Crazy how we're already halfway through this season huh. ___ We heard your cries for larger filesizes, and we listened! So here's a smaller video. A note from our resident computer guy: ``` The filtering was adjusted to allow for some additional speed-ups. This results in slightly less sharp video a tiny bit more compression artifacting left-over, and slightly weaker grain. The encode will as a result be smaller than before, but probably look a tiny bit worse. Nothing too noticeable for your average viewer, however. ``` ~~Because of this change, 13-24 batch will take a while longer to get out as previous episodes are re-encoded.~~ JK we aren't doing that lol ___ Here's our staff: Encoding, OP Styling: LightArrowsEXE TLC: UMT-san Timing, Editing, TS, ED2 Styling: Falloree QC: petzku Here's some notes on the encode: ``` This encode mixes multiple sources together, with a focus on retaining details and textures while lessening compression artefacting. The massive increase in filesize largely owes to this process. A lot more detail is retained in the final encode than on any one source on its own, and I wasn't about to compress those away again. Sources used are Crunchyroll and Amazon Prime h264 (both CBR and VBR). When it comes to lineart, Crunchyroll generally has slightly better lineart, but during high-motion scenes, a lot of detail is lost. Both Amazons preserve stuff like textures significantly better, and while neither are stellar during high-motion scenes either, they preserve finer lines that Crunchyroll does not. Merging was accomplished by combining high-frequency information from every clip (extracted using a bilateral blur) and averaging those out. Additionally, this show is not rescaleable. It appears to be post-sharpened, so relatively weak dehaloing was applied. I was able to ascertain that the native resolutions are 900p (potentially 899.9p?) for most scenes, and 810p for select scenes (including the henshin). Kernel is unknown, as every kernel I tried increased error. Without a way to safely rescale, I was left with little option but to AA to deal with the copious amounts of aliasing. AAing was performed with an antialiaser that attempts to keep the image sharp (unlike regular AAs), while still affecting staircasing without going overboard. Besides that, I used a denoiser aimed at strictly affecting high-frequency compression noise leftover from the lehmer merge, while leaving most of the low-frequency information (blurrier textures, flat areas) only lightly touched. The denoiser used also had the extra benefit of deblurring certain blurrier lines that would be faded away during debanding + dithering. ``` And here's a [comp](https://slow.pics/c/fvcY3oIM) for your comparing pleasure. ___ For the motivation for this project, refer to [my Episode 1 release](https://nyaa.iss.one/view/1641921). ___ [](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/707351025605935190/1116258947884654703/gays_dancing_in_front_of_wakuwan_logo.gif)