Beyond Belief: Berserk

Had the video for this SAD - sorrow - SWORDS trio of releases done and sitting on my HDD for months now but finally got myself to put it all together and release it. [SAD] is a size optimized release with careful filtering and encoding to create the best balance of edge and grain quality at the target "about 30GB" size. This is probably what most people should pick [sorrow] is a transparent in motion quality target release with almost no filtering except for fixes and improvements. This is for those who want near perfect quality and reasonable size should pick. [SWORDS] is a "placebo" as close to BD as possible quality release with almost no filtering except for fixes and improvements. This is for those who want the best, even if it means outrageous size. All 3 releases feature edge fixing and card cleaning using modified versions of ZQ's scripts, as well as numerous uses of scene filtered debanding and regraining to improve quality as well as heavily filtered restorations of 2 scenes in E18 and E25 that had significant damage on the BD but were fine on older DVD releases. My Dekinai base set subtitles are based on the grammar fixed version from Arid's release which are based on ZQ's OP edited version which based its styling on G_P's, I've restyled the OP to more close to Dekinai's original OP styling while retaining readability for all of my sub tracks. Why use AVC/x264 instead of HEVC/x265? For this particular release AVC produced better subjective quality than HEVC, HEVC tended to produce uglier grain and lines with more ringing, while still, image grain may have appeared closer to source grain, it tended to clump together and in motion looked much worse than AVC because of the differences in how AVC and HEVC do things, no amount of tuning I tried could solve the issue completely, so AVC was the best choice. I produced hundreds of test encodes testing settings for this trio of releases, and if including testing of filtering then the number probably becomes over a thousand. | | | | ------------- |:-------------:| | [SAD] | https://nyaa.si/view/1489010 | | [sorrow] | https://nyaa.si/view/1489011 | | [SWORDS] | https://nyaa.si/view/1489012 | | Video & Audio | | | | ------------- |:-------------:| -----:| | Video | x264 8bit | | | Audio 1 | libFLAC Stereo | Japanese | | Audio 2 | libFLAC Stereo | English | | Subtitles | | | | ------------- |:-------------:| -----:| | Subtitle 1 | English Full [Dekinai] | English(ASS) | | Subtitle 2 | English Full [Dekinai] Nostalgic Yellow(Dekinai with G_P Dialogue styling) | English(ASS) | | Subtitle 3 | English Full [Dekinai] Readable White(Dekinai with More readable Dialogue styling) | English(ASS) | | Subtitle 4 | English Full [GBR BD] SRT | English(SRT) | | Subtitle 5 | English Signs & Songs [Dekinai] | zxx(ASS) | | Subtitle 6 | English Signs & Songs [GBR BD] SRT | zxx(SRT) | | Full Mediainfo | https://pastebin.com/cqs8RfRd | | ------------- |:-------------:| | VapourSynth Scripts | https://github.com/sorrowSAD/Scripts/tree/main/Berserk%20(1997) | | Video Comparisons | | | ------------- |:-------------:| | [SAD] about 30GB video comparison + JPBD | https://slow.pics/c/HDb2MLV4 | | [sorrow] about 60GB video comparison + JPBD | https://slow.pics/c/SQBRnaRB | | SAD - sorrow - SWORDS vs JPBD | https://slow.pics/c/ZOFNfB3O | | E18 & E25 - Damaged scenes restoration | https://slow.pics/c/6ZPlxqJL | | Subtitle Styling Comparisons | | | ------------- |:-------------:| | Main | https://slow.pics/c/YSoQMZaM | | Demon | https://slow.pics/c/IoUPLfLv | | OP | https://slow.pics/c/UDk5wN4e | Please comment any issues with the release.