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

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

This is not my own encode, it is quite an old raw that uses WMV9 as video codec. As subtitle source I used the official subs. I fixed a lot of scene bleeds, retimed many lines, split a lot of three liners, added some proper typesetting, and much more.

The whole specs of this release are:
Video: 1920×1040 WMV9
Audio: Japanese 5.1 DTS
Subtitle: English ASS Subs

Download:
Ghost in the Shell on BakaBT
Ghost in the Shell on nyaa