[Pizza] Chihayafuru - 01 [BD 1080p][x264][Opus 2.0]

Source: JPBD (Comparison Note: Difference in brightness may be caused by RGB16 while displayed in browser)
Audio: jpn, Opus 2.0 @160kbps
Subs: eng, MK (heavily modified Commie)

A few years back, MK posted a great release for this show which has been my favorite ever since. However, the Yurasyk encode featured in it is now over 8 years old. The tools of the trade have improved since then and while Yurasyk did a good job at retaining transparency (with an additional deband), I figured I might as well update it myself. This encode features fixed edge brightness, a descale (not downscaling but a reversal of the upscale) to the native resolution of 720p, rescaling to 1080p with a merge of FSRCNNX_x2_56-16-4-1 and nnedi3_rpow2 (since the 56 build gave the best results but was slightly too sharp for this source), a very light denoise (BM3D) and a medium-strong deband (vs.Placebo). Both the denoise and the deband have been detail- and texturemasked to preserve as much detail as possible. I then used adaptive grain to protect the dithering and because reasonable amounts of grain are great. Filtered in 16bit and encoded at 10bit with x264 and CRF 15.

Why did you use Single Audio Opus instead of Dual Audio FLAC?
As a big fan of the show I gave the english dub a chance during one of my rewatches. I did not like it, and I do not want it included in my release. Feel free to mux it in yourself if you must. And while FLAC is a great format for its purpose of lossless archival, I recommend getting a BD Remux for archival instead. This is meant to be watched, and as such I'd rather save some filesize if it sounds the same (which it does).

Why didn't you use x265/AV1?

1. Hardware limitations since I'm encoding from a comparatively weak laptop.
2. I made a fairly extensive amount of test encodes using x265 and it didn't preserve the detail I wanted to preserve until x265 reached a very similar bitrate to my satisfactory x264 encodes. Not worth the extra computing time on my end.
3. Pretty sure trying to use AV1 would result in my laptop going up in flames.

Why didn't you release in 720p when you could properly descale?
Most people don't use proper scalers, and even if they do they might not have the computing power to use a merge of the applied two scalers for optimal results. I know I don't. I prefer having control over how it looks on most devices, but if you have a monster machine you might as well make a 720p descale yourself and save some space. Do note that the current 720p releases are most likely (definitely) downscales and not descales, meaning they lose detail.

Some caveats
Usually I would scenefilter and zone problematic scenes to preserve the most detail I can, but I'm already working on two such projects, both of which are 50 episodes in length. I don't have the time for a third. A few select scenes require fairly strong debanding (e.g. comparison 10), meaning a few textures and details that aren't properly picked up by the masks will get affected, albeit slightly. There are also scenes like comparison 8 that would require zoning for an optimal result. As for a lazy encode like this it's probably the best it'll get (from me anyways), but if somebody with experience would be willing to do all of this work instead of me and make their own release please let me know. If not this'll have to make do.

When will the batch be out?
This entirely depends on how long it takes for me to encode. Currently one episode takes 24h of encoding time (yes, really). As such I expect the first season to be finished in a month or so unless someone notifies me they are going to work on an autistically scenefiltered and zoned release instead. This first episode is really just me telling you someone is working on this and inquiring if anyone can take on the work in my stead; my next Chihayafuru upload will be the complete S1 Batch. May or may not be faster if someone shares the JPBDs for the show outside of U2 so I can get others to run the encodes for me.

Thanks to Koopz for letting me use his server to host my encodes, Zastin for sharing his WIP texturemask and all the people in the Weeb Autism Discord that helped me suck slightly less.