TWD S06E02 1080p WebDL x265 HEVC 5.1 noobless[UTR]

When it appears that things are starting to normalize in the settlement, a new problem arises for the Alexandrians.

Season: 6
Episode: 2
Video: 1080p | x265 (H.265/HEVC) | CRF 22 | slow preset | dither, denoise, deband, ordered noise pre-processing pass
Audio: English | AAC LC | 6 channels | Target Quality 0.4 | 323 Kbps Variable (371 Kbps max)
Subtitles: English SRT, English SDH
Source: The.Walking.Dead.S06E02.1080p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.H.264-Cyphanix.mkv (5535 Kbps)

TWD is the ugliest source material I've ever had the displeasure of working with. For one thing, the bitrate is too low in places, revealing artifacts. The grain is also horrendous and there is some color banding present. Why the studio allows the network to release a product this poor is beyond me.

Pre-processing the grain and color banding out took quite a bit of tweaking for me to get right. The end result is, in my opinion, a higher quality print than the original. See comparison screenshots below I did for E01 (these screens are not representative of the actual file in this torrent):


A note regarding this episode: For the closeup at 00:00:54 to 00:01:29, I was unable to clean out the motion artifacts along the outline of her face. It was present in the source and I tried countless permutations of parameters without success. Some things you just cannot hide when you have dirty source.

Until we get a BluRay, I believe this is the best product we're going to get. Even then I suspect the quality will only marginally improve (still grain, but no artifacts).

[soapbox]Distributors need to up their delivered quality! Stop affixing a fixed 5500kbps bitrate to every WebDL.Studios need to stop applying grain like it makes everything better. All it does is mask the poor quality of your low-budget CGI. If you're going to stylistically apply grain, like this show does, do it right by telling the player to add it later with Film Grain SEI messages.[/soapbox]

Full media info: