[EG] The Big O (AI Upscaled 1080p, Dual Audio, 60fps OP)

Category:
Date:
2021-05-18 00:18 UTC
Submitter:
Seeders:
7
Information:
No information.
Leechers:
3
File size:
31.3 GiB
Completed:
779
Info hash:
8ba94ba4fea7322a50e24ad0fcab0feb9cdb64e3
Fuck, I can't believe I'm typing this, but here is a surprise EG drop: Big O This is a completely one-off experiment that was entirely prompted by wanting to rewatch the show, only to discover that no decent copies are really floating around out there. First off, the Big O BDs that are out there are lame Q-TEC upscales that don't really do much for the image. This is a real shame for the first seasons, because Banrise didn't see it fit to properly rescan the 35mm film. Being from 1999, it should have been right up there with Turn-A Gundam as far as film stock quality is concerned. They instead decided to criminally upscale the first season. The second season of course, was an early 2000s digital production, and while it's well produced, it's a product of its time, meaning it's soft, and eternally stuck in standard definition. So why did I bother encoding it? One reason is that, shockingly, no one seems to have restored the original OP to the Blu-ray versions, which use the 2007 Animax opening instead. Even US DVDs from around that same time also stopped using the original opening, presumably for fear of dealing with Queen, meaning the only DVDs that had the original versions were the single volumes and first collection box sets. It's pretty easy to combine files like this, and the whole show was upscaled anyway, so it's not like it matters that you'd be matching DVD to BD. The second reason that ultimately made me go for it was some recent experimenting with AI upscaling software. Honestly... it can sometimes work magic if the source material is good. After trying to work with free ERSGAN tools (with models that are supposedly ideal for cel animation), I did get some interesting results, but the speed was painfully slow. Then I tried Topaz Video Enhance AI, which though not as specialized in its modeling, had drastically better performance, and more consistent results overall, not to mention an easier UI and batch processing function. Believe it or not, I started looking into these tools just a few months ago when Daft Punk announced their breakup. Naturally, I had to rewatch Interstella 5555, but that movie is literally impossible to repair. It went through several standards conversions and is frame-blended to hell. I tried my best to make a good copy for myself (lol), but the effort was wasted. While I can get decent upscaling, the frame blends are just too baked in to really fix, so I ditched the project. But those efforts were worth it in the end, because it let me know that an AI upscale could work under the right circumstances. So this past week, I downloaded the BD and DVD rips, and got to work. I could not find BDMVs, but I grabbed a rip by [Cleo] that was okay. I *downscaled* them back to SD (hoping that any compression from the rip would be averaged out), created lossless h264 files, brought those into Topaz AI, and upscaled them back to 1080p. The results, though far from perfect, are very impressive. The upscaling process is shockingly effective at times, and certainly more so than whatever process was used on the BD. These upscaled versions were exported out of Topaz to ProRes HQ mezzanines so I could combine them with the OP. Now about the opening... It's certainly unique. Not just in the style, but in the production process. It's an almost entirely interlaced opening, which is really jarring to see in 2021. On TV, this would have appeared as a really smooth 60fps-like intro, and I completely forgot that it looked that way. I managed to find DVD ISO remuxes of the original R1 DVDs, so I grabbed the clean OP. Using QTGMC in Vapoursynth, I deinterlaced it to 60fps and then brought it into Topaz for upscaling. The result isn't amazing, but it does the trick. The only problem is that, in 2021, I no longer want to deal with VFR bullshit (and I don't think the world really wants to either), so I wasn't willing to do all the manual work to combine a 60fps opening with a 24fps episode. That's when I brought everything into DaVinci Resolve. I combined the OP and episodes on a timeline, and then replaced the BD-rip audio (it was overly compressed AAC) with the DVD remux AC3, recreating the original versions. I then retimed the framerate of the OP to 24fps via Resolve's optical flow settings. The results weren't amazing, and I wish it looked better, but the OP really was meant to be seen in 60fps. The panning and zoom motions, as simple as they are, are so fast that it just feels jerky in 24fps. To compensate for this, I added just a tiny bit of motion blur to smooth things out. The black levels of the OP were brought down just a touch, and I performed a deband, spatial denoise, and film grain pass on the episodes themselves. I won't pretend that grain in this context isn't purely superficial, but I figured I might as well try to imitate a proper remaster as best I can. The episodes were then rendered to DNxHR HQX. Episodes from the second season were also AI upscaled and debanded, but there was no additional grain or denoise pass (other than inherent denoising from Topaz). Lastly, the episodes were encoded in H.264 10-bit CRF 18, with both audio tracks in VBR 10 Opus. The subs are directly remuxed from the original Cleo BD rips, so no work was done there. Don't ask for anything more on that front, it's simply not happening. Included here is the complete 26 episode run AND a 60fps version of the clean OP, to show people what it should really look like.

File list

  • [EG] The Big O AI-Upscale
    • [EG]The_Big_O_01_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (1.9 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_02_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (1.6 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_03_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (1.6 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_04_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (1.7 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_05_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (1.5 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_06_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (1.9 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_07_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (1.9 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_08_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (2.0 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_09_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (2.0 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_10_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (1.9 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_11_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (2.1 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_12_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (2.4 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_13_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (1.7 GiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_14_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (504.7 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_15_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (485.2 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_16_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (507.5 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_17_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (561.0 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_18_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (582.8 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_19_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (496.5 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_20_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (522.0 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_21_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (535.7 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_22_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (587.2 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_23_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (515.2 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_24_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (632.2 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_25_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (559.3 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_26_(DualAudio_1080p).mkv (531.7 MiB)
    • [EG]The_Big_O_Clean_OP_(1080p_60fps).mkv (162.3 MiB)
massive legend

GSR

User
Fuck it. I'm curious.
Torrent was apparently temporarily banned because the staff thought this wasn't the real [EG], should be sorted now.
What @Lemioh said. Going to check this out. Thanks @EG.
> Torrent was apparently temporarily banned because the staff thought this wasn’t the real [EG], should be sorted now. More like... upscales aren't allowed plus the fact that according to the description it's a re-encode of a mini re-encode by cleo. "I could not find BDMVs, but I grabbed a rip by [Cleo] that was okay. I downscaled them back to SD (hoping that any compression from the rip would be averaged out), created lossless h264 files, brought those into Topaz AI, and upscaled them back to 1080p." At the very least if not outright banned, it should obviously be flagged red for re-encode.
yeah it's an upscale and a re-encode. it should be deleted (or at least marked as a remake and mocked extensively).
According to the uploader nothing is sourced from the DVD except the audio and OP, Aureolin spoke to them in the IRC channel and reactivated the upload.
no one said it was a dvd upscale though? so that seems unrelated. and if the OP was sourced from the DVD, that was upscaled too.
> More like… upscales aren’t allowed plus the fact that according to the description it’s a re-encode of a mini re-encode by cleo. Actually it was confirmed by staff on IRC that it was because they thought this wasn't real [EG].
I agree about it being a re-encode of an encode though, so I will mark it as a remake(red). The upscale part, well, a higher power than me decided they don't care about just the OP. >I could not find BDMVs, but I grabbed a rip by [Cleo] that was okay. I downscaled them back to SD (hoping that any compression from the rip would be averaged out), created lossless h264 files, brought those into Topaz AI, and upscaled them back to 1080p. This is the line in question that suggests that a proper BDMV source was not used, but this was re-encoded from an existing BD encode, which requires remake status. If this is wrong please let me know.
> Actually it was confirmed by staff on IRC that it was because they thought this wasn’t real [EG]. Probably because people expected better of EG given their history... But to re-encode from Cleo, upscale, and duplicate frames... One has to wonder if EG wasn't just late with the April Fools Day joke this year.
I love how quick some are to shit on this without even bothering to check the info link that shows how much of an improvement this is over the BD source, not that I'd expect any better from people that clearly don't understand how AI neural networks work though thinking it's the same thing as straight up re-encoding. http://compare.bakashots.me/compare.php?setId=4869
@MrAnon We're not even talking about that... We're talking about the fact that they opted to encode from Cleo, a known bitrate starved mini-re-encode group... Meaning this release has likely gone through 3 generations of encoding to get to this point.
that comparison makes it look like your usual warpsharped crap. if you like it, whatever. also clearly the source has very little detail, if any, above SD, so the encoder could've done the same filtering but left it at 480p, saving tons of space.
Since this upload is "hot" at the moment I'm mentioning that this was originally uploaded to another user's account as anonymous. RX782 came to our IRC and made an account, I transferred this upload over to that account.
_Grabs popcorn and plays the piano with his robit maid_ Man I enjoyed reading this page, not sure why..
I can't stand people who don't even give things a chance. Upscaling is usually crap BUT the tech is getting better and better. He said it is an "experiment" and it does look quite good. I applaud and appreciate your effort.
I checked out the first episode. Been a fan of EG's releases over the years. As stated by others, too bad the source is a mini re-encode with much detail loss. x4subs (from JPBD) looks better than this. There are also ReinForce and SFEO-Raws for other options. I don't believe upscales should be killed off. I like to see every type of encode have room to grow and improve as technology does. Can't say I'm sold on it as of yet though. Still much appreciation @RX782. Hope this isn't your last release.
People are so stupid. They won't imagine how many hours this took. Let's hope RX782 don't do anything anymore, they just not deserve.
for admin and anyone who wants to know AI upscale is good, it's not old stuff, it's really good, right now it requires a ton of power, I upscale at 0.4 fps, while some uploader encode 24 episodes a day PS: here is the only site that ban AI upscale that I am aware of, even private torrent sites allow it
AI upscales arent banned, tho
@LightArrowsEXE DVD AI upscaled are banned, if not I did NANA and NHK NHK ni Youkoso, I will upload them now , but if I do my account will be banned and my torrent will be deleted
S1 definitively does NOT need an upscale of any sort. S2 maybe.
@Ravarage Test the waters, they seem calm today.
Thank you For this can you do shigatsu wa kimi no uso
Episode 5 seems to lack a subtitle track
@oh_noes Mines dere.. Granted it's kinda garbled?
@RX782 Episode 5 does appear to lack subtitles.
Anyone that might have downloaded this should notice that Episode 5 is missing subtitles. Since RX782 himself never fixed it by releasing a v2 patch for it, I've made one just now as an xdelta patch, this will add subtitles from original Bluray release, which is the same source as subtitles in the rest of the episodes thus being a perfect match. On a side note, if anyone is interested in reading more about his release, there was a 4chan thread where it originated: https://desuarchive.org/m/thread/19660568/ And now without further ado, here's the (unofficial) v2 patch for Episode 5 to add the missing subtitles: https://files.catbox.moe/rde8t9.xdelta
I wrote this off the second I saw the title and what you did, but I downloaded it. I'm very impressed with the result. I wish you hadn't gone with OPUS though. About the real downside.
I do find it weird that the second intro is not included in this version. In fact, no release I've found on here has the second OP intact, which is a shame.
You do realise the second OP is just a lazy replacement for copyright reasons, right? It doesn't even have any unique scenes, it's a clipshow of scenes from the anime, anyone that cares about this series always restores the original uncensored OP.
We need a version that has only fixes, no improvements--original opening edited in, and video downscaled to 480p because that's the only resolution it actually has.
EG more like Moozzi3
English audio sounds normalized in episode 1, weird swings in volume during segments that should be loud.
Looks good but 60 FPS anime is 100% an L for me.