Puella Magi Madoka Magica / 魔法少女まどか☆マギカ BDRip Rework V2 **TV** 10-bit 1080p HEVC + FLAC + AAC, MKV format. ~1.2 GB / EP. Embedded audio commentary track. **MOVIE 1** 10-bit 1080p HEVC + FLAC, MKV format. ~ 6.8 GB. Official JPN + ENG + CHT + KOR + FRE + SPA PGS. MKA contains FLAC 5.1 and DTS (audio commentary). **MOVIE 2** 10-bit 1080p HEVC + FLAC, MKV format. ~ 7.0 GB. Official JPN + ENG + CHT + KOR + FRE + SPA PGS. MKA contains FLAC 5.1 and DTS (audio commentary). **MOVIE 3** 10-bit 1080p HEVC + FLAC, MKV format. ~ 10.3 GB. Official JPN + ENG PGS. MKA contains FLAC 5.1 + and (audio commentary), plus two bonus tracks (initial recording of Akuma Homura's lines). TL;DR: We have reworked the Puella Magi Madoka Magica series for the second time. Opening and ending credits in the TV series are now in Japanese instead of Italian. The whole series is re-encoded with improved pre-processing. Tons of relevant resources are added. For details, read on. We decided to rework the Puella Magi Madoka Magica series at the end of 2019 as our way of celebrating the 10th anniversary of the show. This project ended up taking a bit more than two years to finish, and we are glad to release it just in time for the 11th anniversary (the first episode of Puella Magi Madoka Magica was aired on January 7th, 2011). Our previous releases of the TV series are based on the Italian version Blu-ray released by Dynit, as this version of Blu-ray has much less banding than the Japanese version (note that this is not true for the movies – both the US and Italian Blu-ray of the three movies appeared to be the exact same encodes as the Japanese version, so they all share the same banding problem). While using the Italian Blu-ray as source made it easier for pre-processing (i.e. debanding), many people would prefer the original Japanese opening and ending credits, rather than Italian. This time, our plan at first was to just use the Japanese Blu-ray as source instead, and we were confident that we could make equally good or even better encodes, given nowadays there are more advanced filter combos to deal with stubborn banding. After careful comparison, however, we found that the Italian version is still at an advantage here: while both Blu-ray look mostly the same after filtering, there are a few scenes we found where the Italian Blu-ray just appeared to be slightly but noticeably better in terms of smoothness. As a result, the TV series of this release is still based on the Italian version as much as possible, with lots of trimming to replace the opening and ending with those containing the Japanese credits (more details below), to make it look identical to the Japanese version. For consistency, there are always one second (24 frames) of black screen at the beginning of each episode, same as the Italian version, so if the subtitles you are using were timed with the Japanese Blu-ray, which might not have the one-second black screen on the even number of episodes (ep. 2, 4, 6…12), you would need to delay the subtitle timing by about one second (or 1001 milliseconds to be exact). Apart from dealing with the banding issues, we have also fixed the slight haloing of the line art this time, which were left as is in the previous release. Content wise, commentary audios of the TV series were added following the Japanese Blu-ray. We have added the Madogatari recap video (more details below) and the Concept Movie of the upcoming new anime (more details below), which were both shown during the Madogatari Exhibition in 2015 and included in the Blu-ray released later. We have also added more CDs, and tons (4,000+) of scans into the collection. Other minor details: 1\. Actually, there is an opening video of the TV series with Japanese credits included in the Italian Blu-ray, so we just used that instead of trimming from the Japanese Blu-ray. For the first six episodes, they are identical; for later episodes, however, the names of the art directors (美術監督) are changed, so we trimmed and replaced that single cut containing the text from the Japanese Blu-ray (which is a cut contains virtually no large areas of color gradient, so banding is a non-issue). Except episode 10 and 12, of course, where there are no opening credits. 2\. We had an unexpected finding while comparing the opening clips: in the Japanese Blu-ray, the pink shadings of the credit text in one of the cuts near the end (showing Madoka running) are somewhat desaturated compared with others. This is not present in the Italian Blu-ray, not even with the included Japanese version of the opening. We cannot think about any reasonable explanation of this being intended, so mostly just human error. Of course, this is automatically “fixed” by using the opening clip from the Italian Blu-ray. 3\. As the credits in the endings are different in every single episode, they were always trimmed and replaced with those in the Japanese Blu-ray. Except episode 9, which has a special ending (Sayaka & Kyouko) that is also available in the Italian Blu-ray. 4\. All audio tracks of the TV series were taken from the Japanese Blu-ray and resynchronized with the video if needed (added 1001 milliseconds of silence at the beginning). 5\. The “TVSP” recapping the first two movies, included in this release as one of the bonuses of the third movie Rebellion, is now properly made VFR. This fixes the smearing artifact in the scrolling credits. 6\. The “Madogatari Recap”, included with this release as one of the bonuses for the third movie Rebellion, is one of the videos shown during the Madogatari Exhibition on a triple-screen setup: three equally sized screen with approx. 16:9 ratio, one in the middle, flanked by two others placed perpendicularly, to provide an “immersive” experience (you can find photos of the setup during the Madogatari Exhibition somewhere online). In the Blu-ray release of this video, however, there are four of them: one downscaled overview, and three full-res videos for left, middle and right, respectively. Here we tried to merge them into one single video to replicate the viewing experience: we stacked the three full-res videos for cuts that showing different views, and we took cuts that has a continuous picture across the three screens from the overview video and upscaled using advanced algorithms to avoid stitching gaps and ugly aliasing. This resulted an extremely wide 5760x1032 video. Enjoy it if you have the right monitor setup! 7\. The new “Concept Movie” was also revealed during the Madogatari Exhibition, served as a trailer for a new anime work of the series, supposedly the sequel to Rebellion, i.e. the upcoming 4th movie Walpurgis no Kaiten. Looking forward! 8\. The whole series is encoded using --crf 14, echoing our 14-year-old Goddess Madoka. May the Law of Cycles be with you. * * * **VCB-Studio will no longer guarantee to include relevant CDs and scans** VCB-Studio has attracted a sizable audience over the years. Many people seem to like our encodes, while there are also many who appreciate the completeness of our releases, especially CDs. We are proud of all the hard work of our collation members for that. However, as a matter of fact, we have been shorthanded of collation members for quite a few years - this is not sustainable. Now we have to unload some collation work to make sure we can still make BDRip releases every once in a while: we will be no longer enforcing the rule to our collation members to collect as many relevant CDs and scans as possible that are shared (publicly or privately) on the Internet. In the future there might be still CDs and scans included, e.g. it happens to be the favorite show of one of our members, but please do not expect that we will include many CDs and scans (if at all) by default. Bonus content (NCOPs/NCEDs/PVs/Interviews etc.) that come with the Blu-ray will still be included as always. * * * Thanks to all resource providers: CD & Scan: 水無月時雨@NPUPT, {klct2010, able1214, 甜池里的沙耶, ksxg}@TSDM, Anonymous@U2 Please refer to [https://vcb-s.com/archives/7949](https://vcb-s.com/archives/7949) if you have trouble viewing WebP images. Please refer to [https://www.tsdm39.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=879923](https://www.tsdm39.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=879923) for more information about jointly purchased music. * * * Comparison (right click on the image and open it in a new tab to see the full-size one) Source________________________________________________Encode [](https://img.2222.moe/images/2022/01/04/840.png) [](https://img.2222.moe/images/2022/01/04/840v.png) [](https://img.2222.moe/images/2022/01/04/2780.png) [](https://img.2222.moe/images/2022/01/04/2780v.png) [](https://img.2222.moe/images/2022/01/04/4265.png) [](https://img.2222.moe/images/2022/01/04/4265v.png) [](https://img.2222.moe/images/2022/01/04/15965.png) [](https://img.2222.moe/images/2022/01/04/15965v.png) [](https://img.2222.moe/images/2022/01/04/19370.png) [](https://img.2222.moe/images/2022/01/04/19370v.png)