Why are 90s anime telecines so bad

[rrats]

Kodomo no Omocha, Evangelion and Initial D are one of the few animes that I've seen having terrible telecines, in terms of both the awful colour accuracy, haloing and worst of all - halfframe blending.

Why are telecines done by the country that was once the pioneer in video industry worse than ones present in Monty Pythons flying circus (late 60s and early 70s, the DVD and netflix release have em)?

[Hoser Rob]

If you're talking about 90s anime that was encoded in the 90s it may just be that the codecs were not as good quality. I'm not sure it was even possible to get adecsnt mp3 codec in the 90s ... all the ones I've heard sound like you put a sheet over the speakers.

[Selur]

I doubt this is coded related and more about making a quick dime,...
DVD releases of animes from that time were mainly cheap productions where no one who was doing the authoring of those DVD really had a clue about what they were doing.
Also the audiance wasn't that big in numbers so nobody really cared to spend money on people who know what they are doing.

[Quint]

This has nothing to do with codecs or such things as compression, it has to do with the hardware used for telecines, especially the pulldown part. Scanning and pulldown were made in one process and the pulldown-part was often done with blending. Even worse are conversions to PAL of this kind of masters.
Avisynth-SRestore can help a lot, but is far from perfect and causes other kinds of artefacts.

[rrats]

I was writing this post in a hurry. Yes those were the telecining artefacts. How in bloody hell did they occur? I've seen 80s animes without them. And I'm positive those were original telecines that I have seen

[october262]

I was writing this post in a hurry. Yes those were the telecining artefacts. How in bloody hell did they occur? I've seen 80s animes without them. And I'm positive those were original telecines that I have seen

found this - http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/articles/VideoArtefacts/VideoArtefactsTelecineWobble.html
and - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine

[rrats]

Nah mate, I'm talking about this
[Attachment 66293 - Click to enlarge]

[Quint]

Yes those were the telecining artefacts. How in bloody hell did they occur?

I gave you an answer. Did you read?

[rrats]

Yes but the blending in question mostly is a"full frame" blending. I've seen a lot of it (some with 18fps 8mm sources, and some of them with 24/25fps 16mm sources). None of them blends half of the frame, they either do full or none. I am asking why does the partial frame blending occur, and I have only ever seen it happen with 90s anime (tho it might have too occurred with celluloid-filmed live action TV).

[Quint]

I see. But you know that the picture you showed us is only one field (after seperatefields())?

[rrats]

Yes it was from a doom9 thread. Will send a sample once I get to my computer

[lordsmurf]

that was encoded in the 90s .

Encoded to what? Real Video? Obviously the thread is about the anime content.

the awful colour accuracy, haloing and worst of all - halfframe blending.

Most of that comes from extreme linear detail converted to video, and then the video framerate adjustments. At a quick glance, the OP here sees obvious blended deinterlacing seemingly applied to telecine. A lot of it was bad processing at the budget operations converting lowly anime 15-25 years ago, while hamfisted homebrewers screwed it up for downloads and fansubs/dubs. I've seen worse. When I worked for studios, I truly hated dealing with pre-digitized analog sources. It was always screwed up in some way, and I had to restore it.

[jagabo]

I believe the partial blend was created with a crossblend of the film frames while recording to analog tape in real time. So during the crossblends each successive scanline gets a blend with less of the previous frame and more of the next. Presumably and attempt to reduce flicker. They weren't concerned with your attempt to inverse telecine the video 30 years later.

[rrats]

Oh yes, thanks jagabo, i think i get it now. GAINAX (and probably other studios as well) are located in Tokyo. Tokyo runs at 50hz, while the entire Japan uses 60hz NTSC format. They had to apply anti flicker

[rrats]

A lot of it was bad processing at the budget operations converting lowly anime 15-25 years ago, while hamfisted homebrewers screwed it up for downloads and fansubs/dubs.

Not really. I'm positive that at least the Evangelion tape source stayed untouched until it got onto the DVD, since the DVD release the blending is present on was officially released in 2015 for the sole purpose of showcasing the original tape telecines.

[Quint]

You wanted to load up a sample, would be interesting.

[jagabo]

You can see this type of blending in the clip here:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/405747-Restoring-the-hellhole-that-is-the-Evangeli...16#post2656647

[rrats]

That one should do, thought it's not the best possible sample. I will send another one later

[Quint]

Thanks, jagabo.
Have seen and had to work with MUCH worse. But those were PAL-to-NTSC conversions, or direct pulldowned-NTSC-to-PAL conversions of the early ninetees.

[rrats]

I've seen couple of those conversions. Man they are so bloody blurry

[defbiz]

Those are NTSC to PAL conversions. Intra-frame blended also, to fill the 50 half frames for some reason. If I were you I'd just find the NTSC copies instead. NTSC to PAL conversions are a recipe for disaster

[defbiz]

In my humble opinion, I can't see why they couldn't implement pull-down on PAL territories instead of ugly PAL blending or screechy speed-ups. I prefer judder instead of frame blending any day.

[rrats]

Those are NTSC to PAL conversions. Intra-frame blended also, to fill the 50 half frames for some reason. If I were you I'd just find the NTSC copies instead. NTSC to PAL conversions are a recipe for disaster

If you've read the thread you would've known that these are NOT conversions. How often do more than 3 OFFICIAL releases, with two of them being Japanese and one North American happen to be all sourced from a surprisingly sharp ?-PAL-NTSC conversion. First off, why would they telecine animes in PAL, Japanese use NTSC-J, second of all, do you know how blurry and flickery it would be to convert from pal to ntsc back to pal. This is definitely not the case. Please don't reply before reading the thread, like we've already come to the conclusion and you are repeating stuff from the beginning

[lordsmurf]

First off, why would they telecine animes in PAL, Japanese use NTSC-J,

You're being too sensible here. You vastly overestimate the cheapness, laziness, and utter lack of skills that budget shops have. I don't care what "big name" the anime is, or the anime company is, budget shops can still be tasked with the encode/release. Large studios can lease out big properties to wankers. As I mentioned earlier, it irritated me at work, and it irritated me as a TV/toon collector. Sloppy SOBs. Animation was often disrespected this way.

[rrats]

Well the GAINAX was early bankrupt by the time they finished with evangelelion

[lordsmurf]

Well the GAINAX was early bankrupt by the time they finished with evangelelion

Oh goody.

That adds in another dimension: utter disorganization, maybe even lost sources.

Been there, done that.

[rrats]

Nearly****!!