Ranma 1/2 (R2)

First created on 18th Apr 2003. 31st Jul 2003: use CSS. 30th Nov 2003: use CSS for most elements.

visits since 18th Apr 2003

The R2 Ranma 1/2 I have is.. not quite up to expectation. This is most likely due to its age than anything else. The colors are good and there is no grain. However, it is extremely soft and the jittering is quite distracting. I captured a few screenshots for illustration. (Not the jittering, of course)

Soft	Vol 1, ep 1, 04:01
Interlaced	Vol 1, ep 1, 05:06		This is captured in forced-weave mode.
Splice marks after scene transition	Vol 1, ep 1, 07:39		This shows up as a flash. Sometimes it is at the bottom of the frame. In addition, the few frames around a scene transition jitter more than usual.
Field blending	Vol 1, ep 1, 08:02		This can be seen easily when there is motion or panning. Two adjacent fields are blended to give smoother NTSC pulldown. We are not supposed to see this at 30 fps, but we can. Note: this is caused by the DVD player.
Sudden softness	Vol 1, ep 1, 08:28		Some frames may suddenly become extremely soft, like a double image on the same frame. This is a special case of the previous problem and happens when the following conditions are met: static scene, jittering, two adjacent frames are blended for NTSC pulldown. When watching at normal speed, it looks like the camera is misfocused from time to time.
Some edge enhancement	Vol 1, ep 1, 09:55		Quite well done, actually.

These images are captured using PowerDVD 4.0. No hardware acceleration is used. Bob mode is used, as the video is encoded as interlaced. No resizing or sharpening is done. They are converted from BMP to JPEG (quality 9) using Photoshop 6.0.