I'm basically doing this because I can't stand the smeared Q-Tec look of the Blu-rays. This release is somewhat inspired by [Okay-Raw's release](https://nyaa.si/view/1613546), the difference being that I'm using the Russian DVDs as my source. The quality for these is comparable to the JP DVDs, but they have a few advantages, such as being already properly Detelecined and having less compression artifacts over the JP DVDs.
The English and French audio tracks are straight from the DVDs (since the Blu-rays lack the Next Episode Previews). The audio in the JP DVDs is PCM uncompressed, so I encoded it to AAC.
The English subtitles are from Hitsuji/A.F.K's. For the 'Songs & Signs' track I'm using their stylings, but I'm consulting with the English DVDs in order have consistency with the dub (For example, using "Computer Club" rather than "Computer Research Society", and "Brigade Leader" rather than "Chief").
Due to there being a joke on Episode 00 where Haruhi, her friends and Kyon are shown as part of the credits; I decided to use the English credits from the Bandai DVDs on top of the Blu-ray footage, otherwise this joke is lost for those who can't read Japanese. For the sake of consistency, all the episodes use the English credits. The creditless OP sequence is from the BDs and I added the English credits to the subtitle tracks.
```
Video Format: H264 10bit CRF=15
Video Attributes: 576p 23.976 FPS
English Audio: AC3 5.1 Surround
French Audio: AC3 2.0 Stereo
Japanese Audio: AAC 2.0 Stereo
English Subtitles: Sub Station Alpha (Hitsuji/A.F.K)
French Subtitles: Vobsub
```
Great idea, but one of the downsides of the RU DVDs is that due to being PAL, it's impossible to retain the VFR nature of the series. A great example is in Live Alive, where there are many 29.98 fps shots in the performance sequence. The NA Bandai DVDs lack the LPF and heavy dithering of the JP DVDs, but are progressively encoded and VFR, so I think combining multiple sources here would be a cool, if impractical idea. Ditto with combining the chroma of the BD with the luma of the DVDs, but idk if that's doable.
A few notes on audio: the English 5.1 mix sucks (it's a terrible "faux surround" track like the 5.1 JP mix of S1 from the Super BD Box), and the 2.0 track on the Bandai DVDs is a unique stereo mix which is different to the "main" (and better) stereo mix on the JP BD, so I would've used that instead and spliced in the NEPs (I would've kept the JP audio in lossless via FLAC, personally), but otherwise all sounds fine, as does the VF.
I really like what's done here, and is overall probably the best so far at trying to fix S1 (baring the one-off [Okay-Raws] episode), so please keep it up! Thanks for the good work.
Thanks. These will be the best nyaa-legal encodes of the series, certainly.
You may want to use tivtc metrics or something to look for 30fps scenes in the JPDVDs and see if the BD redid them in 24fps. I did not see any 30fps scenes in episodes 1 and 2, but apparently they exist in later episodes.
@WPR Thanks, I'll keep in mind the audio notes for when I do the next batch of episodes. I don't have a surround rig so I assumed the Bandai audios were fine.
I actually did an overlay of all three DVD sources for the scenes with heavy grain on episodes 01 and 04, but I don't think it's feasible to do it for the whole show since they all come and go out of sync at different times (It'll probably be a similar situation if you tried doing the BD chroma). Even with an automatic script I made, I still had to do some manual syncing (thankfully, those sections were short), I even noticed a case where the NA DVDs had a single field of animation that didn't exist in the JP DVDs for some reason. (Btw from the looks of my Bandai DVDs, they're actually interlaced but include pull-down flags for the telecined parts, and I noticed these flags were wrong in a couple of places so they're not very reliable)
@motbob I also didn't see any 30fps scenes in episode one so I naively assumed the whole show would be like that, I'll have to be on the lookout for those
Also, you may already be aware of this, but there are 3 sources for the NCOP: the "good" JPBD, the "bad" JPBD, and the USBD. The "bad" JPBDs are bitstarved in high-motion scenes and the good JPBDs are less so, but there are some cuts (I think two?) in the "good" NCOP that look terrible compared to the other options. So you may want to look into that and splice as necessary.
Thanks.
@victor1139
The RU DVD frameblends the 30fps scenes. I don't recall there being many 30fps scenes. OP/ED and aforementioned Live Alive are the ones I remember. The Live Alive concert scene is decimated to 23.976fps (euro-pulldown) on Dynit DVD. Unfortunately Dynit DVD is for the most part blended 25p/50i, so probably not very useful overall (maybe still useful for concert scene).
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