[EG] Turn-A Gundam - BD-BOX 1 (1080p, 10bit)

EPISODES 1-25

Holy shit, I did not expect to get this out so quickly! Huge thanks goes out to the individual who actually bought the box and provided it directly to EG.

Where to start?

Well, this is it, the last main Gundam TV series shot on film, and the only one to my knowledge shot entirely in 35mm. There are digital bits, but I'll get to that in a sec. The transfer has wonderful color, and keeps the muted look of the original while still offering genuine vibrancy to the image. Like pretty much all Gundam releases, it is DNR'd, and though they scrubbed just about all the grain, Bandai Visual's processes look to have improved, so the overall sharpness is intact. That said, they felt the need to add a pretty serious level of edge enhancement to the whole show, which I have mitigated in this encode.

As for the digital segments, they are upscaled to varying degrees of quality. The in-episode footage looks to be upscaled in some QTEC-like process, but it's thankfully minimal (there will be more in the next box though). The shocking part is the upscaling job done on the OP/ED sequences. They did a fantastic job blending the digital footage with the few film bits in the opening, and I suspect they had a better source for the digital footage that was then upscaled to 1080p. Ironically, they didn't apply any kind of DNR to the digital bits. There is a bit of shimmer in some of these shots, however, and the upscaling process itself looks to have created aliasing most of the time. I've reduced it a little bit on a shot-by-shot basis, so the film bits are untouched, while the digital shots are filtered.

One more note on video: Episode 16 is an upscaled recap episode, and as such, is the only 720p episode in the batch. The preview footage at the end is in fact remastered, but I compromised on resolution since that footage, logically, is available in 1080p in the following episode.

The subs are further revised from the previous EG release, and have been retimed and restyled to fit the BDs with standard chaptering. No more ordered chapters here.

FINALLY, commentaries are available as separate m4a files, so you can mux them if you want, but they were included semi-last minute by request.

Specs:
Video: H.264 10bit @ CRF18
Audio: LC-AAC @ -0.7
Subtitles: Revised subs from previous release.
Extras: Commentary tracks and clean OP/ED.

Note: The V2 patch files are only necessary for those who were following my individual Mega releases.