Samurai Champloo [NP-Complete] [v2]  

I second nitephire. I saw the material from the first BD release and it wasn't any better than this release. Sure it was bigger in resolution and at first seemed better but if compared side by side didn't show any improvement.
And that's the case for almost all BD "remasters". If distributor rereleases something in newer format it's not granted that he did that because there is some increase in quality (although there usually is in the audio area). Its because he wants to earn money. You can not make logical connection that it was done to improve quality without a proof.

@h00d1um
As someone at rutracker pointed out source of those files are BDs with qtec upscale. For me qtec is the synonym of crap (usual effects are background detail degradation and vertical smearing of sharp lines). Just look at how other "remasters" done with qtec look. Still there is a infinitesmal possibility that qtec treatment was done by someone who is not blind as a mole and who actually wanted to achieve some improvement. I will try to get a hold on that encode and do a comparision.

There was no QTec involved.  The first BD was over-filtered.  The second one is actually decent, but judging from the rips presented, probably no better than the DVD.  There are some upscaled BDs that are better than the DVD, primarily where the DVD had significant MPEG2 artifacts (e.g. FLCL).

Makes me wonder where that screenshot was taken then... First bd release maybe?
Any hints as to which exactly version shows some improvement over the dvd? There are two versions on ADC tracker, but i'm willing to import orginal BDs for myself if they are worth it. Quality of DVD release where I live was crappy enough to successfully deter me from buying it. Even though this is one of the shows i value the most.

I should clarify.  I mean upscaled BDs for some series, not Samurai Champloo, are better than the DVDs for that series.  Typically when the DVD release sucked.  The Champloo DVDS were pretty good, so there isn't a ton of room for improvement like there is with some other series.

Hmm. But quality on BD is not in worse than that on DVD? Sometimes they manage to make the upscale actually look worse than the orginal, vide Haruhi.

The second BD release seems to be about on par with the DVD.

@migrena
The Classic Edition BD has a bit more details (see the roof) and lacks mpeg-2 artifacts. On the other hand BDs are sharpened a bit, so it all comes down to personal preferences more or less. And I prefer BD version.

P.S. The comparison I posted (http://www.check2pic.ru/compare/21225/) is from Classic Edition BD (It's the second one).
The 1st BD release was indeed overfiltered crap.

I cant get this to start download... the tracker show no peers.
Anyone know whats wrong?

@bjosarn

you might want to check if your bittorent is blacklisted.

This was a fun ride all the way.
Very funny at times, sad at others, serious, deep and subtle. It includes all a series should have, plus the animation is very interesting.
Although some might say that the "modern parts" are out of place, I would say that they, together with fantastic music, make this series as special as it is.

If you are a samurai lover, this is a must see. Hell, even if you don't like samurai at all, this is still a must see  

Horrible quality. There's better if you look around  http://www.check2pic.ru/compare/28332/

Personal perference? Judging from that comparison the BD is a no brainer man.



Wow that is horrible. Glad I'm getting Cman's version then.. bugger this. Can't believe nobody's has updated it, that loss of detail and those artifacts are pretty bad. I don't know why you guys didn't jump on LeijonaSisu's offer of the 720 version here http://forums.bakabt.me/index.php?topic=35984.0

Honestly I can't believe how ignorant der richter and Revo were, what a joke.. "do a 576P version"!  for real? So there wouldn't have been much extra detail over a 576 version, big deal. It was under 10 gigs making it smaller than this version, so regardless of his claims he should have been encouraged to upload it so visual comparisons like the one above could have been made to expose just how much better it really was.. instead he got pissed and gave up due to staff and user ignorance and squabbling.

I've compared Cman's release myself to this.. and there's some big differences in some areas, it has less detail in the background but it more than makes it for it with the much cleaner picture and stronger lines. It's a clear win for Cman's release picture quality wise, I like the subtitle font better on this one though.

TL;DR Came here for good ~720 version saw some users pass up the "offer" due to ignorance about the DVD version being "good enough" and Donelop exposes their mistake in full 1080ish glory. BakaBT fail.

This is probably one of my favorite animes period. 10/10

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that doesn't seem to be the same frame. If you look at the mouseover, the motion lines are in different places, and the baseball itself is different. It could just be that one frame was drawn blurrier than the other to represent the fast motion. I really don't know, I'd have to ask the animators. Which means I'd have to learn japanese, fly to Japan, and pester animators about a show from 2004....

Also, when I look at the discussion in the thread about the proposed 720p offer, it seems that the BluRay release is not really much better than the current one. A higher resolution != better quality! When looking at the comparison shots, the 720 and 1080 p versions seemed to be darker... and have some sharpening filter or something like that applied to it. As pointed out here, in the very topic you linked to, http://forums.bakabt.me/index.php?topic=35984.msg4818344#msg4818344 , some detail was lost in the grain of the wood and other places.

From what I understand of what was said, Samurai Champloo was produced with early digital technology at an SD resolution, which means that you can't really get better than that. Please don't be a jerk and complain about a wonderful anime. You should be happy that it's here, available to you free of charge thanks to the power of communism, I mean torrenting.

Well like I said some months back. I got a LOT of interest after making that thread for the 720p version.

At the time I had 4 versions of Samurai Champloo. This one, a really bad 1080p upscale. A really good 720p version with almost no washing but much better outlines and some weird version that was like 690p but was anamorphic and also looked good. But it had some weird scenes in it that I could swear were not in the original anime.

Anyway. I've still got all but the 1080p version. Which was pretty lame. So I'll try offering the 720p again because I think it's very good. Imo it's pretty much the same as this but with better outlines and a little less darker in some patches so you can see more.

Still nice to see that people agreed with me, and imo the uploader of this torrent was a little too defensive and locked up to ideas that there could possibly be a bit better one available.

P.S. Pretty sure the audio in the 720p one I had was also really good too. Much clearer. I'll have to check again.  

I'm not disappointed. Same frame or not, it's quite clear which one is overall superior. There's no way I'd accept the DVD version.



Please. Maybe heads can be pulled out of asses this time.

I was very positivly suprised by this anime! Good animation, something fun in every episode and a good (not great) story!

That's an obvious statement, you're not talking somebody who knows nothing here.. It's the final image that matters and Mpeg2 does some not wonderful things to video. There's clear evidence of macroblocking throughout, I compared them myself.
Like I said, it's a clear win for the Blu-Ray rip regardless of the fact a few details wash out here and there.



And? All that matters is the final image quality, this release is hardly a gold standard, I saw clear cases of macroblocking in certain scenes an overall lack of sharpness(typical DVD quality) and a noisy picture, in almost all areas LeijonaSisu's encode blew the DVD out of the water.



I'm not complaining about anything, I'm saying BakaBT did a poor job of doing what it's supposed to well.
If anything you're being a jerk by saying something like "please don't be a jerk"



Hope to watch it sometime soon, but not this copy, got to do the good ones some justice after all. As someone who watches anime every night on a large screen TV and has taken many hours out of my time to set up a upscaling, sharpening and denoising sequence to improve DVD quality encodes in realtime I can tell you I still even with that happening I wouldn't be watching this version. There are better encodes out there, and they aren't on BakaBT, maybe LeijonaSisu can remedy that.

I hope that there are still some people who are willing to get the best version of this up on BakaBT.  So far the argument for change has been nothing short of pathetic.  All talk and no proof gets people nowhere.  Those forum threads linked showing 'proof' that new versions are inferior were pretty weak, and the guy who was talking about his release being better was clearly being deceived.

However about 6 months ago a new encode was posted on Nyaa (Kagura) that I just discovered is definitely better than this one.  Sure, it doesnt have the fancy fonts and subtitles of NPs version, but the video quality is a definite improvement, with less blocking, clearer lines, better color, etc, and from what ive compared of the scripts it is identical in translation.  The video is from the new BD and is a 10-bit 720p encode, and the audio is only Japanese, but still of audiophile level (448kbps AC-3).

And lo and behold, I actually have some screenshots to back up my claims!

Here is the baseball screenshot comparison using the same frame as the 1080p version in the last comparison:
http://www.check2pic.ru/compare/29807/

And here are some more screenshots I took:

http://www.check2pic.ru/compare/29808/
http://www.check2pic.ru/compare/29810/
http://www.check2pic.ru/compare/29811/
http://www.check2pic.ru/compare/29813/

Tbh the BD isnt a huge improvement, but the slight improvements make for better video quality imo and is worth being offered on BakaBT as an option to NP's somewhat outdated encode.  I may try making the offer myself if it is ok to do so with files that are not my own.

edit: I lied, the English dub files are available as a separate file that can be muxed in.

^ What he said.

TBH those comparisons illustrate what I consider to be fairly big differences in quality.
If you anyone doesn't think so then I dispute that you even care about quality at all.

It isn't all about sharp lines and "more detail" the colors are better, the noise has disappeared, there's less image cropped.
I would drop an extra 6GB download on Kagura's release in the blink of an eye.