CPM can suck my dick.

[absolutedestiny]

Central Park Media have the worst video quality in the anime market. They are bottom of the video quality ladder now, even below the once unbeatably bad Manga Video.

Why? Well, I think I have an idea.

They have this annoying habit of sometimes wanting to put hard subs on certain things - on screen events mainly. However, I dont have that much of an issue with hard subs, even though TRSI proved they weren't needed.

The issue I have with this hard subbing system is that it is analogue... and it totally fucks up the video quality. Cross-colouraion is present on all CPM anime that has gone through this process (Utena, NTHT, Alien Nine) and it also seems to really wash out the source footage too.

Alien Nine, which I got today, uses a lot of digital animation - it uses a lot of the same methods used in FLCL (Gainax animated some sections).

Not that the CPM transfer is digital. Hell no. It's got rainbows on every black line you could care to mention and dot crawl all over the place. The beachhouse mat is red with white lines and the dot crawl is hideous. Animeondvd gave it a B+ for video. I'd give it a C. Chris Beveridge needs to use crappier equipment that doesn't hide all the blemishes. It's a shoddy transfer and there's no two ways about it.

These are dumb composite video issues that professional video authoring studios should not have in the year 2003.

Crappy sources are NOT the reason for this one. I'm almost tempted to buy a disc of the japanese release just to do a real comparison. Seriously I find it appaling.

But surely, you may ask, not all CPM releases are like this. You're right. The Utena movie didnt have these analogue issues - they didnt do any hard subbing. It did, however, have a hideously low bitrate. It still looked vibrant but that's the source looking good. IIRC the whole movie is on a single DVD layer and there is some awful mosquito noise during the fast scenes if you pause. I'm guessing the GOTF re-release also had a digital source that they decided not to tamper with. These are the only exceptions I can think of.

grrrrr

Comments

[gambitt.livejournal.com]

Let's not forget the head of CPM is a fucking cock. I hate him. He's such a dick. You do not interrupt the director of Metropolis while he's speaking for ANYTHING. Such a dick. I'm kinda glad CPM sucks, because then it proves being an absolute dick means... well... dick about how you run a company.

[exedore.livejournal.com]

John O. may be whatever, but you should hear what some of the other people in the industry have said about Metropolis...one guy close to the Japanese was like "They only did it so they could say they were doing Tezuka and get some hype...and now they act all important because of it."

[wednesday]

it also seems to really wash out the source footage too.

How can you even *tell* with Utena TV? :/ But, yeah -- there's a reason that I held steadfast to my R2 Utena movie (the 5.1 reissue is tempting, but not enough to make me relinquish my first pressing). I watch the R1 with my friends. I watch the R2 by myself. One of these years, I'm going to get round to generating the best of all possible worlds (which may mean getting hold of that reissue).

I thought Media Blasters were still about the same, though...? (Must sit down and scrutinize Idol Project.)

[doki.livejournal.com]

I see that Alien 9 has come down in price... Back before CPM put it out, I checked and it was almost Y5000 at Anime Jungle per episode. Now it's about Y3000.

For the first version of my JSR video, I used A9 footage from a trailer off an AX disc. It looked pretty good, though I covered the AX logo with footage from a fansub. ^_^; (stopgap until the CPM version came out)

[vgp.livejournal.com]

Yes sir, the wonderfull world of DVD authoring and digital transfering... From some of the stupid bugs, quality issues and down right mistakes, It leads me to believe the DVDs belong to a mystic science that not everyone can understand.... I myself am getting tired of crappy bit rates, sound inversion errors, screwups in flags (Take the meaning of life Special edition)....And we have to pay for it!

Vlad

[exedore.livejournal.com]

Having never dealt with John O'Donnell personally, I can't say anything about the man's character, but what I can say from what I've heard at cons is that he's the cheapest man in the industry, which means that he may very well be using older composite equipment to do some of his releases.

That said, I've only got 17 discs from CPM and 16 of them were outsourced to NewTech (the complete Armored Trooper Votoms, which, despite being hard subbed, looks ab-so-fucking-lutely incredible for a show so old). The remainder, Night on the Galactic Railroad, looks old (because it is) and the video issues are more due to print quality than anything else.

[doki.livejournal.com]

If you didn't see them before. (and just because I have them handy)

http://www.doki.ca/pics/misc/R1GotF1.jpg
http://www.doki.ca/pics/misc/R1GotF2a.jpg
http://www.doki.ca/pics/misc/R1GotF2b.jpg
http://www.doki.ca/pics/misc/R2GotF1.jpg

This release was pretty old, and their new version is better, I hear, but yeah, this is the kinda thing they do.

[ashyukun.livejournal.com]

I'm just generally pissed off at the quality of stuff in general. I can't count the number of DVDs recently I've had to deal with that have had horrid frame blending and have generally looked crappy. Personally I tend to be more pissed off at Pioneer recently (Moldiver, Princess Nine), but that's just because it was their titles I have been working with.

It's just completely stupid that amateur hobbyists- skilled as some of us may be- like us can clean up and put out better looking video than the people who should be getting paid to make the video look as good as possible from the get-go.

[exedore.livejournal.com]

ADV did Princess 9. They also glitched TWHE2 with mono audio.

Really, this is proving to be a shit year for R1 anime quality control....the KOR fiasco, the ADV glitches, Media Blasters's Mono run, Pioneer's pack-in "scandal" and the screwup on Sugar 2, CPM's standard less-than-stellarness, Kare Kano going to print with the TV version, etc. It looks like the only companies to get through the year without a QC error are Newtech (who churns out so many DVDs that they've gotten it down to a science) and Synch Point, who's done a whole three discs, and AN Ent. who have done fewer discs than SP. Otherwise, I think every anime company has had to do some form of recall/replacement program/major loss of customer faith issue this year.

[ashyukun.livejournal.com]

That's true- but I know there was another Pioneer title that pissed me off in the recent past. Wasn't Kachi Oji, I seem to remember it overall being pretty good (though there were a few scenes where I had to do some creative deinterlacing).

Given they've now been doing it for some time now, you'd think the companies would get it right...