Edit: As Shiroi Hane kindly pointed out in the comments, it appears that the source is interlaced, and it’s been run through deinterlacing for the original R2 DVDs and FUNimation’s R1 release, but not Madman’s R4 DVDs.
So flicking through the Kiddy Grade 2 thread on the AnimeSuki forums made me realise that I was going to have no bloody idea what was going on when KG2 eventually comes out. I thought I may as well re-watch the original series, since I’ve got it on DVD and all.
Of course, being the anime whore that I am, I’d downloaded and watched the whole series via fansubs probably 12 or 18 months before it was available in Australia. But I enjoyed it, so I bought the DVD set when it came out. But since I’d already seen the series, I flicked through a few of the extras, then the DVDs went on the shelf.
My main gripe when I bought the DVDs was that FUNimation know how to absolutely fuck a good series over. Take the intro for instance. Most respectable English translation companies will subtitle the intro at most, then leave it at that. Even ADV (who I hate with a passion, for ruining good series with some truly awful voice actors and making some rubbish interpretations about Osakan accents). So it begs the question: WHY would FUNimation dub the intro to Kiddy Grade. Argh.
Anyway, bad dubs (of which FUNimation’s and ADV’s are some of the worst) aside, because they can be turned off by switching the language to Japanese with subtitles. That’s not what I’m bitching about today. Because there’s a little feature of digital video that really rubs me the wrong way. It’s used a lot in TV, especially on the standard definition channels where quality isn’t an issue.
I speak of course of interlacing. Which is all fine and good if you’re watching shows on a CRT TV. But my shiny 20.1″ Viewsonic widescreen LCD is much nicer.
As a result, here’s what I end up with:
My eyes! Ze goggles do nothing!
To make matters worse, neither Windows Media Player nor Media Player Classic seem to be capable of de-interlacing the video. Well, Windows Media Player will try, but it still looks shit. And Media Player Classic gives me a choice of deinterlacing, or subtitles. And I’m sure as hell not watching this show dubbed, thankyou very much.
So I can either re-watch the fansubs, or rip and re-encode the entire series.
I don’t think FUNimation are entirely to blame this time. Both the below screenshots were taken with PowerDVD 5 in bob mode:
www kiddygrade info/stuff/spot/
(comment doesn’t seem to be posting, trying to mask link in case it is being blocked for some reason)
I’ve heard that DScaler is good, and it is free. Installed it a while back and never really fiddled with it, but it isn’t working for me at the moment I have to say (playback very stuttery)
Heh sorry, I think my anti-spam mods didn’t like your URL
But I think you could be right, it may be Madman’s fault. It looks like the source was originally interlaced, and it’s been filtered out for the R1 and R2 DVDs, but Madman haven’t bothered when they took FUNimation’s sources and mastered the R4 DVDs.
Thanks for pointing out DScaler though, I’ll give it a run tonight on the KG DVDs and see what happens.
Ach, forgot you would be looking at the R4 discs, otherwise I would have compared with the R2UK (which were mastered by Madman and also in PAL) rather than comparing two different NTSC discs. The point remains that the Japanese R2s have exactly the same problem, however.