TWD S06E04 1080p WebDL x265 HEVC 5.1 noobless[UTR]

The wait for this release was due to several attempts to reduce the banding introduced at the encoding stage in the close-up shots of Morgan. In the end I had to segment the encode to use different settings on those shots.

Season: 6
Episode: 4
Title: Here's Not Here
Summary: A new face appears; trust issues form.
Video: 1080p | x265 (H.265/HEVC) | CRF 22 | slow preset | denoise, deband, ordered noise pre-processing pass
Audio: English | AAC LC | 6 channels | Target Quality 0.4 | 327 Kbps Variable (373 Kbps max)
Subtitles (embedded SRT): English, English SDH
Source: The.Walking.Dead.S06E04.1080p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.H.264-Cyphanix.mkv (5817 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):


Until we get a BluRay, I believe this is the best WebDL 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: