[hydes] My Neighbor Totoro [JPBD Remux][Dual-Audio]

Category:
Date:
2021-10-17 17:41 UTC
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Seeders:
45
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0
File size:
24.2 GiB
Completed:
1562
Info hash:
3f646747099099abae10e64e81e5ea2cea4e04be
![](https://bit.ly/3l6iv6F) ![2](https://bit.ly/3puG6kb) #### [Discord](https://discord.gg/PMrccmpYTu) #### Other films in the Ghibli project: * [Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind](/view/1425023) * [Laputa](/view/1502230) * [Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro](/view/1700966) ___ ### My Neighbor Totoro ### Video Out of all the different releases I compared, the Blu-ray from the 2014 “Hayao Miyazaki Collection” JP box set had the best picture quality. You could say it’s virtually indistinguishable from the original 2012 JP BD, but its somewhat higher bitrate (~38 Mbps compared to the original’s ~34 Mbps) makes it technically just a tad better. And that's it really as for which BD is best. However, I thought I'd mention the other candidates here too. When it comes to the UK and possibly AU BD, which might be a clone of the UK BD, there are problems not present on other releases. On top of the poorer PQ caused by the likely worse encoding settings and the clearly lower bitrate @ ~25 Mbps, they also seem to have an incorrect brightness when compared to every single other home release. (If anyone can confirm my clone suspicions, do let me know.) The UK/AU release is also yet another testament to the common fact that many non-Japanese releases of anime are inferior to their Japanese counterparts (usual exceptions to this rule being Dynit's and Discotek's output). Howbeit it's not all doom and gloom here with the non-JP editions: the Disney and Gkids US BDs look much nicer, as they have the correct brightness and are both rocking healthier bitrates @ ~34 Mbps. The Gkids BD particularly comes very close to the 2014 JP BD, but the JP BD remained the consensus choice after I consulted people more knowledgeable than myself about the two. If curious, check out the comparisons below to see all the differences for yourself. I doubt you could improve the PQ of this movie much, if at all, with an encode unless you tried something akin to what Scoped did recently for his Akira upload. Though all these older Ghibli films tend to look decent (at least on their Japanese releases), so they might not be as worth the effort of doing encodes of as various other classic anime films might be. I personally don't think Totoro is in any need of a fan restoration seeing as the JP BD video is already of good quality, but I guess there are always things with any BD for dedicated people to try and improve. As for the existing encodes, I'd only recommend going with them if you don't have the space for the remux here. I would, however, still add on to nedragrevev's note below about Totoro being an iconic film and it deserving good subtitles that it similarly deserves to be seen in as good a quality as possible. To that end, I hope the relatively compact 24 Gb file size of this upload resulting from Totoro's runtime being on the shorter side at only 86 minutes and the included audio tracks taking up less than 1 Gb altogether won't be too high for most people. ### Audio After doing the v2 of Nausicaä and learning the hard way to pay more attention to the actual real-world quality of the audio tracks, I took it upon myself to do audio comparisons of most of Totoro's major home video releases for this upload. I like to believe it's at least good to be sure of these things, even if the time it took to acquire the BDs for this one might've been better spent elsewhere. After comparing the 1996 JP LaserDisc, 2006 Disney R1 DVD, 2012 JP BD, 2012 UK BD, 2013 Disney US BD, 2014 JP BD, and the 2017 Gkids US BD, I can safely say most of them have very similar audio. Technically, the UK BD was the best by virtue of having the tracks in PCM, that is, in an uncompressed format. PCM is kind of the "least compressed" a track can be, though that doesn't mean it sounds any better than the lossless compression formats used on the other BDs, as they are still, obviously, lossless. And ultimately, since the actual audio content is uniformly so similar, it doesn't matter that much which tracks I'm using here because I'm still converting them to FLAC to save that extra teeny-tiny bit of space. When it comes to saving space though, the UK BD tracks were actually the best choice because they’re 16-bit instead of 24-bit, meaning they’re neatly smaller in size than what's on all the other BDs. This upload should be quite exhaustive regarding the number of releases compared, with perhaps only the 2001 JP R2 DVD being a notable one I haven't yet gotten to see the audio of. And if I had to guess, I'd say having those DVD tracks be absent from the comparisons isn't most likely a big loss. I doubt they'd fare much better than the BD audio. Even the LD, which predates the JP DVD, doesn't have preferable audio quality in this case. Having said that, I’m still interested in checking out everything I possibly can and will gladly examine the audio on the DVD in question if anyone happens to own it and is willing to share. Like I already mentioned, all the BDs had more or less the same audio, yet there was one unusual problem I came across: the Gkids BD had the JP 2.0 track in dual-mono instead of stereo like it should be. Is it just my copy, or is this a major oversight on Gkids’ part? If you own the Gkids BD, let me know if the JP track on it is in stereo or mono. Can you actually hear stereo separation, or does everything sound like it's coming from the so-called "phantom center" between the speakers? Big thanks again to [ZeroCool](/user/PeePeePooPoo69), who has been ripping his Ghibli LaserDiscs and sharing the audio on them. I've synced to this remux the 1989 Streamline English dub from his excellent rip of the Totoro LD from the 1996 ["Ghibli Ga Ippai"](https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/00161) LD set, which was also superior to the 2002 Fox DVD version of the track by having [markedly less noise reduction.](https://slow.pics/c/gn1JMMAH) Another difficult one where ZeroCool really came in clutch was the Japanese audio on the LDs. The Japanese audio LD track was at first going to be another one missing from the comparisons, but I was able to include it thanks to ZeroCool sharing it with me in addition to the Streamline dub. It didn't end up being better than the UK BD audio, but having confirmation of that fact is valuable. ### Subtitles #### NOTE: The following is an abridged version of [nedragrevev's](https://github.com/nedragrevev/custom-subs#readme) notes to fit nyaa's character limit. Read the full notes [here](https://pastebin.com/Cg1qBadr). * #### Translation: The official translation simplified and skipped a lot of dialogue. Every single line has been retranslated in a natural way from the Japanese. I'm very particular about getting things right these days, and being such an iconic film, I tried to translate this as carefully as possible, including the signs as noted below. Referenced Disney's dub at times, which was a surprisingly good translation of the Japanese. Thanks to hydes for offering some pointers about translation choices. I don't like translation notes unless absolutely necessary. I created five of them, and considered including a hardcore version with all showing, but decided not to. Three of these TL notes concerned Mei purposely mispronouncing some words at times. It's interesting but not necessary to enjoy the film. For example, when Mei is explaining to Satsuki that she met "Totoro", Satsuki thinks she meant a troll, which is pronounced "tororu" in Japanese (totoro <--> tororu). There was a reference to Tadpole, which has been translated as pole-tads, which works fine, but the other word she mispronounces is "corn". I considered translating as "corb" but you'd probably be scratching your head and thinking I misspelled it, so I left this out altogether. 4 Versions (Ignore any that don't appeal to you): 1. Signs and Songs Only. Songs k-timed to Disney's English versions of them. 2. Honorifics. Only one TL note included as mentioned above. 3. No honorifics. No TL notes. I recommend defaulting to this one. 4. No honorifics, localized. As with 3, but also removes a Jizo reference and has the western naming order in dialogue and signs. Almost no point with this one, but it gives you the choice as to what you prefer. * #### Timing: Completely and carefully retimed as I usually do. * #### Typesetting: Plenty of new stuff translated and typeset, some of which is basically pointless but it blended in fine so I left it in. Cat Bus Destination Signs: These are left untranslated as place names as they should be. Translating stuff like this, is like translating Shinjuku to the literal meaning of "New Lodging/Inn", which makes no sense. To double check, I asked a native speaker who confirmed these are always read as place names, not descriptors like "Forest" or "Cemetery" as translated in the official stuff (guessing it was to make it kid-friendly). The consensus on the web agrees with this. I did translate Taisha to "Grand Shrine" though as this seemed more logical to do so. * #### Songs: I made some translation adjustments. The Japanese had the final say but after listening to the English version, I liked some of the lines and copied them over (to some extent) if it actually reflected the Japanese lyrics. OP: Credit to [KaraEffect0r](https://github.com/KaraEffect0r) for the k-effect, which I only modified slightly. ED: Translating this nicely was difficult, so it might seem a bit disjointed between some lines. Another one where the k-effect was pretty standard, but worked well with just a few modifications. #### If you find mistakes, please post on my Github issues page and I will fix it as soon as I get to it. ### Comparisons |Audio| | -| |[Japanese](https://slow.pics/c/KouFJwg5)| |[English](https://slow.pics/c/4gyMsRSt)| |[DR Meter data](https://pastebin.com/raw/CpB9n2Lf)| |Video| | -| |[BD comparisons](https://slow.pics/c/6JWnlfit)| |[2014 JP BD vs encodes](https://slow.pics/c/Lmhvj2Wf)| ![3](https://bit.ly/3no7Unx) [Specifics in text form](https://pastebin.com/6eiWzpcv) [MediaInfo](https://pastebin.com/raw/8giK5sPS) ![4](https://bit.ly/3b1cF0N)

File list

  • [hydes] My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro) (2014 JPBD Remux).mkv (24.2 GiB)

hydes (uploader)

User
#### I didn't have space in the description so I'll add this here: I color-matched all signs (save for a few exceptions that didn't quite require it) for each subtitle track because they didn't originally match the 2014 JP BD. The reason being that nedragrevev based his typesetting on the Madman AU BD, which has different colors caused by the incorrect brightness on it. The TS itself is top-notch as always, only the colors had to be changed to fit this upload. I didn't spot any errors after I'd finished my edits but let me know if you find any. I'll fix them and do a v2 if there are some.

WPR

User
Absolutely based
Hydes delivering the goods as always.

hydes (uploader)

User
@WPR, @vikrant9760 Thank you!
Thanks for making these collections :)
ty, looking foward to more definitive ghibli releases:)
Extremely based release my friend. Glad I was able to help.
I have an issue with this. You could have just converted the JP BD's audio to FLAC since 24-bit sounds ever-so-slightly better than 16-bit, even if the 24-bit track is DTS-HD MA and the 16-bit track is LPCM and even if their frequency ranges are exactly the same. A 24-bit DTS-HD MA track and a 24-bit LPCM track would sound exactly the same. You should have just used the JP BD for the JP audio and the US Blu-ray for the Disney dub. 24-bit FLAC is also not that much larger than 16-bit FLAC with the right settings. I recommend just using the 24-bit tracks instead. Also, I hope you include the unofficial FreeSurround 7.1 upmix here.

hydes (uploader)

User
[@HARVEST](https://nyaa.si/view/1445155#com-10), I'm quite sure there's no audible difference between 16-bit and 24-bit audio. I understand 24-bit audio is preferable if you're doing mastering/mixing work as it gives more room to change/edit things, but for plain listening, it is not any better. A good read: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded.415361/ As for the file sizes, the 2014 JP BD Japanese stereo track is 863 Mb after converting to FLAC, while the Japanese stereo track from the UK BD is 390 Mb after converting to FLAC. This is also practically the case with the Disney dub tracks, so by using the UK BD tracks instead of tracks from other releases, the total amount of saved space amounts to near 1 Gb. Not a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, but still a decent reduction, I'd say.
I would be really happy if the 24-bit tracks are at least a separate MEGA download for people who want it. I would also love if you did the same thing (MEGA downloads) for the original PGS subtitles for every Ghibli film for people who really want them. I would say that the official subtitles are the Ghibli-approved subtitles even if they are overly-simplified and they have some merit and it would be truer to what the studio approved for watching their films, but by that logic, that would mean that the truest way to watch the films would be if you are fluent in Japanese and can watch the films raw. As for these Ghibli releases, the only thing that can beat this (other than the 4K UHD release) is if MGVC gets reverse-engineered (very unlikely) and someone can do bloated x265 12-bit re-encodes that preserve all the detail while being in true 12-bit colour.
Why would you want tracks that have been proven to be objectively worse just because they have a bigger number? Thats literally bloating your own life
@hydes, thank you for this! @PeePeePooPoo69, Thank you for the ever growing collection of LD audio mixes. . .. ... @Harvest, dude... why?
@PeePeePooPoo69 According to the waveforms and spectrums, the 16-bit UK tracks are identical to the 24-bit US and JP tracks. The 24-bit audio tracks would be of a higher quality, if very slightly imperceptible. The 16-bit tracks are fine for most people but I want to archive these with the highest quality audio tracks. As for my 7.1 FreeSurround remixes, they are not as purist as decoding the Blu-ray tracks with a vintage Dolby decoder but they get the job done for people who want to watch the films in Dolby Stereo with surrounds but they cannot decode Dolby Stereo/Pro Logic content to surround. FreeSurround also has cleaner matrix upmixing than other decoding algorithms out there like Dolby Pro Logic, so even if it would be less authentic, they would sound a bit more like true revisionist 7.1 remixes. I just threw the audio tracks to foobar2000, processed them with FreeSurround configured to 7.1, and called it a day. It should be mentioned that all of the Ghibli films from Laputa to Pom Poko have Dolby Stereo mixes, except for Ocean Waves which is just plain stereo. Nausicaa is in dual mono on Blu-ray. Every film afterwards is in surround sound, either 5.0, 5.1 or 6.1. The exception is The Wind Rises, which was in mono. And even its LPCM 2.0 track is dual mono.
Thank you for another definitive-quality release hydes! I've nearly finished my translation comparisons chart for Neon Genesis Evangelion, just got to tidy up the tags and notes, then I'll be crowdsourcing submissions to average out various biases (plus some editorial oversight of course) to hopefully arrive at a more definitive result than previous releases' attempts. Possibly going to be pooling resources with McBalls/Arid's similar project too. Even if you're not a fan of the final results, hopefully my comparison document will be of use as a definitive base to work from as it makes it obvious which lines are contentious in their precise meaning where translations differ wildly in nuance etc.
Greatly appreciated...