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Info: Discussion on 80's cartoons on DVD....bad aliasing (jaggies)! — Page 2

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I'm not the greatest avisynth wizard/witch/whatever, but here's a quick attempt in avisynth:

changefps("ntsc_film")#29.97 -> 23.976 from a hardblended source

aaa.aaa#reduces jaggies

SmoothD2(quant=4, num_shift=3, Matrix=8, Qtype=4, ZW=0)#deblocking

Do mind that my usage of aaa seems to make it darker without that being the intention, you might want to use daa or daa.daa instead. Should be looked into. Unfortunately (some of the) ex-jaggy parts now look as if they're dancing. :S

There probably is a better way of converting this unfortunately hardblended source to 23.976, the method I used keeps blended frames. Not sure if changefps("ntsc_film") or TFM.TDecimate wpuld do a better job here (you probably don't even need to use TFM on this as nothing in the source probably doesn't look interlaced, though MediaInfo tells me this is interlaced?), though the result is very likely to be the same with both filters because of the nature of this source. It might be better to just leave the framerate as it is in order to not possibly lose frames that should be kept. x.x

And of course mandatory deblocking because this is has noticeable macroblocking at parts. This does make this thing even smoother though, which is an unfortunate side-effect. Settings might need to be tweaked.

TL;DR: With this filtering it looks less jaggy and blocky, but also unfortunately smoother and formerly jaggy parts now look as if they're dancing. I'm sure someone else would be able to make a much better and hopefully less destructive filterchain. Though keep in mind only so much can be done with a bad source like this (DVD is terribly encoded, the source got seriously messed up in the process). Also feel free to correct any possible faults here.

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OmegaMattman said:

I can tell you that both the BCI and Mill Creek Filmmation DVDs suffer from a botched PAL-to-NTSC conversion.

You know, that makes a lot of sense, I never even thought of it. I remember that Dungeons & Dragons was out on DVD in the UK for quite a while before they finally released it in the US, I didn't know other series had the same fate.

skoal said:

However, I am wondering if this is an interlacing issue or even if this is a real issue that can be fixed by our OT enthusiasts.

Shouldn't be too hard to grab the PAL versions and do a -proper- NTSC conversion. I used to have DivX rips of all the PAL D&D episodes, but I'm pretty sure I deleted them after I bought them legit...

Oh well.

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I wish I had the technical know how of some of you guys!  Just got my hands on some episodes of the original Transformers cartoon that was cleaned up and restored to 24fps and it looks glorious!  It's ashame the studios don't show the same love as the fans do!

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Yep! He was kind enough to send me the episodes and they really do look amazing 

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And for whatever reason, the jaggies on Transformers G1 are more prominent on reds, red characters, etc

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I'm now outputting these cartoons at 1080i to the Samsung Plasma, best I can get out of the poorly mastered discs :(

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Yeah definitely a problem with the disc and not how you're playing them back. Besides the jaggies there is also blending, even across scene changes.

I wonder if the other screenshots I saw are from a different release, or if they're just from episodes in this release that aren't aliased.

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drngr said:

Yeah definitely a problem with the disc and not how you're playing them back. Besides the jaggies there is also blending, even across scene changes.

I wonder if the other screenshots I saw are from a different release, or if they're just from episodes in this release that aren't aliased.

 Some episodes are worse than others, the deinterlacing and up scaling in both my player and TV are lacking, I'll see if I can get my buddies Upscaling player with the Fajouda DCDI chip and see if that helps any. 

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I stumbled upon this thread while searching the interwebs for this exact issue!

I notice that some episodes of Season 2 of Masters of the Universe (Mill Creek release) are badly aliased and display noticeable judder in panning scenes.  Some episodes are fine however!

I wonder, does anyone have the PAL releases of these and know if they are they any better?

I specifically bought the NTSC releases because I thought they'd be the same frame rate and resolution that the original episodes were created in, but it seems that that's not necessarily the case!

Also, in reference to the Transformers series, I've made it a labour of love ripping and re-encoding Shout Factory's NTSC release using Handbrake to greatly improve the image quality over the source.  I'm Happy to share the settings I used if anyone's interested.  It's not as good as Firebrandx's rip but he said he did this manually frame by frame and I don't have that kind of patience ;)

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Blew said:

I stumbled upon this thread while searching the interwebs for this exact issue!

I notice that some episodes of Season 2 of Masters of the Universe (Mill Creek release) are badly aliased and display noticeable judder in panning scenes.  Some episodes are fine however!

I wonder, does anyone have the PAL releases of these and know if they are they any better?

I specifically bought the NTSC releases because I thought they'd be the same frame rate and resolution that the original episodes were created in, but it seems that that's not necessarily the case!

Also, in reference to the Transformers series, I've made it a labour of love ripping and re-encoding Shout Factory's NTSC release using Handbreak to greatly improve the image quality over the source.  I'm Happy to share the settings I used if anyone's interested.  It's not as good as Firebrandx's rip but he said he did this manually frame by frame and I don't have that kind of patience ;)

 I too noticed that season 2 of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was very bad looking, season 1 looks pretty good, but season 2... forget about it! I also would be interested to see if the PAL version is better looking, I was wondering the other day about it.

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Some episodes of season 2 seem fine though.  Eg I notice the problem on Fisto's Forest but not on The Rarest Gift of All!

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crampedmisfit1990 said:

I too noticed that season 2 of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was very bad looking, season 1 looks pretty good, but season 2... forget about it!

Ah, well that would explain why I didn't notice anything wrong; we only watched a few episodes from season 1.

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Blew said:

Some episodes of season 2 seem fine though.  Eg I notice the problem on Fisto's Forest but not on The Rarest Gift of All!

 Exactly. Not all episodes are affected, and also some are in the wrong aspect ratio, I have to manually set my TV to 4:3 to get rid of the stretch.  Also the same with Bravestarr!  Amazing half assed job these companies are doing 

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Well currently playing these through a Samsung HD-941 DVD player with the Fajouda De-interlacer / upscaler chip via HDMI and I'm much happier with the picture.  Most of the jaggies are now gone and the picture is cleaner. Black levels suffered a bit, but I'll take that over the horrible jaggies!  Enabled the region free code as well, so next up on my order list is Count Duckula!

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Has anyone figured out how to fix aliasing on the transformers 1984 tv series? Sorry for necro posting I just didn’t know where else to get help on this issue.

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yeah, I own a number of mill creek dvds and some other oddbll “value brands” they all have that sort of problem. Mill creek doesn’t do any sort of quality work. I swear they’ll take multi generational video masters from the prehistoric age and capture them. no high quality releases from that company, just stuff that would otherwise not exist.

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henryperu77 said:

Hi…

I tried a new encode, i stabilized, cleaned and upscaled it to 1080p check it out

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fD_f7Oz8PLfYnhfQa19Yx1e4YA2IdzlH/view?usp=sharing

2 audios - Spanish/English

Looks good, but your cleaning filte might be too aggressive for some shots. There are instances where stars flicker on and off in fast motion, which is a result of them being mistaken for dirt in some frames. I have had the same issue myself restoring Thundercats.

Also, Soundwave’s Spanish voice is lame. 😉

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I just started the same project (picked up the Transformer and GI Joe sets as part of the Prime Day festivities).

I’d be really interested to know what software/settings is/are being used.

The best I’ve done so far is in Handbrake (Filters: {detelecine: default, interlace detection: default, deintrelace: decomb default, denoise: NLmeans light animation, sharpen: LapSharp ultralight animation, deblock: 5}, Video: {Codec: H.265, Framerate: 24 Constant Framerate, Encoder Preset: slow, Encoder Tune: Grain, Constant Quality 18 RF}), it’s better, but it doesn’t look nearly as good as henryperu77’s encode.

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To me that looks pretty good! If I had one comment it would be that I think some of the noise reduction might be a little aggressive. For example, if you look at the shot of Laserbeak flying around 18:20,he vanishes for a moment and then reappears. My files sourced from my US DVDs don’t have that issue, but for the most part I thought they were very good.

Also be aware that the animation quality in Transformers varies greatly. The other episodes in Season 1 are nowhere near the standard of the 3 part pilot!

henryperu77 said:

Hi…

I tried a new encode, i stabilized, cleaned and upscaled it to 1080p check it out

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fD_f7Oz8PLfYnhfQa19Yx1e4YA2IdzlH/view?usp=sharing

2 audios - Spanish/English

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Watched a couple The Transformers (season 2) episodes on the Shout Factory DVDs for the first time in a long while, and while I definitely noticed the aliasing, to me it was only noticeable in maybe 3-5% of each ep, mostly during certain pan shots.

Maybe all that’s needed is to do some minor filtering on the frames where the aliasing is noticeable? I have very little experience with AVIsynth or encoding video, so I couldn’t do this myself.

I didn’t check the Shout Factory DVDs on my PC, but I seem to remember the Rhino DVDs being progressively encoded (for the most part) when I watched them on my PC back in the day, so perhaps they were improperly deinterlaced before encoding, and the Shout Factory DVDs carried over the deinterlacing artifacts? I’ve personally seen a lot of anime DVDs like this in Japan from Toei (mostly 70’s super robot anime), where the episodes were progressive but had bad jaggies during pan shots.

The fact that the episodes were remastered from film makes them more than watchable compared to most US cartoon DVDs IMO, but a proper Blu-ray release would certainly be welcome. Although I seem to remember reading that the producer -(forget his name even though I regularly read the Shout Factory forums back in the day) in charge of animation at Shout Factory hates Blu-ray for whatever reason, not sure if he’s still working there or not.

But I assume if Rhino could remaster all the episodes from film elements for their DVD release, then the film should at least still be available for a new scan, although there still might be a need to have some sequences inserted from the broadcast masters, like the Shout Factory DVDs, since the film that Rhino used was apparently from before certain animation mistakes were fixed for broadcast.

But sheesh, can’t believe it’s been 10 years since the Shout Factory DVDs, and like 20 since the Rhino DVDs… Freaking time, man.

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Buster D said:

Watched a couple The Transformers (season 2) episodes on the Shout Factory DVDs for the first time in a long while, and while I definitely noticed the aliasing, to me it was only noticeable in maybe 3-5% of each ep, mostly during certain pan shots.

Maybe all that’s needed is to do some minor filtering on the frames where the aliasing is noticeable? I have very little experience with AVIsynth or encoding video, so I couldn’t do this myself.

I didn’t check the Shout Factory DVDs on my PC, but I seem to remember the Rhino DVDs being progressively encoded (for the most part) when I watched them on my PC back in the day, so perhaps they were improperly deinterlaced before encoding, and the Shout Factory DVDs carried over the deinterlacing artifacts? I’ve personally seen a lot of anime DVDs like this in Japan from Toei (mostly 70’s super robot anime), where the episodes were progressive but had bad jaggies during pan shots.

The fact that the episodes were remastered from film makes them more than watchable compared to most US cartoon DVDs IMO, but a proper Blu-ray release would certainly be welcome. Although I seem to remember reading that the producer -(forget his name even though I regularly read the Shout Factory forums back in the day) in charge of animation at Shout Factory hates Blu-ray for whatever reason, not sure if he’s still working there or not.

But I assume if Rhino could remaster all the episodes from film elements for their DVD release, then the film should at least still be available for a new scan, although there still might be a need to have some sequences inserted from the broadcast masters, like the Shout Factory DVDs, since the film that Rhino used was apparently from before certain animation mistakes were fixed for broadcast.

But sheesh, can’t believe it’s been 10 years since the Shout Factory DVDs, and like 20 since the Rhino DVDs… Freaking time, man.

I feel ya. The prospects of my favorite shows getting better treatment in the US is slim.
The DVDs for TMNT (1987) and Urusei Yatsura, to name a few, pale next to releases in other countries.

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I recently started watching the Japanese Blu-ray box of The Transformers, unfortunately it’s just the old broadcast masters from the 1999 Japanese DVDs slapped onto SD on BD, MPEG2 encoding and all. Minor composite artifacts, but not too bad.

At least they’re better than the Rhino/Shout DVDs in that they have much more consistent PQ (haven’t compared the broadcast footage on the Shout DVDs, but it might be better), almost perfect film cadence with next to no aliasing, and of course there’s no need to worry about unfixed animation (I think there’s still a couple instances in the Shout DVDs, but not sure).

But a big minus would be the fact that all the episodes (except a handful) only have the Japanese dub audio (which I kinda like since I watch a lot of old anime but it’s no substitute for the original cast), and I think some episodes have minor cuts.

The JP Laserdiscs might be a better option if one has the Domesday86 device, runs a modern Y/C filter and IVTC on the captures, and then adds the English audio + missing cuts. The decoding software for Domesday86 probably still needs some more time to mature, though.

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A Playstation 3 seems to handle the Shout Transformers DVDs pretty good, there is still some minor aliasing visible in pan shots but it doesn’t seem worse than most other animation DVDs.

Have been using a PS3 to watch DVDs and Laserdisc captures more often than my OPPO recently, and I like how the PS3 handles cadence drops, since it blurs the image slightly instead of making it too jagged. Combing also seems less frequent.