Serial Experiments Lain

[bobawesome]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

After finishing the first 9 episodes in the set I have to say that I'm not as bothered by the banding issue as I thought I would be. What really sticks out to me, however, are the untouched scenes left in SD, especially one episode later on. It's a pretty glaring change when it happens but I'm sure there are technical reasons why they were left the way they are. Overall, I'd say that I'm still satisfied with the purchase as it's a beautiful set and the show looks acceptable for the most part.

[superdry]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

Nice to see this getting the Classic release treatment and looking at the cover it looks really nice. Is there any way this could perhaps benefit from an improved encode like the one Samurai Champloo Bluray Classic received?

Probably not much hope of that when Geneon is likely shipping out degraded materials to anyone who licensed it. The AU release also seems to have the same banding issue.

Not that it's helping matters when you have technical geniuses at FUNimation brightening the video for their Blu-ray discs in order to exacerbate inherent animation flaws and potentially create other video issues. Because, y'know, that's such a great thing to do, and so many fans have been asking for it.

Maybe this is nitpicky, but it's not FUNimation brightening the video so much as they aren't adjusting their settings to compensate for the differences between NTSC in Japan and North America, isn't it?

That is most likely the case, but difference in black levels between NTSC-J and U shouldn't matter with digital video (someone can correct me if I'm wrong) - it should be all the same.

[Sensuifu]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

Nice to see this getting the Classic release treatment and looking at the cover it looks really nice. Is there any way this could perhaps benefit from an improved encode like the one Samurai Champloo Bluray Classic received?

Probably not much hope of that when Geneon is likely shipping out degraded materials to anyone who licensed it. The AU release also seems to have the same banding issue.

Not that it's helping matters when you have technical geniuses at FUNimation brightening the video for their Blu-ray discs in order to exacerbate inherent animation flaws and potentially create other video issues. Because, y'know, that's such a great thing to do, and so many fans have been asking for it.

Maybe this is nitpicky, but it's not FUNimation brightening the video so much as they aren't adjusting their settings to compensate for the differences between NTSC in Japan and North America, isn't it?

That is most likely the case, but difference in black levels between NTSC-J and U shouldn't matter with digital video (someone can correct me if I'm wrong) - it should be all the same.

Dual standards do have an effect. It's up to the studio to adjust appropriately, otherwise you'll get problems as seen with a lot of titles that look 'washed out' or vice-versa.

[Skywise]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

[QUOTE=Sensuifu;210536][QUOTE=superdry;210499]

Dual standards do have an effect. It's up to the studio to adjust appropriately, otherwise you'll get problems as seen with a lot of titles that look 'washed out' or vice-versa.

Actually the studio doesn't have to do anything of the sort. DVD (and BD) don't have NTSC-J and U disc wise - it's all just YUV. NTSC-J for black level only matters with analog outputs, and on the player hardware side (if you have a Japanese DVD player bought in Japan for instance). Calibrating the TV properly for black level according to the input should take care of any issues.

Or to put it another way, if you have a calibrated setup and things look like crap, the studio screwed up, and it has nothing to do with NTSC standards.

EDIT: To add - the only time the studio will have to adjust for NTSC black levels is if they're using old analog masters. Digital masters are completely different and not affected by it.

[Sensuifu]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

Actually the studio doesn't have to do anything of the sort. DVD (and BD) don't have NTSC-J and U disc wise - it's all just YUV. NTSC-J for black level only matters with analog outputs, and on the player hardware side (if you have a Japanese DVD player bought in Japan for instance). Calibrating the TV properly for black level according to the input should take care of any issues.

Or to put it another way, if you have a calibrated setup and things look like crap, the studio screwed up, and it has nothing to do with NTSC standards.

EDIT: To add - the only time the studio will have to adjust for NTSC black levels is if they're using old analog masters. Digital masters are completely different and not affected by it.

I'm still curious to what really happened with this release. It's hard to say whether or not the blacks levels aren't a result of bad monitoring, but I'm guessing that could be the issue. I did mention something about in the past. Regardless of the output, the levels don't appear correct; even with a calibrated setup, the release still looks awful. Viewers can essentially 'match' the settings to the studio's, but the results are still the same. I haven't seen an instance in this thread stating otherwise. If the other, international releases exhibit the same problems, notably if they were given the same masters FUNi used, then it's hard to tell who's really at fault. I doubt the other studios are using FUNi's encode, but that would be funny if that's really the case.

[Skywise]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

Mismatched levels is a possibility. If 16-240 got treated as if it was 0-255 somehow, you'd get brighter blacks, darker whites, crushed blacks and highlights along with compressed dynamic range. Does that match what you've been seeing? You can re-calibrate the display chain to compensate for the levels, but you'd still get some artifacting as a result. Basically figure out how many clicks on the remote it is from 0-16 using a calibration disc, then do the same amount of clicks to get to the approximate new black level at around 30. Repeat for 255-240.

[Sensuifu]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

Mismatched levels is a possibility. If 16-240 got treated as if it was 0-255 somehow, you'd get brighter blacks, darker whites, crushed blacks and highlights along with compressed dynamic range. Does that match what you've been seeing? You can re-calibrate the display chain to compensate for the levels, but you'd still get some artifacting as a result. Basically figure out how many clicks on the remote it is from 0-16 using a calibration disc, then do the same amount of clicks to get to the approximate new black level at around 30. Repeat for 255-240.

Pretty much. That's why I was suspicious about the inconsistent levels, though that's only a part of the entire problem with this release. Now I'm really curious if they'll slip a corrected encode under the radar with the upcoming Classics release. Slim chance, but you can never tell with FUNi.

[Hayate Kurogane]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

Mismatched levels is a possibility. If 16-240 got treated as if it was 0-255 somehow, you'd get brighter blacks, darker whites, crushed blacks and highlights along with compressed dynamic range. Does that match what you've been seeing? You can re-calibrate the display chain to compensate for the levels, but you'd still get some artifacting as a result. Basically figure out how many clicks on the remote it is from 0-16 using a calibration disc, then do the same amount of clicks to get to the approximate new black level at around 30. Repeat for 255-240.

Pretty much. That's why I was suspicious about the inconsistent levels, though that's only a part of the entire problem with this release. Now I'm really curious if they'll slip a corrected encode under the radar with the upcoming Classics release. Slim chance, but you can never tell with FUNi.

Considering their response at one convention when asked about Lain at the height of the online concern about the visible banding was to publicly berate fans for not having good enough equipment, and that this isn't the only release of theirs to exhibit PQ discrepancies versus the Japanese release, I highly doubt they'll suddenly now feel that there's anything wrong and take steps to correct anything, either with this re-release or other new titles going forward.

[WTK]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

via TRSI...

• Serial Experiments Lain: Complete Collection (Blu-ray / DVD Combo) (Classic Line) - $325 minutes - $39.98 - 1/28/14

New release date: May 20, 2014.

[Just Passing Through]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

I've read through this thread and could find no mention of it, so I wonder if anyone could help me?

I've got the recent Australian release of Lain, on DVD and BD which look to be pretty much clones of the US discs. However, as I started watching Blu-ray disc 1, I noticed that the next episode previews are missing. The live action bits with Lain's voice actress Kaoru Shimizu. They are on the old Pioneer sourced DVDs I still have.

Does the US Blu-ray (or the DVDs in the collection) have the next episode previews? Just for point of interest, the runtime for Blu-ray disc 1 is 215:16

[Zhou]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

I've read through this thread and could find no mention of it, so I wonder if anyone could help me?

I've got the recent Australian release of Lain, on DVD and BD which look to be pretty much clones of the US discs. However, as I started watching Blu-ray disc 1, I noticed that the next episode previews are missing. The live action bits with Lain's voice actress Kaoru Shimizu. They are on the old Pioneer sourced DVDs I still have.

Does the US Blu-ray (or the DVDs in the collection) have the next episode previews? Just for point of interest, the runtime for Blu-ray disc 1 is 215:16

The US BD set doesn't include the next episode previews either.

[Just Passing Through]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

The US BD set doesn't include the next episode previews either.

Just once I'd like to get a Blu-ray and be able to ditch the DVD into the bin. I'm running out of space. Next episode previews and those cryptic Easter Eggs...

Thanks for the quick reply BTW

[Hayate Kurogane]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

I've read through this thread and could find no mention of it, so I wonder if anyone could help me?

I've got the recent Australian release of Lain, on DVD and BD which look to be pretty much clones of the US discs. However, as I started watching Blu-ray disc 1, I noticed that the next episode previews are missing. The live action bits with Lain's voice actress Kaoru Shimizu. They are on the old Pioneer sourced DVDs I still have.

Does the US Blu-ray (or the DVDs in the collection) have the next episode previews? Just for point of interest, the runtime for Blu-ray disc 1 is 215:16

The US BD set doesn't include the next episode previews either.

The next episode previews on the Pioneer R1 DVDs weren't included in line with the episodes, though. They were on the discs as extras.

Incidentally, they're still included only as extras in the Japanese Blu-ray set. Even if FUNimation's release did include them, they wouldn't play with the episodes or be included in a player's displayed runtime. So, anyway, rather than having them sliced out of the episodes, FUNimation apparently just never licensed them as part of the ancillary material (or were not actually able to license them).

[Just Passing Through]

Re: Serial Experiments Lain

I've read through this thread and could find no mention of it, so I wonder if anyone could help me?

I've got the recent Australian release of Lain, on DVD and BD which look to be pretty much clones of the US discs. However, as I started watching Blu-ray disc 1, I noticed that the next episode previews are missing. The live action bits with Lain's voice actress Kaoru Shimizu. They are on the old Pioneer sourced DVDs I still have.

Does the US Blu-ray (or the DVDs in the collection) have the next episode previews? Just for point of interest, the runtime for Blu-ray disc 1 is 215:16

The US BD set doesn't include the next episode previews either.

The next episode previews on the Pioneer R1 DVDs weren't included in line with the episodes, though. They were on the discs as extras.

Incidentally, they're still included only as extras in the Japanese Blu-ray set. Even if FUNimation's release did include them, they wouldn't play with the episodes or be included in a player's displayed runtime. So, anyway, rather than having them sliced out of the episodes, FUNimation apparently just never licensed them as part of the ancillary material (or were not actually able to license them).

They do play in-line with the MVM/Madman Ent discs I have, although they aren't pressed onto the disc 'in-line' Bit of a clunky back and forth by the player at that point.

I had a bit of a think about it, and I can see why they aren't on the Blu-rays. After all, they are live action video, shot most probably as NTSC 30fps equivalent. There's no way of remaking them the way they re-animated the CG in the show. So the Blu-rays would have either had to be in 1080i as in the Cowboy Bebop discs, or they would have have been upscaled and converted to 24p, which probably would have been too messy. Would have been nice to have them in the extras though as in the Japanese release as you say.

[WTK]

https://twitter.com/deijoubu/status/1147543866171523072

NBC Universal just announced that for the next 9 years they are making Serial Experiments Lain open source! #lainTTL https://www.nbcuni.co.jp/rondorobe/anime/lain/ttl/

https://twitter.com/deijoubu/status/1147547473218433029

Reading through it some more, NBCU has given fans carte blanche to use the Lain intellectual property however they want; video games, VR, fan zines, apps, etc. Existing images, video footage, etc. from original slow are still off limits, everything else is fair game though.