I've already got them on my hard drive, and the quality is good.  Maybe if you want to make future releases a bit smaller then that would be fine by me, as long as quality doesn't suffer too much.  I wouldn't waste time reencoding old eps though.  However, I am interested in Suzuyama, but I haven't been able to find 720p fansubs of it.  Is it something you're thinking of subbing after Roots is over?

I think it'd work,the size was too big in the first place,dunno bout other but since it had huge dimensions it played somewhat slow,voices would lag for about 1.5 seconds etc,and if it is minimal loss,why not?

@SeymourBewty: hmm.... I don't think I'll want to sub an anime that's already over.

what I'm providing is the sub, the video is there only for your convenience, so I won't sub an anime simply because other groups are not providing high quality videos for it.

on the side note, the conversations in Suzumiya Haruhi are fast and painfully long... I think I'm gonna have hell of a pain there if I do sub it... 

Some of us have large resolution screens like 19 inch LCD monitors with 1280x1024 or widescreen 15 inch laptops with 1280x786 and we appreciate the high resolution as lower resolutions would look a little blurry compared to the full resolution.Our computers can also handle the high processing power required for it so keep the resolution high for us

@Anonymous: the resolution is unchanged.

this is more of an issue on bandwidth than CPU processing power(that's what the LQ version is there for).

in fact, by applying higher compression, it may require even bigger CPU muscle to decode the video(in theory, but I didn't notice that when I was playing mine). 

I really don't see why a very good encode with a quality unchallenged should be downsized to a less quality.

Comparison haven't convinced me, and i don't see a reason to do it. I think I see a difference, especially on the face of the girl at the left of the screen (i don't watch Suzumiya Haruhi so I don't know the name sorry )

Moreover, if I understood correctly, it would require a better cpu to run them so since people already complain about the slowing, i don't see the point.

I hope u'll keep the quality that makes me a LuPerry fan

@IsaK: the original encode used high bitrate to retain quality, because it had to be encoded in realtime, and it didn't have the luxury to be encoded in two-pass.

so in a two-pass re-encode, reduce the size while keeping the quality can be easily done with H.264. what I've done here is an extreme example of this. re-encoded .hack//Roots would have almost twice the bitrate of what you see here.

as for the CPU part, the difference would be 1Ghz vs 1.01Ghz, if there is any. 

Hi

i understand your point but i can't agrre with you when you tell me it would be the same quality if the result is the same as the example you give with Suzumiya Haruhi. There's obviously a loss of quality. For me, the quality is not the same and as far as i'm concerned i can't help thinking quality should be the best if you can do the best.

I hope you will pursue to encode the hack roots as the way you did before since i was so impressed by them or you could do better with this new encody than the example you give  us.

Anyway, thank you for all your good work:o)

@IsaK: I wasn't trying to make them the same quality in this case(my wording may have misled you), it's just a demonstration of what it can do with 155MB(consider the typical 170MB AVI fansubs).

the poll shows a 50/50 distribution, so I'll try to work something out to make both groups happy.

I am most likely the 1000th person to say this, but (pretty) please (with sugar and a cherry on top with some bannanas for substance in a crystal bowl otherwise filled to the brim with rich, smooth ice cream of a flavor of your choosing) fix the .hack episodes so they play in Windows Media Player!!!! Pleeeeeeeeeeease!  ...thank you kindly.

@Kyric: that's simply not fixable. the problem is on WMP's side.

and actually, you are the first one to ask me to "fix" the releases so they work on WMP.

I hope you'll decide to keep releasing those high quality versions like normal. For me the higher the quality the better, theres nothing worse than blocky video >_< I have an unlimited broadband connection and nearly 1tb of harddrive space so im not afraid of a few extra MB. I love your releases, please keep up the quality ^^ (i notice a BIG difference in color quality between your two screenshots...not good ^^" )

If you reduce the bitrate you pretty much have to reduce the resolution or it's going to look bad. In this day and age of high bandwidth connections it's beyond me why anyone wants a reduced quality version. Re-encoding isn't difficult so why don't you people who want a lower quality version just do it yourself??? Being a former fansub encoder this topic makes me giggle like a school girl.....

@TheCrazyCanuck: think of it like this, if you encode something at a higher bit-rate, you don't gain quality.

if you encode it to another lousier video format, you may even lose quality despite the bigger file size.

it's the same case here, the real "source" here is the TV, the raw was encoded in real-time(off from the TV), which means it used an exasperatingly high bit-rate in the first encode in order to retain the same quality(the encoding software is not psychic, it can not predict what's going to happen on the TV in the next few mins in order to make the necessary adjustment to the video bit-rate to take advantage of the variable video bit-rate/block-size in the H.264 standard) which can be achieved in a two-pass or three-pass encode. in which case, the encoder can determine exactly how much data it needs to retain the same quality of the picture, instead of fixed bit-rate through out.

being a former encoder(though I'm not sure how such a title is necessary, I thought the encoder is suppose to be your computer and the encoding software, as for me, along with an automated script). you must haven't experienced with H.264 that much(an upgrade would be nice).

i'm sure you already are aware of the situation.  Bandai has recently obtained the liscense for Roots and will begin dubbing episodes.  this set of circumstances has prompted other 'providers' to take down thier listings of roots.  do you plan to follow suit?  thanks.

@icydragon: read my comment here.

It'd be wonderful if you could re-encode the episodes! I'm actually amazed by how many people don't understand that this is a RAW and can be trimmed down quite a bit in size without affecting the quality. They likely all think "if you cut down the size, the quality goes as well." That would be true if this wasn't a RAW, and like you said... They're encoded in realtime, so the CPU doesn't even really have time to process anything and make the file smaller because it needs to constantly encode the movie.

I have a broadband connection, so I *ALWAYS* download your hi-res ones (and rarely have a problem with the torrent)... But I do have limited harddrive space. Not everyone has 1TB of disk space handy. And with the filesize almost half, I don't consider that a trivial "few extra MB." Also, to the person that posted what I was just referring to, I "noticed" a color difference in the two images at first also. Then I realized the color was just shaded differently on the top and bottom of my laptop's screen. Things on the top of my screen actually seem darker than things on the bottom, I noticed this when I scrolled down the page... The two images looked exactly the same then.

I suggest people actually click the two images and view them fully before voting. I honestly can't even see the difference.

No reencode please! I really appreciate to have the raws without touching them.

The diference may not be at a still image because it's about smooth HQ quality viedeos.

i got a 0.5tb file/torrent server specialy for animes.

so it doesn't matter to me if you reencode the hq vids or not.

i'm just curious why would you want to reencode the vids?
if you don't already have enought work, i could think of something ;) .

anyway, as long as you don't reduce the quality you can do to the vid whatever you want.
but afaik without reducing quality a three-pass encode can cut the size of the vid-stream only by ~10%-15% in comparison to a single-pass (based on webcam footage).

it's your choice, i'wont complain.

@SunBlade: a bit more work for the computer, not for me. from download to encode, that's all done by a script without my intervention.

normally I would just check the Download folder to see if the files(the RAW and the re-encoded XviD I will be using for timing) are there, if they are, then I'll start to time and translate, after I'm done, another script would put everything together into the final release(I would be issuing the command in this case).

quite painless really. 

Knowing that the file size was too big, and making it smaller is probably better for us, since we want to watch anime subs fast/fan-subs. but it's probably best on what you decide, because if it takes longer for you, then it might be hellish for you

@nifear4: it's the same for me actually, it either takes longer to encode or takes longer to seed. 

@luperry: I guess if you do pre-processing on the video then re-encoding would be fine (I assumed you didn't). I still think at the resolution you want to keep you should target 233MB or greater no matter what codec you use.

Sure scripts are great I used them all the time with virtualdubmod for my pre-processing. But I never blindly threw a script in without fine tuning it so that in itself is a lot of work. Lucky for you though you have good sources so you don't have too many issues with the source to begin with.

"you must haven't experienced with H.264 that much(an upgrade would be nice)."

Back in those days xvid and divx were the standard so I never encoded anime using it. In a R&D setting I've been looking into hardware h.264 optimizations to do real-time encoding so I guess I "upgraded" long ago...

@TheCrazyCanuck: by "script", I meant bash script, perl script, and crontab. I use them to automate some tedious tasks(I don't use windows by the way, the only time I've used virtualdubmod was when I hardsubbed ar-tonelico, and I used vmware to run windows back then, not a pleasant experience).

no, I didn't do pre-processing, doing so you'll have the illusion that it looks good because the picture looks smooth and sharp, but you would lose a lot of details you won't even notice.

quote from wikipedia: "The intent of the H.264/AVC project was to create a standard that would be capable of providing good video quality at bit rates that are substantially lower (e.g., half or less) than what previous standards would need (e.g., relative to MPEG-2, H.263, or MPEG-4 Part 2),"

so I guess the codec does affect how much MB you need to obtain a certain quality, though it may be contravertial as "quality" is not well defined. 

Hm... you have a point re-encoding them in two-pass.

But re-encoding is ALWAYS connected to a loss of quality, even if you don't see it.

And if it takes as long as the seeding the huge file, why bother? Most HQ videos of that length are above 250MB anyway!?

In addition I think fansub crews in other countries rely upon your releases in hq.

Btw. I have an Athlon XP 2400+ and your videos still T^T run smoothly with over 95% cpu-usage in WMP6 using ffdshow; the VLC player could not render them in time meaning all laggy. Please do not increase CPU-usage anymore!

Sorry for double-commenting.

The 1st one is the re-encoded roots. You can see jpeg artefacts at the edges of Ovan's glasses, also around any other edges. And there are white/gray colored blocks in Shino's hat.

Both scenes are low-motion scenes, hence scences with high motion will be worse. 

@Zeth: no, second one is the re-encoded one.

I could care less of the size give be the bestquality and ill download even a 1gb file of an episode

What? lol Then this is absolutely not a scene that will display the loss very good...

Despite the fact that it's actually not the same frame, lu.

I was not able to open the video in VirtualDubMod due to an unknown codec(where can you download your codec?) to tell you the exact frame difference.

Anyway....

@luperry: Even if you're not willing to sub Haruhi, maybe you can just sub episode 12? I'm sure that's the one every one really wants in HQ. ^^