and ask buddies to rip the Platinum subtitles for you. 8)

Your plan was flawless right up until the cartel implemented region locking on all DVD-ROM drives. Danm their oily hides!!
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Postby Soluzar » Sat Jul 30, 2005 10:23 am

ObsessiveMathsFreak wrote:
Reichu wrote:Import the Japanese DVDs and ask buddies to rip the Platinum subtitles for you. 8)

Your plan was flawless right up until the cartel implemented region locking on all DVD-ROM drives. Danm their oily hides!!


There are ways and means to defeat that.
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Postby drinian » Sat Jul 30, 2005 11:26 am

Soluzar wrote:
ObsessiveMathsFreak wrote:
Reichu wrote:Import the Japanese DVDs and ask buddies to rip the Platinum subtitles for you. 8)

Your plan was flawless right up until the cartel implemented region locking on all DVD-ROM drives. Danm their oily hides!!


There are ways and means to defeat that.


[url]http://www.doom9.org/[/url]

In Linux, it's not even an issue, or at least it never has been for me with Mplayer or dvdrip.

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Postby Soluzar » Sat Jul 30, 2005 11:55 am

drinian wrote:
Soluzar wrote:
ObsessiveMathsFreak wrote:
Reichu wrote:Import the Japanese DVDs and ask buddies to rip the Platinum subtitles for you. 8)

Your plan was flawless right up until the cartel implemented region locking on all DVD-ROM drives. Danm their oily hides!!


There are ways and means to defeat that.


[url]http://www.doom9.org/[/url]

In Linux, it's not even an issue, or at least it never has been for me with Mplayer or dvdrip.


Nor even in Windows, although the methods are somewhat more involved. Once implemented, though, it's as simple as you like. It just works.

OMF mentioned that he does use Linux/Mplayer, so should be OK.
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