The first 9 episodes of Tatsunoko's depressing puppet torture anime, now available in English without Harmony Gold and Saban's meddling. I've been wanting to do this for a while, so yeah. I was gonna wait until I had the full series done, but I wanted to take a break so I decided on doing a batch release of these 9 episodes. It's enough to give any newcomer a taste of what the series offers. ## About this release Video is sourced from the Japanese Blu-rays and processed with a preservation-first workflow. The raw Blu-ray video is run through a VapourSynth script to clean things up and create a lossless FFV1 master (deinterlacing + correct 4:3 aspect ratio). The 4:3 framing is intentional and matches a cel I own (obviously, i checked with the episode it's from). From the FFV1 files, episodes are encoded to H.264 and muxed with the subtitles and raw Blu-Ray audio. The H.264 settings were tuned specifically to avoid blockiness in high-motion scenes (Particularly it was wholly based on shifting fire effects in episode 1 until it wasn't blocky), with the goal of keeping the image as close to the Blu-ray as possible. This is a quality-focused release, if someone wants a smaller or lower-bitrate encode, they’re free to make one from this. ## Subtitles Earlier work (episode 5) used Whisper for transcription, but it proved unreliable, so the full project switched to a better transcription > translation workflow with manual checks for phrases and names to ensure fair accuracy. Episode 5’s sub track is mostly unchanged aside from updated styling and an extra note, since it was already decent, and can be revisited later if needed. Future episodes may or may not be released in batch as work continues. The likely scenario is I will eventually go through the next selection for any finishing touches before deciding they're ready for a batch. ## MediaInfo Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : High@L4.1 Format settings : CABAC / 5 Ref Frames Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, Reference frames : 5 frames Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC Duration : 25 min 35 s Bit rate : 9 545 kb/s Width : 1 440 pixels Height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 4:3 Frame rate mode : Constant Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.205 Stream size : 1.71 GiB (86%) Writing library : x264 core 164 r3191 4613ac3 Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=8 / psy=1 / psy_rd=0.60:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=4,4 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=2 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc=crf / mbtree=0 / crf=15.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=1:0.60 Default : No Forced : No Audio ID : 2 ID in the original source medium : 4352 (0x1100) Format : PCM Format settings : Little / Signed Codec ID : A_PCM/INT/LIT Duration : 25 min 35 s Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 1 536 kb/s Channel(s) : 2 channels Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz Frame rate : 25.000 FPS (1920 SPF) Bit depth : 16 bits Stream size : 281 MiB (14%) Title : Stereo Language : Japanese Default : Yes Forced : No Original source medium : Blu-ray