Q. What is Encodergasm? Who is it?

A. Encodergasm was formed in 2006 by RX782 (me) out of sheer frustration with the majority of anime encodes out there.

While he takes pride in his encodes (and strays far away from material that is shitty to begin with), he openly admits

that his subtitles and styling completely suck. The goal of Encodergasm is to provide high quality encodes (and nothing more!)

of already awesome material, in an effort to make other people encodergasm (see: Urbandictionary).

 

Q. Are these DVD rips?

Q. Yes, except for the ones that are blu-ray rips. No TV sources here, no sir! We're no filthy fansubbing group!

 

Q. Is it really one man?

A. Not anymore. Thankfully, other people have found their way and donated their time to Encodergasm's releases.

WaryWolf (aka PenisEngineMechanic), DreamTactix291, mreweilk (stinx), and anon32 (useless), who idle the #encodergasm channel are the other two important (and two unimportant) others in the group, and

there have been quite a few other people to lurk the channel that have assisted as well. Originally, yes, I alone

(RX782) was encoding and distroing, but now, much of the distroing beyond the intial release is handled by WaryWolf,

while Outlaw Star could not have been done had DreamTactix291 not supplied me with the R1 materials.

 

Q. Why the huge filesize?

A. Simple: It's necessary... Well ok, maybe not, but many of EG's releases are from older, cel based shows.

Basically, there's film grain to deal with, more detail than modern anime, flickering luma, and a jittering frame,

so the extra filesize helps. I'm also quite a purist when it comes to the source material, and I absolutely hate to

oversharpen or oversmooth footage, unless it is absolute shit (which I avoid mostly anyway). I refuse to freeze frame

the jitter out, as it is not truly part of the source, and removing it would seem unnatural. As of October 2008, I've

switched to CRF mode for judging bitrate requirements, and then using two-pass mode on the final encode; the new rule

is to keep it at a 340MB cap (as to prevent several files from spilling over that and causing issues with burning to DVD),

but also increase the bitrate on the CRF encode if I feel it necessary during the two-pass encode. The results have been

equally impressive, and I'm not longer wasting bits, particularly on Gurren Lagann. Gundam 0083 tends to inch towards

340MB even in CRF mode, however, so it's not always the best indicator.

 

Q. Why mostly Gundam shows?

A. I'm a huge Gundam fan myself, and my name should imply such. I am doing these shows mainly because I only have those DVDs.

I honestly did want to do Full Metal Panic as well, but KAA did that recently (for the 4th or so time...), so I backed

off from even bothering... Additionaly, FMP is a bitch to deinterlace and VFR properly. Outlaw Star only exists because

DreamTactix291 was able to supply me with R1 video and subtitles, while I downloaded the R2 Remastered discs. Gurren Lagann

is currently the only other non-Gundam show that I'm doing.

 

Q. What about English Tracks?

A. I did this for Gundam 0083, Endless Waltz (both versions), and the beginnings of both Outlaw Star and 08th MS Team.

Fortunately for the first two, this was an easy task as the video and audio tracks all synced up (0083 was R1 based,

and Endless Waltz was a movie, so naturally there's little variation in framecount) without having to cut up the audio.

For Outlaw Star and 08th MS Team, I wanted to do what zx did so many years ago with Evangelion: Cut up the english audio

and sync it up to the R2 video. I went into the task with anticipation, but soon grew sick of it. Outlaw Star was not a

huge problem because the R2 version did not change the sound effects, meaning I could use the sound effects in both

audio tracks as reference points. 08th MS Team was much harder on the other hand, as the sound effects were changed

on the R2 Remaster (much to my dismay), and the music was also lowered in volume or overshadowed by sound effects;

this meant that it was very hard to find good points within both tracks to sync to (keep in mind, in both show's cases,

I had to sync each chapter point differently, so I had to find sync points in 5-6 chapters, depending on the show).

 

Q. And not on Gundam Wing?

A. Nope, it's just too much work. For all future projects, I'll probably avoid using english tracks (My stance on that

used to be that I would include the english track for completist's sake, but oh well), as it's just quicker and less

bitrate-consuming to use them. Believe me, I would love to include the dub on Wing, as it's a great nostalgia factor for me, but I just cannot bother.

 

Q. About Gurren Lagann episode 6...

A. It's the DVD-only version, with extra fanservice.

 

Q. So what's this 0083 V2? Is it Remastered?

A. Back in 2006, I started EG with Gundam 0083 as my first release. Quite frankly, it was a terrible release by today's

standards. It uses vobsub subtitles (so they're just as ugly as the DVD), very poorly encoded audio, has no chapters,

and the subtitle timing is less then spectacular; encoding-wise, it's not too bad, but it can still benefit from

modern filtering and x264 builds, but it did have an incorrect aspect ratio. Now, I'm rereleasing 0083, but I have

not called it remastered because the source is the same (R1 DVD). It IS remastered in the sense that the R1s come

from a remastered source, but it is NOT the 2006 remaster (0083 was remastered earlier in 2000/2001 as well), hence

me calling it "V2". Truthfully speaking, the new R2 is obviously superior, and it has true 5.1 (the R1s have a shitty upmix)

audio... The downside to the audio is that everything is rerecorded: voices, sound effects, and music. Anyway, the reason

I'm not using the R2s is that I simply cannot find uncompressed sources for them anymore. There are currently only DVD5-sized

(meaning they've been recompressed to fit on a single layer DVD) ISOs on Share, and their quality is less than stellar.

Considering all the OTHER problems with my initial release, I considered a V2 better than not redoing 0083 at all. The new

release features styled subtitles, more accurate timing, ordered chapters with textless OP/ED, superior encoding, and higher

bitrate audio; however, the audio has been downmixed to stereo... Don't worry, you're not losing anything, as the DVDs are

upmixed anyway, so you have had true 5.1 to begin with! The only "downside" to some people may be the exclusion of the dub,

as is current EG tradition. I apologize, but 0083's dub is a piece of shit, and I don't consider it worth the space anyway.

 

Q. Very well, What's next for EG?

A. Gundam 0080 is the immediate next project once I get a hand on the DVDs (a friend has them), though that can be whenever,

as he lives away most of the time; they will be from the R1 remastered sources (there hasn't been an updated remaster like

0083). The next big project, however, would be the Zeta Gundam Blu-rays. I have confirmed this project, but the release probably

won't be till mid-January given the time it'll take to acquire raws, encode HD video, and sort out all encoding obstacles with an

older, grainy show. There has been lots of discussion going on as to how I'll encode Zeta, since I'm not even sure if it's worth

1080p quite yet (we won't know until we see the discs). It IS an old show, let's not forget, so while I do like to keep maximum

resolution, it is a much easier task to encode 720p and still get excellent results. Secondly, if I DO do 1080p, the issue of

filesize comes into question. I would *prefer* to not have ridiculous filesizes for one episode (>1GB is ridiculous to me), but we'll see.

 

Q. What is your "OP Project"?

A. Ahh yes. A few years ago, shortly before Encodergasm existed, I contemplated creating a website/resource for high quality encodes

of simply the openings and endings of various anime series. Now yes, there's compilation torrents all over the internet for this

purpose, but the idea was to create very consistently high quality encodes throughout, rather than shoving the only textless versions

available ont he web into one torrent. The more important motive behind this that I hate Youtube with a passion, and cannot stand

having to resort to it for quick fix of an OP or ED. I currently am testing this out, and the project is a low priority of mine,

but the current example out there is the Evangelion OP, taken from the R1 Platinum (Remastered) DVDs. It is notable in that the OP

is textless, but it uses the 5.1 audio from the episodes (for whatever reason, the textless version had stereo audio on the DVDs).

 

Q. That reminds me, ARE YOU DOING EVA?!

A. No.

 

Q. Is "x" from the DVD?

A. Everything is from DVD or BD source, there is nothing to encodergasm about from TV sources (One exception has happened in the case of Gundam Wing Remastered 18, when I could not find the DVD ISO for that episode, and resorted to a rip... moments after the episode was released, PEM found the ISO and a V2 was issued a few days later).