New Tamers encodes
November 17, 2011 20 Comments
I’ve started putting up the new encodes at the Tamers page, they’re the ones marked “v2” (except for episode 26, that one will be v3). For now only 1 and 16 are up, the rest will be as soon as the encodes are done. And likewise, 39 will be released when we get the DVD that contains it, since the script is already complete. This should be the very final version (lol how many times have I said that now) of the files unless something went very wrong and it slipped past my barely existent QC, since you can’t improve much past encoding straight from DVD.
Besides the obviously higher quality encodes (MKV, AVI – note that the new AVI-Xvid encode looks better than the old MKV-H264 one at the same size, which is kind of amazing), we also made some minor changes to the scripts, mainly styling, some minor timing tweaks, and edited insert song translations to make them consistent with later episodes. Also, I’m not uploading the scripts anymore, since the new versions aren’t compatible with the old Xvid raws unless the timing is shifted, and I’m not going to bother. Though if someone still wants them for whatever reason, I have no problem providing them.
Finally, for a funfact: a while ago (back when I used LJ) someone complained about our use of the creditless OP, mentioning that the original OP in the first 3 episodes starts slightly different (black background instead of blue, and series logo is in the foreground instead of background) and that we weren’t keeping that by using the textless OP. Well, Puto went out of his way to perfectly recreate the original sequence for the first 3 episodes, through some insane editing that I wouldn’t even think of doing. So, yeah.
And now for something completely off-topic: inb4 my waifu loses the International Saimoe League finals
Edit: As usual, expect defeat, obtain victory. And so Mikoto joins the hall of moe fame. <3
Positron's Subs 
Thanks for taking the time to do these. I really enjoy watching Tamers :)
So why aren’t you on MSN? Ep 17’s raw is up.
Same answer as the last time: studying (or rather, should really get away from the computer if I want to get anywhere =P)
> Well, Puto went out of his way to perfectly recreate the original sequence for the first 3 episodes, through some insane editing that I wouldn’t even think of doing. So, yeah.
One of these days, I should make a blog post describing exactly what I had to do to get this done. But then my lazyness when comes to writing would kick in and I’d never get it done.
Oh yeah, before you upload any other episode, talk to me because there’s something I wanna take the chance to fix before it can’t be done without inconsistency.
Episode 16 has a 3-liner, first line after the op.
I still want the scritp if you don’t mind! ;o;
And thanks for all the hard work <3
Sure, but I’ll wait until we catch up to 39 and upload them all at once. There won’t be that much of a change from the old scripts though, just so you know.
Ok, thanks again =D
Count me in as someone who would also love to keep getting the scripts for Tamers (and Frontier). :) Thanks again for everything!
I would also like to have the scripts, in case someone wants to try custom-subbing the DVDs. =P Can’t wait until all the episodes are done – I’ll finally be able to watch the whole series completely translated!
I’ve just taken a look at episode 1 to compare the video quality between the old Xvid raw, your release and that of The Wild Bunch. I’d never have thought that the old Xvid raw had such poor detail retention. Even your Xvid version retains detail and sharpness significantly better, although it does have noticeable ringing due to the small bitrate (smaller than that of your H.264 version! why?).
Comparing the H.264 releases, which are both encoded straight from the DVD, your release has still more detail than that of The Wild Bunch even at a smaller bitrate, which is probably due to the vastly better (for quality) encoding settings and improvements in x264 itself; however, I’ve noticed occasional aliasing and a very weird thing at 2:49: the first frame after the scene change looks bad but then the next frame suddenly looks good. This may sound like nothing but the jump in quality is clearly visible: even if you don’t notice what exactly happens there because there’s just one bad frame, you do notice that something happens (I immediately went like ‘Wait, what was that?’ when I saw it). You can also see some aliasing in the same scene as the building shot slowly zooms out. (Actually, now that I think of it, it is probably reasonable to say that the first frame just has some bad aliasing as well… but bad it definitely is.)
For good measure I’ve also looked at WPP’s (Xvid) version that I had lying around anyway, and it basically looks the same as the old Xvid raw (it’s probably based on it, but it’s definitely been re-encoded at least once to burn the hard subs in). I don’t have WtW’s or DATS’ versions or the Xvid release of The Wild Bunch, but I’m not really interested in comparing the Xvid versions anyway. I do want to take a look at H.264 encodes of a later episode though just to see if there are any changes (plus later episodes have H.264 versions done by WPP).
Oh yeah, I should have also said: Good job! But it would be nice to have the aliasing corrected.
Check the other episodes; I’m looking at episode 2’s encode right now (which isn’t released since we haven’t subbed it yet, but that’s besides the point) and it doesn’t seem to have aliasing issues like episode 1. I wonder if I screwed up somewhere in that one.
Short version: H.264 versions are CRF (CRF18 to be exact). XviD versions are for people stuck with devices from 2003.
About the Xvids’ bitrate, since the main point is compatibility with DVD players and such (because really, your CPU has to be ancient if it can’t play 640×480 H264), I’m setting the sizes so it all fits in 2 DVDs as opposed to 2 DVDs and a CD or something. Some people actually care about that, plus quality isn’t the target when it comes to Xvid.
And yeah, we see the aliasing thing. It’s most likely some IVTC issue, we’ll see what we can do.
Ah, that makes sense. Although (if I was making the choice, which I am not) I would probably go with making it all fit in 3 DVDs to reduce the ringing, especially seeing as Tamers has 51 episodes and 51 is divisible by three but not by two.
Good luck with IVTC or whatever else causes the aliasing[-like] effect! (To be honest I can’t imagine why/how IVTC would cause this, given that there are no other IVTC problems visible… I wonder if I am just missing something obvious.) This is the only reason why I can’t say this is the single best encode yet. *thinks of asking The Wild Bunch why their encode is so bad compared to this*
Puto, I’ve taken a look at (I should really say watched) episodes 16 and 17 so far. The episodes themselves seemed clean but the final shots of both eyecatches in both episodes had initial aliasing (even during the fade-in) that suddenly resolved itself after a few frames much like in the building shot in episode 1, and on top of that some ringing that also resolved itself but another couple of frames later (barely noticeable when watching normally but still curious). I’ve checked now and it happens in episode 1 too, but not in the old Xvid raws. The eyecatch in the H.264 version by The Wild Bunch is not perfect either, but the artifacts are different.
By the way (this is something I didn’t check yesterday), all the aliasing visible in your H.264 encode of episode 1 also shows up in the exact same places in your Xvid encode, so this at least confirms that the problem must be somewhere before the final encoding.
When watching episode 16, I also noticed that there are lights in the city at 13:28 even though Sinduramon has just eaten all the electricity, but I doubt you can (or indeed should) fix that. :P I also realized I’d never before paid attention to just how hand-drawn the backgrounds look. (And IMO it is a good thing that they do… gives a warm and fuzzy feeling.) And in episode 17 I noticed that I can’t find the BGM playing in the first card slash sequence (starting at 12:08; it’s a saxophone version of SLASH!!) in the OSTs.
Oh, and at the end of the second eyecatch there’s some aliasing-flickering-how-should-I-call-it at the top.
The sax versions of Slash and Evo were never released, unfortunately :(
And yeah, the old xvid raws really killed the hand drawn appearance of the backgrounds. I only noticed it after I watched Wild Bunch’s releases, and later the DVDs.
The Xvid encode is a re-encode of the H.264 encode, so all the issues would necessarily carry over. No idea about the artifacts.