This should indicate the quality you can expect on season 1’s episodes. Season 2 are much much better.
Karaoke is soft-subbed and turned off by default, you know the drill by now 🙂
This comparison should show you how poor the source was, and I can only do so much to improve it. I cannot magic detail into the video that has been destroyed by KyoAni’s upscaling process from 480p.
Season 2’s quality is similar to Kanon/Clannad 1080p, so at least you can enjoy Endless Eight without eyecancer.
Doki vs Source (FOR Special ED ONLY)
It turns out that actual episode ED has different filters to the special ED filters. Basically, KyoAni were lazy and did not filter their Special ED.
Actual episode comparison:
1080p not available yet.
1080p (h264): [Doki] Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu – TV Version Special ED (1920×1080 h264 BD FLAC) [0DABAE6B].mkv
720p (h264): [Doki] Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu – TV Version Special ED (1280×720 h264 BD AAC) [542D2E57].mkv
480p (h264): [Doki] Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu – TV Version Special ED (848×480 h264 BD AAC) [E947A861].mkv
Thursday 30th December 2010 
1:14 AM 
Wait what. Season 2 quality much better than Season 1?
Well, that’s interesting, considering S2 had shockingly bad quality in its TV run.
Considering the first season was made in 2005 when HD had not yet become the defacto standard I’m not really sure why you’re at all surprised… perhaps you just don’t know what the hell you’re talking about? 🙂
total epicness! haruhi ftw!
Is this supposed to mean that more is to come in the following days?
Also, thanks a lot!
Very excited!
Lol Holo. Sure I won’t get eye cancer from re-watching the endless eight, but that doesn’t mean I won’t suffer serious brain hemorrhaging…
oversharpening? well, i can stand it, ofc…. 🙂
and thanks. of course i’ll archive urs 😉
Maybe I’m picky, or it’s my eyes, (or it’s really like that in source,) but the banding during the fade in of the massive text at the beginning hurts my eyes – almost like a deinterlace filter went wrong.
Not quite sure, but be assured that the episodes themselves are certainly all progressive.
can you post a screen shot of the dvd not the BD just for other comparison. Perhaps the blur helped it in the past.
woo haruhi, brings back so many good memories.
btw, sorry if i have already asked this before (my memory has been doing very badly lately), but r u guys still subbing seto no hanayome? i don’t mean to rush u guys, im just kinda curious
You should check our “Dropped Projects” section periodically for projects we may have ‘somehow’ dropped. ^_-
yes we still Subbing it 😀
yeah, there will be a bunch of episodes in a while
i think it looks great it dont matter to me as long as i can see haruhi HD lol
This is applesauce! Your comparison shots help quite a bit. Not a huge fan of sharpening, but you guys pulled it off. Good job and thanks.
I did a comparison and is-delicious’ encode turned out to be better.
Maybe you could do a re-encode.
Comparison shots or GTFO.
Just saiyan’ don’t take it otherwise ┐(￣ー￣)┌
Can you please post the comparison shots?
Doki vs Source
Delicious vs Source
Comments are welcome. Pay attention to colour in particular.
While the color looks more intense in Delicious’, I’m really not in a position to say which is truer to the intended result or not.
However, I must say that looking at her eye, I think Delicious’ screenshot does a much better job with sharpness.
I have to admit that I like the deep color in the Delicious version.
OTOH, Haruhi is better known for its OMGWTF plots and harassment of poor Mikuru-chan.
To state the obvious: Yours is closer to the source, though as Meshaal stated Delicious’ sharpening process seems to have come out better (In part that is, seeing some jaggies here.) That plus the deeper cooler seems to do a better job of covering up colour bleed (see top of Haruhi’s head,) though that isn’t to say the same effect couldn’t be had by just picking up the TV remote and cranking the colour.
Personally I find the colour in Delicious’ a little too intense, though flicking through some older artwork/screens it looks like what they’ve done brings it more in line with how it should’ve looked before it met upscale hell, quite a quandary.
Also I must apologise for my horrific use of punctuation, even mild sleep deprivation can do funny things to the mind.
The Delicio.us encode may have more initial impact, yet on closer inspection my own preference leans towards Holo’s approach.
The colours in the Doki screenshot appear to be truer to the source, unlike those of Delicio.us that strike me as being somewhat over saturated. Furthermore, the filters applied to the Doki encode, while sufficient to remove the unsightly aliasing, have retained finer details… particularly noticeable in the background, which on the Delicio.us screenshot seems to be rather washed out with a slight yellow colour cast.
Delicious does a truly remarkable job there, although it loses the highlights on the ribbon and perhaps assumes a fingernail that isn’t there, so may be oversharpened.
Delicious’ deep colour (which is delicious) may well backfire; that’s such an intense alteration of levels that either they know that perhaps the BD was encoded using the wrong colour space, or they are either going to be inconsistent with the levels or may blow out detail during one of the eps. They are only going to know that if they’ve done the entire series already and checked the levels graphs that nothing actually does top or bottom out. Theirs is extreme, but risky.
Yours is a much more conservative filtering, removing the blocks, keeping the detail that made it intact, and not messing with the colours.
Meanwhile, KyoAni’s BD encoders can’t upscale their way out of a paper bag.
This Anon is going to get both Doki and Delicious, because I’m intrigued to see how their extreme filtering works alongside the actual episodes and the season 2 episodes. If it in fact matches the colours between season 1 and season 2, then the sharpening, if extreme, doesn’t look too bad at all, and if enough detail seems to survive blowout in whites and blacks, then Delicious’ encode would look better and might be the keeper – if Delicious’ experiment turns into a disaster, then yours is a safe, reliable and looking good alternative. Which is a keeper also depends on how the S2 episodes are done; if Delicious screw them up, I’m keeping Doki, and I like the idea of having playlist files which skip (part of, or all of) Endless Eight, so that’s a point in your favour too.
By the way, what are you going to do for the intentionally-hokey quality ’00’?
I am leaning towards comic sans font, lol.
That would be hilarious, though I don’t really get the hate for Comic Sans…
I would say that Comic Sans is an absolute requirement!
Please remember to make sure the subtitles on 00 stay within (i.e. don’t overflow) the 4:3 “window” until the 16:9 “reveal” at the end. It’s much more effective that way and heightens the impact of the reveal.
I’d say it’s pointless to compare the EDs, since it seems Delicious only applied those filters on those, and not the episodes.
So let’s wait to see comparisons between episode 2 of both Doki and Delicious, that will be more relevant.
Comparisons:
http://isumi.in/crap/delicioused.png
http://isumi.in/crap/dokied.png
As per request.
A bit late lol
I’ve been asleep since 1AM. It’s 7:30 PM now 😛
The delicious one is like the intensify the colors and refine some lines. On the Doki one, the lines are refined but the colors somewhat remains consistent with the original one (source). But too much of the color intensity sometimes make the project “don’t look good.” Just my opinion only.
Doki -> clean
Delicio.us -> over saturated
I’ll say again that I just compared Coalgirls to Delicious (the episodes, not OP/ED) and they look exactly the same. The only difference is Coalgirls higher bitrate that in 720p is almost unnoticeable.
So I’m quite sure that whatever filter is probably applied only to OP/ED and not the episodes themselves. In fact if you look at the lines in Delicious they are far from perfect and show the same color bleeding as BD original source.
did Safari messed up with me? when i highlight the Delicious tab in my Safari, suddenly the color become lively @_@
but when i download it… they look like the same (Doki and Delicio.us). okay, i have to press Page Up-Page Down quickly to know the difference… (the hair color?)
Here’s a split-screen comparison for those who are interested:
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x210/raikit/Private/Comparison.png
Not perfect, but there you go.
Personally speaking, I prefer Doki’s release as it does a brilliant job in enhancing the original, while maintaining its look and feel. Delicious’ attempt at enhancing the colors looks vibrant on an initial glance, but appears unnatural awhile later.
Your point is likely valid. Though in a still-image comparison, I like the effect of Delicious’ better, it’s really hard to say if I’d like it or not when actually watching the video.
Doki did a good job in maintaining the original source but the fact that the source has such poor colours demands for a some adjustments in the colour side as well.
As a still, I definitely prefer the colors in the Delicious one. They look more in line with the official artwork colors. I’ll have to get theirs now and see which looks better in motion.
Delicious only adjusted colour space of the ed. I’ll post screens of episode comparison later
I’m pretty sure I must just be missing something obvious here, and am about to feel dumb. How do delicious have comparison screenshots when I don’t see any kind of episode release from you yet? They have yours (the two you posted), and then another one from here (the comments), and then two more that appear to be from an episode.
Those 2 that appear to be from an episode are made by me. I have encoded the episodes but they are yet to be released.
I don’t know why, but when I checked Delicious ending myself it wasn’t nearly as saturated as the other screenshots in these comments show.
The “Source” is copied from Holo’s earlier comparison (ie. the “BDMV”).
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/15890
Now I kinda doubt Doki’s and Delicious’ source are the same. The cropping doesn’t match and it seems like Delicious has more detail (fingernail, the background, eyebrows) so it looks overall much better, especially when the colors aren’t bleeding like in the source or Doki’s release.
Sorry Holo, I really like your versions, but if THIS is how I can enjoy my Haruhi, I’ll gladly take it, even if that means a slightly saturated colourspace.
If it’s going to be like the other comments here, I’ll investigate how I can get it to be like Seppo-kun’s screencap shows. If that doesn’t work I’ll give your encode a second chance.
Don’t sweat it though. Everyone agrees this is one of the most cancerous and difficult Blu-Rays to pull off decently, and you’ve barely got one year of encoding experience. You’ll get better over time, I assure ya. (If you drop MeGUI, maybe :p)