wow, thanks. these are huge! I guess the audio must have been big, but it looks like you really kicked in some bitrate, too… I guess even adding a bit of noise to the whole thing wasn’t helping, huh (addgrain(), if gradfun() wasn’t enough)? In any case, amazing dedication on the freezeframes, etc. It looks great in the screen shots! Can’t wait to download!!
Oddly enough, I didn’t add any grain. I actually removed more (mvdegrain3 with strength = 500) than I do on most releases. It’s simply the nature of the series. If you check out the individual episodes, the tamer ones are down in the ~350MB range, which would be about ideal for me, but the bigger ones … well, they’re the issue. See, there are a lot of scenes that feature video-within-video if you will, where there’s all sorts of snow/static/grain throughout the episode (much like “Brain Scratch” in Cowboy Bebop). It’s really hard to reduce the average bitrates on those episodes without making something look like crap…
Also I should mention that this release uses ordered chapters, so make sure you don’t skip the Opening and Ending files in the download!
March 10, 2009 8:57 PM Finalizer
Yus! Was waiting for this one, I’m actually a bit surprised it came out this soon. A shame it doesn’t all fit on one DVD, but I’ll just find some other mind-fuck stuff to toss on the second disc, heh.
Also, I was originally planning to upload this onto BoxTorrents once I finished downloading, but if you guys are gonna do so yourselves, then I guess I won’t bother after all.
March 10, 2009 11:31 PM cestfait
Haha, yeah, that “snowy” business can be a pain, but you might find yourself able to bring the bitrate down quite a bit by giving the dct a little something to chew on next time. I guarantee you it won’t destroy visible detail if you’re careful!
That said, I guess I’d rather have the “purer” version anyway, since you’re offering it. I’d probably have vorbis’d the stereo, too, but then again, that would be detracting from the quality (in a minimal way). I think you’re way is very cool, though. This is straight up archival quality– no compression tricks.
Very nice. :D
March 12, 2009 12:01 PM Lemon
Yay! It’s finally here! Thanks a lot :)
March 12, 2009 12:54 PM Lemon
Since this uses ordered chapters, I was wondering if there is anyway to change the font and remux it?
To be honest, I’m not sure if there’s a way to do it without breaking the chapter links, unless you can specify a certain SUID … which actually I think there is a way, I just have no idea how to do so.
Wait, now that I think about it, that’s only an issue if you want to change the OP/ED fonts. If you leave the OP/ED files alone, you should be able to change the font for the episodes and remux without breaking the ordered chapters.
March 13, 2009 2:58 AM Lemon
I did that and the OP/EDs didn’t play, even though they showed up in the chapters and the audio seemed to play…Also the subs weren’t timed properly, but I had only changed the main font…
I guess it’s ok that I can’t change the fonts, I still love your release. I guess that’s the only gripe I have with ordered chapters in general, but I understand that it saves a lot of space so it can’t be helped.
Did you do a drag-and-drop of the original file into the mkvmerge GUI? If so it should work. I just tested it myself. The command line tool might work differently.
March 13, 2009 11:55 AM Lemon
I did that. I also dragged the sub file with the changed font to mux and it didn’t play the video for the OP/ED.
I guess it must be some problem on my end?
I’ll keep it as it is. I just like fiddling around with the fonts :P don’t worry about it.
March 19, 2009 3:43 PM kefali
thnx for all of your top quality releases Nite Phire(in case you are lone, if not greetings to all the members of the group)
this is by far the best release on Serial Experiments Lain, but it has only one downside which is the fact that you have the english dub audio included(at least you didn’t scrifice video quality in order to fit the english dub a udio, right? :P )
as the number of people who like the english dubs on anime is very few, I suggest to all the people who don’t want the english audio to do the following thing in order to save some disk space, which will be maybe(I haven’t done that on all the episodes yet)resulting into fitting al lthe episodes on one dvd insteaad of 2.
all you have to do is to download a programm called mktoolnix from here http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/downloads.html , then insert an episode and check all the tracks except the audio 4 which is the english dub, then click on “start muxing” and you are done
March 19, 2009 3:50 PM kefali
p.s sorry for the misstypings guys, just being too lazy to recheck what I wrote :P
March 19, 2009 10:01 PM cestfait
thanks for the kind words toward our group, kefali. as a side note, if people are interested in saving disk space, you can also compress the audio tracks down a bit further without (most likely) hearing any quality degradation. you might notice that I compressed the audio using the vorbis codec for our grave of the fireflies release. you can do this using a tool called “Besweet”. just google it up. you can probably find info on how to use it with another google search.
stereo audio definitely does not *need* so much bitrate to sound transparent. sometimes I think I even gave it a little too much on the grave of the fireflies. however, you should all be grateful to NitePhire for serving up the audio on this release completely unchanged from the way it was on the dvd. this is some mega high-quality. :)
Well, if I’m not mistaken that should actually make it appear brighter than usual … but there’s a good chance I’m mistaken. Anyway, it is quite a dark series, and by nature plasmas bring out the blacks quite nicely. I actually haven’t watched the final version of release on my plasma yet, sadly. ;_;
March 21, 2009 2:21 PM Raziel666
Congrats for completing this little gem. I’m curious to see the results! ^__^
One question though: why didn’t you use the Jap R2 DVD’s? They usually have less errors and are visually better.
Unfortunately I couldn’t get my hands on an R2 copy for the amount of money I would have been willing to spend on it, which happened to be just about how much the R1 set cost me. Given that I bought the DVDs after they went out of print because Geneon went out of business stateside, that was a considerable sum as it was. Also with series as old as Lain, a lot of the R2 sources are just as bad.
The main issues come with newer series, especially from certain distributors who either pack too many episodes on a given disk or are just plain bad at mastering DVDs (for instance see FUNi on both accounts). The Japanese market has in recent years shifted toward putting fewer episodes per disk (meaning higher bitrates), and have gotten pretty good at mastering DVDs (thank goodness someone finally learned how to use MPEG2 well).
May 5, 2009 2:26 PM kawajiri
guys if you would i will provide with scripts of your release in arabic if you wuld and its very good styled and well orginesed so mmm
I’m not sure if I’m understanding your request. You would be willing to provide Arabic subtitles if we wanted to add them to our release? If you want to do all the work (editing, styling, etc.), then I’d be more than happy to upload a ZIP file with your subtitles such that other users could download, remux, and have the additional language support. I’m not looking to add anything to the official release at this point. For future releases (meaning other series and movies) I may consider it. Feel free to email me at nitephire@gmail.com if you’re interested in these options.
May 19, 2009 11:41 PM andrnd
FYI, there is a 2007 russian release of Lain by XLMedia. 3 DVD9, mastered directly to progressive PAL, Japanese stereo and 5.1 along with Russian dub, clean OP/ED is present, nothing hinders making a rip for any language. Maybe that would have saved you from half of the troubles. The only disadvantage I can notice is that PAL version is slightly shorter than original due to 2:2 pulldown and one should fix existing subtitles and time marks accordingly.
Torrents are still alive at nyatorrents (or anythere else).
May 28, 2009 12:28 PM f
What version of mkvmerge works to demux the english dub? I am using 2.9.0 and the op/ed are not linking for the demuxed files.
Ah. You’ll have to fix the linking. All files have to have the same track signature, so you’ll have to demux the English audio from the OP/ED as well, which means the SUID’s will change. So you’ll have to basically re-write the chapters. You can find a guide to ordered chapters here:
Hi! First of all, thanks for such a great encode of Lain.
I noticed though, that despite having all the files in the same folder, ordered chapters don’t seem to work for me. Could this be due to changing the file names?
Using MPC with CCCP, and they don’t show up regardless which renderer I try [haali, overlay mixer etc.].
Renaming the files shouldn’t matter. Make sure that the Haali splitter is being used, rather than MPC’s internal one. That’s the important part. The renderer shouldn’t matter. If that doesn’t work (or you already are using Haali Media Splitter), then check to make sure the files downloaded correctly. The MD5 file is available at the top of this page.
I’ve looked at the settings again and under “Haali Media Splitter” ~> “Enable MKV” is checked [if that's the option in question, that is]. It doesn’t seem to be used, though, since no tray icon appears when playing matroska files [only ffdshow] – even though that option is checked as well. Is there another option that I overlooked?
March 10, 2009 5:50 PM cestfait
wow, thanks. these are huge! I guess the audio must have been big, but it looks like you really kicked in some bitrate, too… I guess even adding a bit of noise to the whole thing wasn’t helping, huh (addgrain(), if gradfun() wasn’t enough)? In any case, amazing dedication on the freezeframes, etc. It looks great in the screen shots! Can’t wait to download!!
March 10, 2009 6:17 PM Nite Phire
Oddly enough, I didn’t add any grain. I actually removed more (mvdegrain3 with strength = 500) than I do on most releases. It’s simply the nature of the series. If you check out the individual episodes, the tamer ones are down in the ~350MB range, which would be about ideal for me, but the bigger ones … well, they’re the issue. See, there are a lot of scenes that feature video-within-video if you will, where there’s all sorts of snow/static/grain throughout the episode (much like “Brain Scratch” in Cowboy Bebop). It’s really hard to reduce the average bitrates on those episodes without making something look like crap…
March 10, 2009 7:40 PM Nite Phire
Also I should mention that this release uses ordered chapters, so make sure you don’t skip the Opening and Ending files in the download!
March 10, 2009 8:57 PM Finalizer
Yus! Was waiting for this one, I’m actually a bit surprised it came out this soon. A shame it doesn’t all fit on one DVD, but I’ll just find some other mind-fuck stuff to toss on the second disc, heh.
Also, I was originally planning to upload this onto BoxTorrents once I finished downloading, but if you guys are gonna do so yourselves, then I guess I won’t bother after all.
March 10, 2009 11:31 PM cestfait
Haha, yeah, that “snowy” business can be a pain, but you might find yourself able to bring the bitrate down quite a bit by giving the dct a little something to chew on next time. I guarantee you it won’t destroy visible detail if you’re careful!
That said, I guess I’d rather have the “purer” version anyway, since you’re offering it. I’d probably have vorbis’d the stereo, too, but then again, that would be detracting from the quality (in a minimal way). I think you’re way is very cool, though. This is straight up archival quality– no compression tricks.
Very nice. :D
March 12, 2009 12:01 PM Lemon
Yay! It’s finally here! Thanks a lot :)
March 12, 2009 12:54 PM Lemon
Since this uses ordered chapters, I was wondering if there is anyway to change the font and remux it?
March 12, 2009 1:13 PM Nite Phire
To be honest, I’m not sure if there’s a way to do it without breaking the chapter links, unless you can specify a certain SUID … which actually I think there is a way, I just have no idea how to do so.
March 12, 2009 3:03 PM Nite Phire
Wait, now that I think about it, that’s only an issue if you want to change the OP/ED fonts. If you leave the OP/ED files alone, you should be able to change the font for the episodes and remux without breaking the ordered chapters.
March 13, 2009 2:58 AM Lemon
I did that and the OP/EDs didn’t play, even though they showed up in the chapters and the audio seemed to play…Also the subs weren’t timed properly, but I had only changed the main font…
I guess it’s ok that I can’t change the fonts, I still love your release. I guess that’s the only gripe I have with ordered chapters in general, but I understand that it saves a lot of space so it can’t be helped.
Thanks anyway =)
March 13, 2009 9:00 AM Nite Phire
Did you do a drag-and-drop of the original file into the mkvmerge GUI? If so it should work. I just tested it myself. The command line tool might work differently.
March 13, 2009 11:55 AM Lemon
I did that. I also dragged the sub file with the changed font to mux and it didn’t play the video for the OP/ED.
I guess it must be some problem on my end?
I’ll keep it as it is. I just like fiddling around with the fonts :P don’t worry about it.
March 19, 2009 3:43 PM kefali
thnx for all of your top quality releases Nite Phire(in case you are lone, if not greetings to all the members of the group)
this is by far the best release on Serial Experiments Lain, but it has only one downside which is the fact that you have the english dub audio included(at least you didn’t scrifice video quality in order to fit the english dub a udio, right? :P )
as the number of people who like the english dubs on anime is very few, I suggest to all the people who don’t want the english audio to do the following thing in order to save some disk space, which will be maybe(I haven’t done that on all the episodes yet)resulting into fitting al lthe episodes on one dvd insteaad of 2.
all you have to do is to download a programm called mktoolnix from here http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/downloads.html , then insert an episode and check all the tracks except the audio 4 which is the english dub, then click on “start muxing” and you are done
March 19, 2009 3:50 PM kefali
p.s sorry for the misstypings guys, just being too lazy to recheck what I wrote :P
March 19, 2009 10:01 PM cestfait
thanks for the kind words toward our group, kefali. as a side note, if people are interested in saving disk space, you can also compress the audio tracks down a bit further without (most likely) hearing any quality degradation. you might notice that I compressed the audio using the vorbis codec for our grave of the fireflies release. you can do this using a tool called “Besweet”. just google it up. you can probably find info on how to use it with another google search.
stereo audio definitely does not *need* so much bitrate to sound transparent. sometimes I think I even gave it a little too much on the grave of the fireflies. however, you should all be grateful to NitePhire for serving up the audio on this release completely unchanged from the way it was on the dvd. this is some mega high-quality. :)
March 19, 2009 11:42 PM Nite Phire
My justification: high-bitrate AC3 sounds gorgeous on home theater setups. XD
March 20, 2009 7:01 AM wayland
thanks for this, it looks a little dark but maybe thats because my plasma is calibrated for rec. 709 rather than rec. 601
March 20, 2009 7:24 AM Nite Phire
Well, if I’m not mistaken that should actually make it appear brighter than usual … but there’s a good chance I’m mistaken. Anyway, it is quite a dark series, and by nature plasmas bring out the blacks quite nicely. I actually haven’t watched the final version of release on my plasma yet, sadly. ;_;
March 21, 2009 2:21 PM Raziel666
Congrats for completing this little gem. I’m curious to see the results! ^__^
One question though: why didn’t you use the Jap R2 DVD’s? They usually have less errors and are visually better.
Keep up the good work!
March 21, 2009 2:46 PM Nite Phire
Unfortunately I couldn’t get my hands on an R2 copy for the amount of money I would have been willing to spend on it, which happened to be just about how much the R1 set cost me. Given that I bought the DVDs after they went out of print because Geneon went out of business stateside, that was a considerable sum as it was. Also with series as old as Lain, a lot of the R2 sources are just as bad.
The main issues come with newer series, especially from certain distributors who either pack too many episodes on a given disk or are just plain bad at mastering DVDs (for instance see FUNi on both accounts). The Japanese market has in recent years shifted toward putting fewer episodes per disk (meaning higher bitrates), and have gotten pretty good at mastering DVDs (thank goodness someone finally learned how to use MPEG2 well).
May 5, 2009 2:26 PM kawajiri
guys if you would i will provide with scripts of your release in arabic if you wuld and its very good styled and well orginesed so mmm
May 5, 2009 2:53 PM Nite Phire
I’m not sure if I’m understanding your request. You would be willing to provide Arabic subtitles if we wanted to add them to our release? If you want to do all the work (editing, styling, etc.), then I’d be more than happy to upload a ZIP file with your subtitles such that other users could download, remux, and have the additional language support. I’m not looking to add anything to the official release at this point. For future releases (meaning other series and movies) I may consider it. Feel free to email me at nitephire@gmail.com if you’re interested in these options.
May 19, 2009 11:41 PM andrnd
FYI, there is a 2007 russian release of Lain by XLMedia. 3 DVD9, mastered directly to progressive PAL, Japanese stereo and 5.1 along with Russian dub, clean OP/ED is present, nothing hinders making a rip for any language. Maybe that would have saved you from half of the troubles. The only disadvantage I can notice is that PAL version is slightly shorter than original due to 2:2 pulldown and one should fix existing subtitles and time marks accordingly.
Torrents are still alive at nyatorrents (or anythere else).
May 28, 2009 12:28 PM f
What version of mkvmerge works to demux the english dub? I am using 2.9.0 and the op/ed are not linking for the demuxed files.
May 28, 2009 2:15 PM Nite Phire
Ah. You’ll have to fix the linking. All files have to have the same track signature, so you’ll have to demux the English audio from the OP/ED as well, which means the SUID’s will change. So you’ll have to basically re-write the chapters. You can find a guide to ordered chapters here:
http://www.uppcon.se/thefluff/hurfdurf/?p=8
May 28, 2009 3:29 PM f
Thanks. That guide is really good. I just demuxed the first episode successfully.
October 26, 2009 2:25 PM Yuri
Hi! First of all, thanks for such a great encode of Lain.
I noticed though, that despite having all the files in the same folder, ordered chapters don’t seem to work for me. Could this be due to changing the file names?
Using MPC with CCCP, and they don’t show up regardless which renderer I try [haali, overlay mixer etc.].
October 26, 2009 2:51 PM Nite Phire
Renaming the files shouldn’t matter. Make sure that the Haali splitter is being used, rather than MPC’s internal one. That’s the important part. The renderer shouldn’t matter. If that doesn’t work (or you already are using Haali Media Splitter), then check to make sure the files downloaded correctly. The MD5 file is available at the top of this page.
October 26, 2009 6:00 PM Yuri
Thanks for the fast reply.
I’ve looked at the settings again and under “Haali Media Splitter” ~> “Enable MKV” is checked [if that's the option in question, that is]. It doesn’t seem to be used, though, since no tray icon appears when playing matroska files [only ffdshow] – even though that option is checked as well. Is there another option that I overlooked?
October 26, 2009 6:37 PM Nite Phire
Try going into your settings in MPC. Make sure Matroska is unchecked in the Internal Filters pane.
October 26, 2009 6:57 PM Yuri
Ah, so that was the problem… works perfectly now, thanks a lot.
January 14, 2010 8:37 AM R4Zi3L
Great quality :D