Macross Plus in HD?

[Pat S]

Edit: For people clicking the link, you might have to click the little HD button at the lower right of the video to see the HD version, then click fullscreen.

I didn't think there was an HD release yet. This looked sharper than the DVD remaster I thought. What do you guys think?

Edited September 12, 2009 by Pat S

[007-vf1]

Whatever that was it looked awesome..

[hutch]

Agreed. That looked incredible.

Some of the 'HD' DYRL stuff looks pretty good too...

[SchizophrenicMC]

HD Macross Plus is HD

[hissatsu]

It's not HD. It look like someone ripped some video from the Japanese HD remaster DVD box released in 2007, boosted the saturation and contrast, then did some heavy filtering on it. There's no more actual detail there than on the those DVDs (actually less since the filtering has blurred away some detail and removed all the film grain) and more macroblocking/banding. Since HD masters were created for those DVDs, one can hope that Bandai Visual will get out around to releasing it on Blu-ray eventually, and it should look quite a bit better than this.

Edited September 12, 2009 by hissatsu

[Pat S]

It's not HD. It look like someone ripped some video from the Japanese HD remaster DVD box released in 2007, boosted the saturation and contrast, then did some heavy filtering on it. There's no more actual detail there than on the those DVDs (actually less since the filtering blurs away some detail). Since HD masters were created for those DVDs, one can hope that Bandai Visual will get out around to releasing it on Blu-ray eventually, and it should look quite a bit better than this.

Does anyone know if youtube compresses or has you compress the video to a certain format (.flv?) before uploading? I suspect so, as a HD .mkv file in the same length as this video would be several hundred megabytes, and I don't think youtube would have the bandwidth to upload that constantly for the trillions of videos they host. If there is compression, then this vid looks worse than it really is.

I thought of that upscaling and color changing thing, as I remember a few years ago, there was a lot of that going on with decoders like ffdshow. People were sharing settings that really cleaned up anime video playback compression artifacts.

[BeyondTheGrave]

Looks good to me. but I haven't watched M+ in a while.

[UN Spacy]

I've never seen Macross Plus look that good before.

[Keith]

Definately a bit soft, but hopefully BV will put 2 & 2 together, and realize Macross + Bluray = Sales.

[Ignacio Ocamica]

I've never seen Macross Plus look that good before.

Couldn't agree more!!!

[ChronoReverse]

Hmm, looks similar to the Macross Plus remastered movie dvd image with a bit of sharpening. A full HD release would be nice but I hope they clean up the cels even more. The remastered version has a lot more details but you can also see some artifacts (from when they did the animation) because it's so much clearer.

[Knight26]

Gorgeous, and if you watch carefully at the end, you will see a trio of VF-17s parked on the ramp that the YF-19n lands on, they are right in front of the VF-11 battroids.

[SchizophrenicMC]

Gorgeous, and if you watch carefully at the end, you will see a trio of VF-17s parked on the ramp that the YF-19n lands on, they are right in front of the VF-11 battroids.

He's right. 2 are trainers, it appears, and one is a run-of-the-mill D-variant.

Also, when YouTube created the HQ/HD system, they added MP4 compression to the site. Normal quality is compressed to FLV, which reduces quality a fair bit. HQ and HD are compressed to MP4 which adds some JPEG artifacts, but is far better than FLV.

Not quite MKV but good enough for me.

By the way, Hissatsu, it is HD if it's in a 720p or higher resolution. If it was any lower, the HD option on YouTube would be HQ.

[ChronoReverse]

It's 720p but it's so much more blurred.

M+ remastered DVD:

M+ Youtube 720p:

It's bigger but note all the lost details.

Here's the upscaled (but not sharpened) version of the DVD:

Edited September 13, 2009 by ChronoReverse

[hissatsu]

By the way, Hissatsu, it is HD if it's in a 720p or higher resolution. If it was any lower, the HD option on YouTube would be HQ.

I'm not talking about Youtube's HD. There are plenty of "HD" videos on Youtube that are anything but HD. If the original video isn't HD in the first place, it doesn't mean much, and this Macross Plus clip is almost surely based off the remastered DVDs, not any sort of HD source. ChronoReverse's post really shows all the detail that is blurred out of this clip compared to the remastered DVDs.

Edited September 13, 2009 by hissatsu

[Fortress_Maximus]

Not bad but looking forward to a real HD version of M+, tv and DYRL.

[BeyondTheGrave]

It would be nice to have a HD version of M+ . Wish someone would be smart and make it happen.

Edited September 13, 2009 by BeyondTheGrave

[akt_m]

He's right. 2 are trainers, it appears, and one is a run-of-the-mill D-variant.

Also, when YouTube created the HQ/HD system, they added MP4 compression to the site. Normal quality is compressed to FLV, which reduces quality a fair bit. HQ and HD are compressed to MP4 which adds some JPEG artifacts, but is far better than FLV.

Not quite MKV but good enough for me.

By the way, Hissatsu, it is HD if it's in a 720p or higher resolution. If it was any lower, the HD option on YouTube would be HQ.

I think MKV is just the container, what changes the quality is the codec and the bitrate used (mostly, but there are other parameters), youtube mp4 uses H264, the same that is also used in most MKV HD fansubs.

Never realized that there were 3 VF-17. Were they there since the begining or just added after Macross 7???

[SchizophrenicMC]

Well, while MKV is just a container, it is capable of supporting HD, and usually does, as AVIs are smaller and do the same, albeit with less quality.

Anywho, you can make a non-HD source HD if you do enough to it, sharpening and detailing and whatnot. It's not as good as if it was MADE in HD, but it's hella better than the original.

For example, look at Star Wars. In 1977, it came out okay. 20 years later, they went in, sharpened it, added some scenes Lucas had never gotten around to, and it came out leagues better than the originals.

Now, it was no HD transition, but you get the picture.

[ChronoReverse]

Looking at the unremastered version of the movie, it appears to be still there.

With that said, Plus OVA came out a few months before 7 while the Plus Movie came out during 7 (according to the wiki).

[hissatsu]

Anywho, you can make a non-HD source HD if you do enough to it, sharpening and detailing and whatnot. It's not as good as if it was MADE in HD, but it's hella better than the original.

For example, look at Star Wars. In 1977, it came out okay. 20 years later, they went in, sharpened it, added some scenes Lucas had never gotten around to, and it came out leagues better than the originals.

Now, it was no HD transition, but you get the picture.

This is not so much mistaken as it is misleading. "Made in HD" has no meaning if it was done on film. Star Wars was done on 35mm film, like most movies (and most likely Macross Plus, as most OVAs were done on 35 mm film). 35mm film has a much higher level of detail than any HD video format. Film may need to be cleaned up, damage repaired, and a new telecine needs to be done, but no sharpening is necessary. Even movies over 50 years old are quite capable of taking full advantage of of Blu-ray as long as a good film print is available.

The issue of thing not being made in HD only matters when it comes to all digital productions or edited on video. Then they're stuck at whatever resolution/level of detail they were originally made at, and no amount of sharpening or filtering can fix that. They might make it look better to some people, but in reality it only removes some of the little detail that was present. When it comes to anime, it's not older shows that can't take advantage of HD, it's shows from the late 90s - late 00s that are the problem. Most were produced digitally in SD, and they won't look any better on Blu-ray (aside from the lack of artifacting compared to DVD) without entirely re-animating the show (which has not been done for any show I know of, and probably won't be done).

As for Macross, DYRL, TV, Plus, and Seven have all had HD remaster DVD boxes released in the past few years. Bandai Visual could release Blu-ray versions at any moment if they felt like it, but they need to squeeze as many DVD sales out of these shows as possible before releasing them on Blu-ray (which is pretty annoying).

[Keith]

I'm pretty sure 7 & Plus were in production during the same (or very close) period of time, i.e. the VF-17 was likely already designed when it came time to toss it into Plus.

[VT 1010]

That doesn't look like it is truly in HD. It is more than likely upscaled. If you look at the cap from the DVD and then the one from the "HD" youtube clip, you'll notice the HD clip doesn't seem to have any visible grain. If was really at a higher resolution, then it should at least have just as much grain--if not more--than the DVD. It looks like they also messed with the contrast a bit on the HD clip to give it more "pop."

[Vepariga]

that was nice,crisp and very clean visuals, hopefully they'll give plus a blu-ray release.

[SchizophrenicMC]

This is not so much mistaken as it is misleading. "Made in HD" has no meaning if it was done on film. Star Wars was done on 35mm film, like most movies (and most likely Macross Plus, as most OVAs were done on 35 mm film). 35mm film has a much higher level of detail than any HD video format. Film may need to be cleaned up, damage repaired, and a new telecine needs to be done, but no sharpening is necessary. Even movies over 50 years old are quite capable of taking full advantage of of Blu-ray as long as a good film print is available.

The issue of thing not being made in HD only matters when it comes to all digital productions or edited on video. Then they're stuck at whatever resolution/level of detail they were originally made at, and no amount of sharpening or filtering can fix that. They might make it look better to some people, but in reality it only removes some of the little detail that was present. When it comes to anime, it's not older shows that can't take advantage of HD, it's shows from the late 90s - late 00s that are the problem. Most were produced digitally in SD, and they won't look any better on Blu-ray (aside from the lack of artifacting compared to DVD) without entirely re-animating the show (which has not been done for any show I know of, and probably won't be done).

As for Macross, DYRL, TV, Plus, and Seven have all had HD remaster DVD boxes released in the past few years. Bandai Visual could release Blu-ray versions at any moment if they felt like it, but they need to squeeze as many DVD sales out of these shows as possible before releasing them on Blu-ray (which is pretty annoying).

Well, I was talking about how cleanly they made the cels, more than anything. I know 35mm is still the highest-quality, just by its nature, but if the cels had that crap in them, it'd be a lot harder to clean up than a film reel, and you'd probably have to end up running them again to get the recording. This is, of course, if they didn't do the original record in 35mm. I'm not sure what medium Macross Plus was recorded on before editing and distribution, come to think of it.

I know Zero and Frontier are both digitally drawn, the latter in HD.

By the by, I know a lot of differences appear in the animation between TV, DVD, and Blu-ray releases of several anime. Gundam 00, K-on!, and one other come to mind, but I forget the name of the last one. They all had some surprisingly different details between them. Even entire character designs being different, consistently, between the media.

Not saying they reanimated the WHOLE series, but a good bit, for sure.

[JB0]

Well, while MKV is just a container, it is capable of supporting HD, and usually does, as AVIs are smaller and do the same, albeit with less quality.

That has more to do with how the community USES the containers than any real restriction.

While AVI does not support some features of MPEG-4 that MKV does, there is absolutely nothing preventing AVI from being larger or higher-quality than an MKV, either in general or when using an MPEG-4 codec.

Anywho, you can make a non-HD source HD if you do enough to it, sharpening and detailing and whatnot. It's not as good as if it was MADE in HD, but it's hella better than the original.

Actually, HD is being used as a buzzword with no real understanding of the term.

Officially, for TV purposes, high-definition is anything with 720 or more lines of resolution. Regardless of source quality, compression level, or anything else.

For example, look at Star Wars. In 1977, it came out okay. 20 years later, they went in, sharpened it,

You mean "repaired the film degradation so it looked as good as it did when it was first released"

added some scenes Lucas had never gotten around to,

This was a SECOND release. FIRST was the remaster, THEN was the Special Edition. And I have the unedited remaster tapes to prove it.

and it came out leagues better than the originals.

HAN SHOT FIRST.

[SchizophrenicMC]

That has more to do with how the community USES the containers than any real restriction.

While AVI does not support some features of MPEG-4 that MKV does, there is absolutely nothing preventing AVI from being larger or higher-quality than an MKV, either in general or when using an MPEG-4 codec.

ORLY?

Actually, HD is being used as a buzzword with no real understanding of the term.

Officially, for TV purposes, high-definition is anything with 720 or more lines of resolution. Regardless of source quality, compression level, or anything else.

And when you export in HD, you resize the video so it has that many lines of resolution, yes? Thus, on larger screens, it has higher theoretical quality, right?

You mean "repaired the film degradation so it looked as good as it did when it was first released"

I wasn't talking about the Remaster...

This was a SECOND release. FIRST was the remaster, THEN was the Special Edition. And I have the unedited remaster tapes to prove it.

I was talking about the Special Edition. I have both. We actually just had to get rid of an original unremastered tape because it got roaches in it. They EAT the tape. But, save Jedi, I have the remasters and the Special Edition. And, for that matter, even without the film degradation, it was sharper. Again, I bring up the unremastered tape from the 80s. We kept them in dry storage for years. Took 'em out when we moved to my current location, where cockroaches got in and ATE THE TAPES.

HAN SHOT FIRST.

Not in the fixed version.

[Zinjo]

I'm pretty sure 7 & Plus were in production during the same (or very close) period of time, i.e. the VF-17 was likely already designed when it came time to toss it into Plus.

Same time...

[Zinjo]

Well, while MKV is just a container, it is capable of supporting HD, and usually does, as AVIs are smaller and do the same, albeit with less quality.

Anywho, you can make a non-HD source HD if you do enough to it, sharpening and detailing and whatnot. It's not as good as if it was MADE in HD, but it's hella better than the original.

For example, look at Star Wars. In 1977, it came out okay. 20 years later, they went in, sharpened it, added some scenes Lucas had never gotten around to, and it came out leagues better than the originals.

Now, it was no HD transition, but you get the picture.

Not really a great example, since the resolution of 35mm film is still higher than HD (thus far). The biggest challenge to Lucas was remastering a decade old copy and cleaning up the SFX of the movies since the film projectors back then were much more forgiving as compared to how HD tvs are now...

The fact that most of us have become accustomed to the near flawless results of CGI lately, the flaws of old films like Star Wars really stand out to us now! Even with all that he did, there were still several scenes that he missed during the clean up.

I suspect he's working on the blue ray masters for the saga right now... If he gets it done by Christmas, it'll be a massive seller...

[eugimon]

Film isn't just higher, it's significantly higher, the equivalent of 3 to 12 million "pixels" compared to the 2 million of a 1080p digital source.

[Mercurial Morpheus]

It's 720p but it's so much more blurred.

Indeed, pointless upscale is pointless. Judging from the pic, it's upscaled and DNR'd with some oversaturation to boost. It looks okay, but hardly incredible. He didn't go too overboard with the DNR. It even accentuates the unfortunate EE in the remaster.

An upscale does have higher resolution, but the nature of the digital beast is that it's stuck in it's native resolution essentially. Hence adding the lines really doesn't do much outside of bloating the filesize and removing the work of the player's own on the fly upscaler. So even though the film is in 720p, the source is still locked at 480p. Hence you have a DVD in a BD package, nothing more. Add in the DNR to remove the grain (and some detail), because, as Zinjo sort of pointed out, studios are so scared of grain and believe people think HD has to be 100% clear, no matter what the cost (despite no problem with "filmy" theatrical showing), and you have a prime example of just what's wrong with the HD revolution.

I've seen worse though, like Baka Wolf's horrid release of DYRL as well as what they did to the Star Trek movie BDs (ity's so wrong that the TV series looks better than the films due to revenge of the wax people).

I've never uploaded to Youtube, but I believe it converts for you. So this would be lossy compression (DVD, most people forget that one) atop compression (whatever he encoded the file to, x2 if he tweaked a DVD rip instead of the original files, preferably he used a lossless codec, but I doubt it) atop lossy compression (mp4 wrapped in an flv container).

Oh, and the Star Wars trilogy was essentially remastered twice. There was the 1995 THX release. The 97 SEs built off of that, but did add in their own tweaks (like framing). The 2004 DVDs were done in what was basically a rush job (like the rest of the SEs) by Lowry. They're really sharp and clear, but they all but outright destroy the proper look of the film to match Lucas' beloved prequel trilogy.

Lowry may have cleaned up Star Wars, but the punched contrast, horrid blue tint, and messed up sound just added insult to injury with Lucas' amateurish and needless CGI (seriously, the SEs were some of the worst work ever to come out of ILM, 96's Star Trek First Contact has better effects. It was a painfully obvious rush job, the old models, while not as nimble, looking far more realistic), and horrid revisionism. I'll take the smeary old laserdisc rips of the real trilogy to the cold, digital nightmares featuring things like Hayden's head taken from an Ep III outtake he seems to feel is his "true vision".

It's pretty sad when fans can produce better versions than the official release (like the color corrected and/or de-SEed fan edits. Even the edits that add more changes and actually fix things that were broken unlike the SE's CGI orgy )

But this thread isn't about Star Wars. Thank goodness for sites like Originaltrilogy.com.

Thanks for the numbers Eugimon. It reminds me of why I get so peeved over what the fad of Digital 3D is doing to our theatres.

[Keith]

True, but a proper source transfer to BD, with an even hand controlling the DNR, would still look better than the remaster DVD's due to better compression than can be done on DVD. To me, that would be worth it.

[Mercurial Morpheus]

A source transfer without the DNR period would be preferred. There's rarely an "even hand" in the matter sadly. I hear you on the compression end though. Really, the biggest problem with the Macross remasters is the perhaps overly tweaked contrast and of course, the EE. It would be nice to see a new transfer of DYRL as well, given the rampant soft spots and frame error in the current one.

Edited September 19, 2009 by Mercurial Morpheus

[SchizophrenicMC]

Film isn't just higher, it's significantly higher, the equivalent of 3 to 12 million "pixels" compared to the 2 million of a 1080p digital source.

But I still have trouble comparing the two types of media. One is digital, the other is physical. 35mm film has that limitation, though, of 12 million dots, whereas digital technology will progress and support more in the future. Given, it's not now.

Also, I don't think, for that matter, that dots and pixels are the same measurement, anyhow. I'm confused.

[eugimon]

But I still have trouble comparing the two types of media. One is digital, the other is physical. 35mm film has that limitation, though, of 12 million dots, whereas digital technology will progress and support more in the future. Given, it's not now.

Also, I don't think, for that matter, that dots and pixels are the same measurement, anyhow. I'm confused.

the point is, if you shoot something on film, you can scan it and digitize it to potentially 12 million pixels. When you shoot something on 'HD' you're stuck at whatever resolution you had at the time.