Though this isn’t the ‘holy grail’ of GitS releases. The new source is overall cleaner, i could properly IVTC it, it has a lot less severe problems, the high motion/action scenes are especially better, but it does lose some minor dark details in a few specific scenes. Re-constructing the grain did bring a a few problems itself, eg the grain can obfuscate some details since they appear less pronounced. Not everything could properly be re-constructed so i had to add some grain in specific scenes or on specific level ranges, to make everything blend properly and to have a somewhat consistent look. On the bright side, this is most likely a lot closer to the original intend than before.

Also thanks to all the contributors and supporters, sadly i lost my list with all the names.

anyway, there will most likely a v4 someday (maybe in a decade lol) with:
– new subtitles (i have a new completely reworked translation but it needs heavy editing, anyone interested?)
– re-create the look of the BD/DVD (eg colours/proper colour grading)

Comparison can be found here.

Specs of this release are:
Video: 1920×1038 (1.85:1) h264 10 bit
Audio: Japanese Stereo FLAC, English Stereo FLAC, Japanese 5.1 FLAC, English 5.1 FLAC, English Commentary Stereo AC-3
Subtitle: English ASS Subs (Dialogue, Signs/Songs)

Download:
Ghost in the Shell (1995) on BakaBT
Ghost in the Shell (1995) on nyaa

Blog Post | AniDB

Video: 1920×1038 (1.85:1) h264 10 bit
Audio: Japanese Stereo FLAC, English Stereo FLAC, Japanese 5.1 FLAC, English 5.1 FLAC, English Commentary Stereo AC-3
Subtitle: English ASS Subs (Dialogue, Signs/Songs)

Staff:
der richter – Everything
the_E_y_Es – Spot spotter, QC

Download:
Ghost in the Shell (1995) on BakaBT
Ghost in the Shell (1995) on nyaa

Download old v2:
Ghost in the Shell (1995) on BakaBT
Ghost in the Shell (1995) on nyaa

This is a re-encode of my original release, since the source/MPEG2 stream is not available anymore. This is a huge improvement over the original video and as before a lot better than the BD source.

This encode is not completely issue free and perfect. not all of the MPEG2/WMV artifacts could be fixed completely without damaging other areas of the video. The video is still quite dirty in places and not all spots have been fixed. Tbh one could probably sit on this for an eternity and won’t be able to fix them all.

Video:
– Several 1000 frames (severely damaged by MPEG2/WMV artifacts) were restored (per frame)
– Several 100.000 spots on several 10.000 of frames were removed and fixed (per frame)
– Frames edges were fixed (per scene)
– Remnants of the Logo have been removed
– Colour and range correction have been made (red/yellow tints etc.) (per scene)
– Some combing remnants were fixed
– Heavy sharpening artifacts were removed as good as possible (ringing/haloing)
– Chroma bleeding has been fixed
– Everything was cleaned up to remove encoding artifacts
– Everything was stabilised
– Banding was removed (per scene)
– Frames were matched to the BD source (audio matches properly now)

Audio:
– Japanese audio: Sourced from a DTS-HD MA track
– Japanese audio: Cut to make it properly sync with the video (bad mastering, BD audio wasn’t in sync on the BD)
– Japanese audio: A missing dialogue line was added
– Japanese audio: The original Japanese ending theme was re-inserted (U2’s “One Minute Warning” replaced with “Reincarnation”)
– English audio: Sourced from the 6.1 DTS-ES track instead of the UK BD’s DTS-HD MA track because of severe mastering problems, same problems on the US DTS stream
– English audio: Problems were missing sound effects and bad mixing (more infos here and here)

Subtitle:
– The opening Sign was redone
– Song lyrics were added
– Dialogue styling was adjusted
– Some lines were fixed

For some history, of the several stages of my filtering, you can look at these three comparisons.

Specs of this release are:
Video: 1920×1040 (1.85:1) h264 10 bit
Audio: Japanese 5.1 FLAC, English 6.1 DTS-ES
Subtitle: English ASS Subs (Dialogue, Signs/Songs)

Download:
Ghost in the Shell (1995) on BakaBT
Ghost in the Shell (1995) on nyaa

anyway coming to this release itself. this contains the ‘uncensored’ episode 18 and unlike the R1 rips this release isn’t the TV edit but the DVD/Home Video edit. meaning it has some revised animations and is a bit differently structured (scenes, OP, EDs, Previews etc.). this is probably the best release you will ever see in the foreseeable future, seeing that no one wanted to touch those atrocious DVDs before me. all sources are sadly a blended mess and it’s not completely fixable. back then, i’ve done my best to get a good compromise of blend removals and smooth motions. so yeah my encode is definitely not blend free, that being said my release is also full of blends. besides this the source has heavy rainbowing in parts which was removed. also fixed were screen edges as far as possible, chroma shifts and aberrations, haloing and ringing and some aliasing in places.

subs were completely retimed, since the R1 source, and with that the subs, don’t match the R2 Source. it’s because of some rearranged scenes, etc. that were mentioned before. recap episodes 14 and 15 (first part) are untranslated, since they are completely different from the R1 release. also untranslated is the preview of episode 6. besides this the subs got my usual good treatment, like proper styling (alternate, overlapping lines, etc), some editing by me, song translations and lyrics (OP edited by laus), and it is fully TSed, though i cheaped out on a few sings. the last point probably the biggest part of my frustration because this show is littered with signs.

Specs of this release are:
Video: 698-718×522-526 h264 10bit VFR
Audio: Japanese Stereo AC3
Subtitle: English ASS Subs (R1)

Download:
Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou on BakaBT

Blog Post‎ | AniDB

Video: 698-718×522-526 h264 10bit VFR
Audio: Japanese Stereo AC3
Subtitle: English ASS Subs (R1)

Staff:
der richter – Everything
laus – Editor (OP)

Download:
Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou on BakaBT

Blog Post‎ | AsianWiki

Video: 1920×1038 h264 10bit
Audio: Japanese 5.1 Flac, Japanese 2.0 DTS Commentary
Subtitle: English ASS Subs (Furritsubs)

Staff:
der richter – Everything

Download:
Bakuman (2015) on BakaBT

Specs of this release are:
Video: 1920×1038 h264 10bit
Audio: Japanese 5.1 Flac, Japanese 2.0 DTS Commentary
Subtitle: English ASS Subs (Furritsubs)

Download:
Bakuman (2015) on BakaBT

• DVD is overexposed at places
• BD grain is bad and completely destructive
• BD darks are completely crushed
• BD has a bad colour tints (green, blue, yellow) in different scenes
• BD has worse colour grading than the DVD, or is none existent
• BD is horrible shaky
• BD has lot of broken frames (burns, holes, glue etc)
• BD has some digital sampling artifacts due to the production
• BD has horrible blooming due to the bad transfer

Things i have fixed:

• Matched the DVD video to the BD one (frame count) (DVD)
• Lot of spots and broken frames fixed (several 10k spots and film defects on more than 20k frames) (BD/DVD)
• Colours, levels etc have been fixed according to my judgement (BD/DVD)
• Chroma shifts/bleeds fixed (BD/DVD)
• Shaky BD was stabilised (BD)
• DVD was completely cleaned up and adjusted for best merging (DVD)
• Combed frames fixed, even though all were progressive (DVD)
• Near complete removal of the bad grain (BD)
• Merging of the good DVD details into the BD
• Blacks are mostly restored (BD)
• Digital sampling artifacts fixed (BD)
• Fixed some animation defects (DVD/BD)
• Blooming fixed mostly (BD)

Things i assumed for my simple colour grading:

• snow white, moon white, vampires grey, teeth white, blood red, bright sun clouds white + sand whitish, dawn/dusk sun orange/red clouds orangish/redish, bright scenes bright not greyish, etc. make it look natural, since i don’t have any reference material

What can be improved:

• Some blurring from the DVD merged details
• Video is still quite dirty from the BD, lot more spots to clean up
• Some individual frame are still quite shaky
• there are a few individual frames where i fucked up the filtering a bit

Source of the video is the english BD release and 3 different DVD releases (R1/R2). The DVDs and BD were first filtered separately and merged scene by scene afterwards. The matching of the DVD to the BD was quite hard. Not only was the DVD differently cropped by scene it was also transferred with a different angle, so frames were differently ‘warped’ in comparison to the BD. I had to ‘warp’ them to match the BD, additionally to cropping them appropriately.

Specs of this release are:
Video: 1920×1038 h264 10bit
Audio: Japanese 5.1 DTS, English 5.1 FLAC
Subtitle: English ASS Subs (Main, Signs/Songs) (R1 Heavily modified)

Download:
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust on BakaBT
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust on nyaa

Blog Post‎ | AniDB

Video: 1920×1038 h264 10bit
Audio: Japanese 5.1 DTS, English 5.1 FLAC
Subtitle: English ASS Subs (Main, Signs/Songs) (R1 Heavily modified)

Staff:
der richter – Everything

Download:
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust on BakaBT
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust on nyaa

Specs of this release are:
Video: 1280×720 h264 10bit
Audio: Japanese Stereo AAC
Subtitle: English ASS Subs (SFW-sage)

Download:
Bakuman S2 on BakaBT
Bakuman S2 on nyaa