Ghost in the Shell

[professorwho]

The company who did the "restoration" for the UHD was Q-Tec, who are the place where anime goes to die.

First, some background- most anime produced between 2000 and 2008 were composited at SD 480p, so, when released on Blu-ray, they have to be upscaled. Q-Tec has a process called FORS where they smear the sh*t out of the image reducing the jagginess of some upscales, but lots of details are lost. Now, they've done this to quite a lot of anime, and even to live action films. FORS also works with native HD content, so you get disasters like the Japanese BD of Seven Samurai- the grain is mostly gone, and is is smeared to a great degree.

Perhaps the worst stuff they've done are the UHDs for TMS, specifically Space Adventure Cobra, Ashita no Joe 2, and Lupin III The Secret of Mamo. They'll be destroying Miyazaki's Cagliostro later this year. Here's an example of how bad their process can be (from Cobra):




Their FORS process looses actual lines in the animation, which explains the loss in detail with GitS '95.

Q-Tec does other stuff in Japan about anime production, but they don't ruin anything unlike their upscale work and, well, anything with FORS. So, there's an explanation as to why the UHD of GitS '95 looks the way it does. For me, the definitive release is the remastered 2017 BD using the older scan, but not windowboxed, slightly higher bitrate (old: 34.57 mbps; new: 38.63 mbps), and 24-bit audio.

[Doctor M]

Looks like Disney 'restored' animated BDs.

[drood]

Very interesting. FORS is actually the name of a whole digital mastering system:
there are some details on Q-Tec's website. They look completely obsessed by PSNR...
Hence the Disney-like results, I guess.

[captainsolo]

Someone gifted me the LD and I've always wanted to see this. I had no idea the video history was this convoluted and since the LD is without subs I wondered if there was a decent version of the original cut with English subs and Japanese audio. Is the US reissue BD is an okay place to start or would I be okay watching the LD with the English dub for a first time viewing?

[bronan]

I like the English dub   8)

[Doctor M]

Yeah. GitS has a superior English dub (as does most of the series). Also, there are big info dumps AND action, reading subtitles can be a bit of a challenge with this franchise.

[professorwho]

Someone gifted me the LD and I've always wanted to see this. I had no idea the video history was this convoluted and since the LD is without subs I wondered if there was a decent version of the original cut with English subs and Japanese audio. Is the US reissue BD is an okay place to start or would I be okay watching the LD with the English dub for a first time viewing?

https://www.amazon.co.jp/Ghost-in-the-Sh...B01N12EY85
The best looking release. With English subs and the dub (if you're into that- I personally prefer watching foreign movies in their native language).

The US reisue is fine, I guess, but it's windowboxed and has audio mixing issues in the dub, so I'd go with the Japanese release I linked.

[ribowski]

First of all hello
My search for the best GITS version out there brought me here.
I wanted to address the brown/black line controversy. Brownish lines on cels are an effect of exposure to sun - you can't do that, if you do that, the lines fade and ultimately you ruin a cel. That's because cels were made by photocopying of pencil drawings - basically they xeroxed them to celuloids. So, for obvious reasons, the longer the cel is exposed to sunlight, the more outline/strokes fade, and the paint remains. This ruined many exceptional animation cels circling the fan market - the biggest harm being done to Akira cels.

Der richter, you've done an amazing job with GITS. One thing I can't understand though is why did you settle for that overal, reddish tint? With all that zealous work and being super meticulous and thorough, you clearly stray away from the original color scheme of the movie and intention of people who gave it life. Why being so careful with all the details and little things while being pretty much careless with one of the most important aspects of the movie? Don't get me wrong, I don't want to discredit your work, I'm just interested about the decision process behind that.

[drood]

@ribowski nice info, how did you learn about their "xerox process"? Looking at his screenshots comparisons it does not seem to me like Der Richter is using the orange/2.0 color grading, however. By the way, he recently announced v3 as "upcoming".

[der richter]

the question is more like what is the original/intended colour scheme and the intention of original people? i can't tell/know what was intended or not.

the original TV stream obviously had a very reddish tint. i already toned it down considerably. if we consider this the original intentions, then the colder look of the BD is wrong. if one considers the BD as intended look, then yeah you wouldn't want the reddish look. though then it begs the question why consider the BD as intended look? there are many questionable decision they made for the BD that surely weren't intended. looking at the DVD for example there are many scenes that a more reddish than the BD too.

i still wonder how the original theatrical release looked in the cinema, because surely that would be the original look?

there is not much behind my choice. i took the TV stream as is and white balanced and slightly colour balanced it, to remove a considerably amount of reds (or rather shift the colours around). my intentions at that point was not to imitate any of the other sources and neither was it to interpret any kind 'what is the original colour scheme'. this step was just to make it look 'pure' and consistent again and to make logic choices. if there is not a definite answer in the end it's hard to please everyone. so i just made the first needed adjustments that are mostly uncontroversial. besides that, avisynth isn't the greatest tool to do proper colour grading with. anyway from this step onwards it should be relatively easy to get to a wanted colour scheme again, if one can get definite facts about it. i am open for discussion for that. even better if we can back it up somehow. maybe interviews with the director?

another thing, you are the first person who even asked or complained about it, so i didn't think about it as a big deal. to be quite frank i expected a lot more input of more knowledge people, since i can do the technical stuff but not all the research, but i didn't get much or any help at all besides some of the menial work. most people only ever complain, without being specific and when asked they never reply.

my v3 is encoding to a lossless intermediate atm. i still need to test encoding settings and i most likely need to rework the subs. there were a few complaints about them, since i apparently picked a suboptimal translation. though when asked for help what to pick i didn't get any replies.

i can only repeat myself. if anyone wants this project to go into a certain direction, feel free to offer your help (i don't really care how much longer it will take by now, hell even a v4 is possible). for many years now i am mostly by myself and investing a lot of time. obviously i can't only make decisions that please everyone or only the 'right' ones, even less without any kind of feedback. my plan for now is, to make a new test encode from the lossless filter. after that i was planing to make a download available for people who care, for their feedback. if there are still (bigger) things to do/fix i will make the necessary adjustments and make a new lossless encode. a lossless encode will take 30-40 days, so there most likely won't be a new release this year anymore. just drop me a PM, drop by on irc, i can give people my mail address, or any kind of other way to communicate if wanted.

one can find a new comparison at the link below. "Judgment v3 filter" are screenshots from the direct filter. i did a lot of small changes to filtering regarding, dehaloing, colour and white balance, stabilisation, cropping, logo removal, ITVC, the heavy filtering, chroma fixes (mostly because the new TV stream is different in various ways). the most obvious change is the reconstruction of the grain. it obviously looks a lot more dirty than my v2 now, which was completely degrained. frankly i am not completely happy with the new grain, some scenes couldn't be reconstructed at all and what was left of the 'good' grain is of various different quality. it's quite inconsistent.
http://comp.judging.it/index.php?seriesi...id=1080p-3

hm... that was quite a wall of text.