Owing to the competent further utilization of the quality scan of its film elements, Laputa is in the same boat as My Neighbour Totoro and Nausicaä in that there’s not really much an encode could do for it. The video on some of the Blu-rays for it looks good overall and doesn’t seem to be in any dire need of extra tinkering, so as long as it’s from one of the decent ones, the raw BD video ought to please anyone looking for a top-notch version. The encodes currently out there are admittedly fine if your goal is more so to have the movie easily accessible while saving on space as much as possible, but purely regarding PQ, I doubt any simple encode of this one will beat a remux counterpart (barring any future ones that improve or fix something, of course). With this in mind, I went with the 2014 Miayzaki Collection set JP BD for the video in this upload.
The 2014 JP BD in a not-so-surprising continuing fashion from previous Ghibli Project uploads looked the best out of all the releases compared. Like with Totoro, it looks much like the earlier JP BD but beats it when it comes to the fine grain and small detail (assumedly thanks to better authoring and the generally higher bitrate), making it the best possible pick in this case as well.
An easy thing to see at this point is that the Miyazaki box set has proven to be of decent value for anyone willing to pay for its hefty price tag that imaginably equals a month’s rent in some places. For all us folks unable to cough up the money for the mighty physical set, this upload should hopefully work as somewhat of a substitute for one of the two movies in it that “student film director” Mamoru Oshii admits to liking.
If you’re curious about the specific characteristics of any of the tracks across the compared releases, see the spectrogram, waveform, and mastering graph screenshots linked below for the more direct data. Feel free to also send my way any tracks from BDs/DVDs of Laputa that I haven’t looked at. I’m always eager to make the comparisons as extensive as possible.
1996 JP LD: No noticeable issues and basically the same as the 2012 Disney US BD save for the sooner roll-off point at around 20 kHz.
2002 JP R2 DVD: Same as the 1996 JP LD but with slightly more drastic low and high-end roll-offs. (448 kbps)
2003 US R1 DVD: Same as the 2002 JP DVD except that the first 54 minutes are quieter for some reason. (192 kbps)
2010 JP BD: The soundstage is slightly narrower, i.e., the audio contents (mostly music and some SFX) aren’t as widely panned to the sides and play more strongly from the center area. The mastering is a bit less bright and has a hint more of low bass compared to the LD mastering. There are also these occasional “amplification edits” that aren’t present on the LD version. See the waveform comparisons and you should notice how some sections have been made louder while others have been kept the same (or it could be the older versions are more limited somehow). If they’re indeed edits I guess they’re supposed to make things stand out more in the mix?
2011 AU BD: Same as the 2010 JP BD.
2011 UK BD: Same as the 2010 JP BD.
2012 Disney US BD: The best iteration of the LD version due to having the greatest range of the audio intact with no apparent issues hindering the quality. Being lossless doesn’t hurt either.
2014 JP BD: Same as the 2010 JP BD.
2017 Gkids US BD: Has amplified sections that largely match the 2010 JP BD, yet strangely enough, has the LD version’s wider soundstage. The mastering, while not hugely different by any means, is also unique from every other release. The ED song abruptly ends ~1.5s earlier on this one.
From the above releases, I’ve included the Disney BD, 2014 JP BD, and Gkids BD tracks. I saw them as being distinct enough from each other for it to make sense to include all three for a more comprehensive package. To make it less confusing, try to see the Disney BD track as the original audio, the JP BD track as something akin to a remix, and the Gkids BD track as a kind of hybrid of the two. The Gkids ED song issue was fixed by splicing in the needed audio from the Disney BD track.
Choosing the right track could prove difficult for those wanting to watch the dub as there are four unique tracks in total to choose from. The first and one of the more uncommon ones of these is Laputa’s first-ever English language dub, produced back in the 80s by Magnum Video Tape & Dubbing. Having been originally made for the sole purpose of in-flight entertainment, it is unsurprisingly OOP these days and often harder to come by than the later Disney dubs. The two home video releases to ever include it are the 2002 JP R2 DVD and the 1996 JP LaserDisc, from which ZeroCool graciously provided the audio for me to use here. The quality of the LD track was as good as it could get for this old mono dub, but how it was straight from the LD, it wouldn’t completely sync up with the JP BD video. To fix this, I went through the track and made sure it synced up.
Where it gets more complicated, then, is with the three versions of the 1998 Disney dub:
All the info in the list should be OK, but please let me know if you find anything to be incorrect or misleading.
THORA’s script, which uses the official translation, was first QC’d to a smaller extent by me, then checked and edited by Mysteria, and lastly, largely modified and polished by nedragrevev. The title card sign was done collectively by me, Mysteria, ghsushsu123, and nedragrevev. ED TS was done by nedragrevev. Included as a legacy option are THORA’s subtitles with the new TS added but otherwise unaltered. Let me know if you find any errors!
Don’t use VLC.
Japanese 2.0 | English 5.1 | English Dual-Mono | Video (by RainingTerror) (JPN MGVC BD = 2014 JP BD)
Comments - 10
hydes (uploader)
Specifics:
Video:
Audio:
Subtitles:
Additional things/notes:
The “Signs And Songs (2003 & 2011 Disney)” subtitle track has the ED TS timed to the 2003 and 2011 versions of the Disney dub.
If you wish to use the subtitles for your own use, note that they will not match up with the Japanese audio on the Gkids BD or any release with the LD version since they were timed according to the Japanese track on the 2014 JP BD, which frequently differs timing wise from the said releases. The Japanese tracks here have all been synced more thoroughly to match the 2014 JP BD track, so you can of course extract them for yourself to bypass needing to sync anything again.
The story behind Joe Hisaishi’s rescore
ss of the old comments
PeePeePooPoo69
Dangerously based my friend. Im glad i was able to help/provide audio to this awesome project :)
Phantom132
*appreciation
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Rrobynne
Hi hydes, I have the 2002 JP R2 DVD with the Magnum dub, do you want me to send over a MakeMKV remux or is it likely to be inferior quality to the LD version? Also, the project to improve Evangelion’s episode 16 (for whom the celluloid masters are lost/destroyed) is coming along decently & I’ve opened up my translation comparisons workbook to public submissions for new subtitles, so when I’ve got something more final to bring to you I’ll email you the results for you to evaluate against your standards - just letting you know it’s made progress. Great job again.
HARVEST
@Rrobynne The Magnum dub audio in the 2002 R2J DVD is NR’d and of inferior quality to the audio in the LaserDisc.
hydes (uploader)
@Rrobynne Great work on the Eva subs! It might be better if you get in touch with McBaws and Arid as they are doing an Evangelion project of their own with new typesetting and such. Ghosty64 from the SoM group is also working on an Eva upload, so that’s another one you could consider. These projects already seem so in-depth that there wouldn’t be much need for me to do another one, I feel. That episode 16 remaster would also likely be of interest to both Ghosty and Arid/McBaws.
Rrobynne
@hydes Yup I’m in contact with McBaws already, no probs. Know any way to get in contact with Ghosty64 e.g. Discord/Twitter? The Discord invite in the SoM releases I could find has expired. @HARVEST Thanks for the info.
hydes (uploader)
This link for the SoM Q&A server should still work: https://discord.gg/5HuFcx5msE Ghosty is quite active on there so it should be pretty easy to get a hold of them.
HachiRokuNiSanKyu
Please do more from the studio soon.
Mangalicker94
What a great upload. Sucha masterpiece.