BakaBT > Torrent Requests Archive
Cardcaptor Sakura
DaggerLite:
Coming from this thread, I just thought I'd comment that Sakura's release both looks the best and is the smallest in filesize out of all of these. The others look grainy to me, while Sakura looks pretty smooth. I'm personally not a fan of coloured subs, but as long as it's a static colour for all dialogue it's okay. they chose a colour that somewhat fit the show anyway, and doesn't cause too much contrast.
Dasbreko said that it looks smoothed and contains less detail than the other too. The fact that it looks smoother is a good thing in my mind, and I don't really see the detail loss in the shots I checked. Even the "lines" across Sakura's face in shot 6 are easily spotted. The grain in the others is however pretty distracting, and should've been filtered out.
namaiki:
It's cell animation, so originally it would tend to look grainy at least to an extent. However, it has been remastered so you would have to compare to the source.
Desbreko:
Grain is detail when it's part of the source.
Also, look at shot 07. Most of the detail in the background there is stationary texture and not grain, yet it still gets smoothed out in Sakura's encode.
DaggerLite:
Grain can be part of the source material, sure. I think the CCS Blu-ray release is just a remastered edition of the old release, but I don't really follow the news around this show, so I won't argue on that point. Grain being part of the original does not, however, mean that leaving it in for an encode is better than successfully filtering or "smudging" it out. Grain is not an "intended" part of the image, but it requires effort to remove without losing any image quality.
I think Sakura has done a great job on their encode, because all the actual detail (in the screenshots provided) is still retained. The "texture" on the door as you say is not really texture. It's just grain that can be interpreted as texture if your mind is good-willed enough. It's the exact same "texture" as elsewhere. When talking about actual detail, I'll point out a few that look perfectly fine in all three releases of shot 07: The switches are visible, Sakura's blurred hair is fully visible in front of the door/wall and the yellowish horizontal line in the middle of the door is visible in all releases.
There are two cons about removing grain in my mind right now:
* The same effect (removing grains) can be achieved with player filters, while adding retrieving the original image from Sakura's release cannot.
* Sakura's lines may look slightly less defined/blurry, which is the main reason I can see against removing grains in most cases. I do however think that this has been done exceptionally well in this case, and I can barely notice the less defined lines compared to KAA and SMC's release. This is even looking at a still frame. Looking at the moving picture, no one will be able to notice the slight blur.
Some pros could be:
* It brings out the intended picture in certain cases. Sticking to 07, Sakura's dress (below the collar) has its intended colour in Sakura's release whereas the grain in the KAA and SMC makes it lighter than intended.
* Less grains gives a less distracting image and doing this in the encode require less effort on the user side, be it messing with filters or the power required by the machine to do so on the go.
Besides all that has been said, Sakura's release is significantly smaller:
* Ep1 :: Sakura 335.874.971 :: KAA 498.843.438 :: SMC 624.780.218
* Ep2 :: Sakura 332.434.602 :: KAA 445.754.929 :: SMC 624.928.057
* Ep3 :: Sakura 325.614.853 :: KAA 534.793.453 :: SMC 625.644.855
Sadly, in the end, all of the releases are horribly slow from what I can see. If BakaBT doesn't mind waiting, my order would be Sakura > KAA > SMC for this particular show. Then again, I don't really care much about CCS personally. Just bringing my views to the light.
Edit
Looking more closely on the ones you pointed out earlier, I can see that certain important details were lost in Sakura's encode. Specifically, the glow of the ring in 03 and the obvious roofs having faded in with the shades in 09. I still personally think Sakura's encode looks better overall considering the decent job on the grains, though.
kristen:
For one thing, I really do not like SMC's OP/ED. If you're going to have an OP like CCS with the kanji at the bottom, style it! >.<
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