A short guide to Anime formats, qualities and processes
Well, I noticed that a lot of dear members and general public overall have some questions regarding the topic of graphics and formats in anime, so I made this short guide to help answer some of those question and sort out misconceptions.
First, we will define what does graphic quality in anime means and how it varies.
The graphic quality, or simply “quality”, is known as the quality of the artwork.
Most modern anime has 2 key stages in the development, the traditional and digital procedures. The traditional type is the “pen and paper” style of drawing and the digital type is, as the name implies, the usage of digital artwork to enhance the quality and to enable designer to create images which would be more complex via the traditional way. Not all anime is made in this way; some are made completely using the digital process (i.e Final Fantasy). Also, the quality of the artwork and detail all depend on the designers (and not what type of codec was used and in what digital format the anime is in; more later).
Now for the fun part, the digitalization process and codecs.
Like I said, there are different levels of quality which vary on the type of anime and the level of detail/art work quality, but the rest all depends on the way that the media (anime) is digitalized and compressed.
There are 3 main types of quality levels when it comes to encoding anime series.
These are: LQ (low quality), HQ (high quality) and HD (high definition).
What does this all mean? Well basically when you want to “digitize” something, make it into a digital media file which can be viewed on TV and PCs, you have to use a codec (many have heard of this before, codecs like xvid, avi, mkv and the first to be used of all DIVX) to compress the file make it into a container file.
Now, the file types that have the lowest and worse graphic quality are the ones that are in LQ – low quality, meaning that the codec used in the container format ( a container format is a computer file format that can contain various types of data, compressed by means of standardized audio/video codecs. The container file is used to identify and interleave the different types of data) has high compression both in audio and in video.So the overall graphic detail (and sound) looks/sound really bad; there is a lot if pixilation (those squares you see during playback ). Also the resolution of the file is really small, usually around 400x300 pixels (meaning that the height is 400 and width is 300 pixels in 100% zoom ).
Here are some samples of a LQ anime, I’ve chosen the anime Naruto (since it is the most popular).(click on the “SPOILER” tag to view the images).
But, LQ has one advantage over the other formats and that’s its file size. An anime that is approximately 22-24 mins is around 50MB when in *.rmvb (the most common LQ format).
On to HQ – high quality, the most common in use when it comes to anime. This is also know as the “DVD format”. Why? Well, most DVDs have this level of quality and also the most important thing (I'm sure many of you have noticed) that when an anime episode is in HQ format, it is always around 180Mb. Why? Well, when you have an anime series which consists of 24-26 episodes which are around 22-25 mins. and if each is around 180Mb and less it can be burned/stored to a DVD (4,5 GB – 4500MB) and it fits perfectly. This is one of the main reasons why most anime is in this format; it has a very good level of quality when it comes to graphics/art-work and it can fit on a single DVD.
Most container formats for HQ are Avi, Mkv, Ogm (others are used but rarely). These are the most popular types: Avi is usually compressed using codecs like xvid/divx/H.264/mpeg-4df, while Mkv and Ogm are usually compressed with H.264 which is also a favorite of many FSG ( fan-sub groups like KAA, A4E, Shinsen, etc.) because it is open source (meaning it’s free, while you have to pay for the others).
Here are some examples of the HQ. These are the same pictures/screenshots I used in the previous example. As you can see there is a clear difference in the quality, also the resolution is 640x480 ( at 100% zoom ). This is from an Avi file which was encoded via Xvid.(click on the “SPOILER” tag to view the images)
Finally, HD – high definition (my personal favorite; you’ll see why).
This has the best overall quality both in graphic/artwork and in sound/audio.
HD formats are also the largest. They can vary from 220Mb to 350Mb, depending on their encoder type, and also what the container file has (dual audio, synchronized subtitles/multi languages, etc).There are 4 main types of HD : 720p, 1080p, 1080i, 2160p.The key difference are the indexes "i" and "p", which mean actively-interlaced (i) and progressively-scanned (p). With progressive-scan, an image is captured, transmitted and displayed in a path similar to text on a page, line by line, from top to bottom, while interlaced video does this to but only for every second line. What it means is that the progressively-scanned formats have a better picture quality. High Definition usually refers to 720 vertical lines of video format resolution or more. The smallest of all 4 HD formats is 720p which has 1280x720px resolution and the smallest container file size, however it still has better picture quality then the best low compressed HQ formats. These files are normally compressed via H.264 because it does produce the best results and (like I said before) is open source. The 1080i format has a resolution of 1280x1080px and the 1080p has a resolution if 1920x1080 which is currently the best format there is; it is called the “true HD” format. The picture quality is best, but the file size is also the largest, it can be up to 350MB for a 24min anime episode. The format 2160p has a monster resolution of 3840×2160, but it will only be available begging of the year 2015 and only in Japan and S.Korea.
Here are some samples of a true HD anime 1920x1080px (at 100% zoom) called “5 centimeters per second : a chain of stories about their distance” (also my personal favorite anime overall, from artwork to storyline etc.).
Click on the “SPOILER” tag to view the images (images may take some to load for slow internet speeds).
Well as you can see there is no comparison to HQ and LQ.
Also here’s a link that directly compares screenshots of HQ and HD in the same resolution.
http://www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/index.html
Note: this is only for anime. May not be accurate for other types of digital media.
Would also like to thank BlackBlade for his help. Also if you have anything to say about this you can PM me.
And thank you for reading.
~~~ UPDATE SOON (def's for players and other formats and driver's,and more)...