C3: Cube x Cursed x Curious

Last update on 2012-05-14 by ♦Tenshi♦ | Posted in Completed

Type:	Series (12 Episodes + OVA)
Video:	1920×1080 @ crf 13 (8 Bit) 1280×720 @ crf 16 (8 Bit)
Audio:	FLAC 2.0 – Japanese
Subs:	UTW AFFTW-Hatsuyuki (OVA)

Torrent:	1080p – 720p

Final Batch. A bit late, but I was waiting for the OVA to be subbed.

133 Responses to C3: Cube x Cursed x Curious

2012-01-17 at 21:20:21

Joe writes:

What file size decrease?
2012-01-19 at 08:33:54

yeller writes:

Shouldn’t you wait for UTW’s batch scripts?
2012-01-21 at 10:25:31

Verix writes:

To anyone whining about 10-bit & DXVA, I’m on a 2.4GHz core 2 duo with integrated rubbish graphics. I can play 10-bit 720p and 1080p without hiccups. Without hardware decoding. Any new computer, including notebooks with newer intel iX/sandy bridge chips can do much better than my system. Maybe it’s just time to buy a new system. I’m sure you can get a decent system or HTPC for €400-600…

The only thing situation where I lose frames, is when I play 16ref 10-bit material at 150% speed >.>
2012-01-24 at 01:48:02

Illicit writes:

Verix, you are correct in a way, that said, you have to take into account anyone running a *nix based OS as well…the linux operating system does not really support 10 at this time…linux tends to be behind in this. That is why I highly appreciate the staying at 8. Thanks.
- 2012-01-24 at 08:37:22
  
  ChrisK writes:
  
  get your facts right.
2012-01-27 at 15:01:45

Tylrgamster14 writes:

To me the 8bit looks clearer then the 10bit,

the 10bit has a slight fuzzy look to it

Thanks for the series
2012-01-31 at 03:50:40

cyke1 writes:

where 10bit i think show’s better video is when use lower bitrate, using bitrate for 700+MB video sizes you won’t a difference.
2012-01-31 at 04:15:09

No HiP10? writes:

I thought CG upgraded to HiP10? What’s with this 8bit downgrade led by tenshi and his delusion HiP10 serves no purpose.
2012-01-31 at 04:51:59

fan writes:

thx for the release. if your having trouble choosing a ddl service I suggest depositfiles. animekyun,animetake, and other popular groups are using this service. there’s a download/upload manager and prices are fair for premium service. take a look and see if u like. thx again for the eps
2012-01-31 at 04:59:10

fan writes:

8 or 10 bit ? eh I really don’t see the difference. I made a 10 bit file using the same software and hardware to make and watch a episode of sekirei season 2 from the japanese blu-rays(yes their real and am rich) and I didn’t see any picture quailty difference.
2012-01-31 at 06:34:34

Petrushka writes:

@Illicit…. ur statement was invalid. My Linux system can play 10-bit fine with mplayer2 + smplayer from PPA
@Tylrgamster14 …. check ur eyes on veterinarian
2012-01-31 at 12:23:42

Jay-kun writes:

Thanks! 😀
2012-01-31 at 22:07:19

noko writes:

@No HiP10?

It doesn’t.
2012-02-01 at 11:41:00

castor212 writes:

FUCK YEAH
2012-02-01 at 13:26:05

Urusai Baka writes:

@No HiP10?
Yeah, coalgirl did. the leader of the group, not the group. Apparently, they don’t have any standards in their releases as a group. Same package, different contents.
- 2012-02-01 at 13:58:11
  
  coalgirl writes:
  
  Not quite.
  
  http://coalgirls.wakku.to/?page_id=2
  
  Those are our standards.
2012-02-02 at 03:40:46

Urusai Baka writes:

@coalgirl
Yeah. too general though. well, to each his own.
2012-02-03 at 14:26:28

Havoc10K writes:

About those chapters, I hope we get ordered chapters 😀
And not random 😀
Would be lulz but heheh.

Did I ever drop by your channel to say I appreciate your releases and your hard work ?
Might do it again later on 🙂
- 2012-02-03 at 19:10:27
  
  ♦Tenshi♦ writes:
  
  Ya, ordered chapters will be a flat out NO. I made a promise to some commenter here a while back that I would never do em. I intend to keep it.
2012-02-05 at 15:23:15

Drano writes:

Obviously, if you encode an 8bit source into 10bit, you can’t expect any increase in quality.
In fact, the quality will ALWAYS decrease, because H.264 is a LOSSY codec, therefore quality gets lost whenever it gets encoded in another lossy format. The same is true for 8bit encodes as well.
You can easily watch it happen, when you save a .jpg as .jpg, then open the new .jpg and save it as .jpg again. After about 3-4 iterations and a quality of around 70 (or more iterations when using higher quality) you’ll start noticing compression artifacts (I recommend using .jpg, because it’s a lot faster to test out).
However, the truth is that when you encode a source (regardless of bit depth) into 10bit, you’ll generally get a lower filesize with the SAME quality than if encoded in 8bit.
The only way to get a higher quality 10bit encode is if the source video itself was in 10 bit.

Either way, I don’t care if the release is in 8bit or not.
2012-02-06 at 08:00:25

DmonHiro writes:

Drano, you are an imbecile. If you encode into 8bit from an 8bit source, you will degrade the quality of the source. If you encode the same 8bit source, with the same settings in 10bit, you will degrade the quality of the source LESS THEN YOU WOULD IF YOU HAD ENCODED IT IN 8BIT. Don’t argue, you fool it’s already been proven.
2012-02-06 at 13:21:24

Drano writes:

Firstly: the source remains untouched.
It’s the video that results from encoding the source that ends up with a lower quality than the source.

Secondly: I don’t see why your point makes me an imbecile. You’re just repeating what I said above using different words.

Before you go and call people imbeciles, you should reflect upon yourself.
2012-02-06 at 18:52:37

Ftur writes:

@Drano: don’t mind DmonHiro, he’s a troll. Calling him imbecile would be praising him.
2012-02-09 at 09:21:21

Sheila writes:

No quality difference? You guys don’t have very good eyes, do you? In those screen shots, go to picture 3. Look at the background directly above Kana (middle girl) where it fades from dark blue to light blue. Compare 8-bit to 10-bit. The color transition from dark to light is much smoother in the 10-bit compared to the 8-bit.

Everyone else is doing 10-bit. Stop making excuses and being lazy.
2012-02-10 at 01:05:10

SupraGuy writes:

When my hardware media player supports 10 bit, I’ll be happy about it. Until then, when I get something from “everyone” doing Hi10p, I re-encode in 8 bit. Sometimes I hardsub in the karaoke and typesetting, too, since there are releases there that can bring my 6 core machine to it’s knees, even worse with the Hi10p codec.

It’s not a matter of computer hardware, it’s a matter of support on the platforms that I actually use to play back the media files. I have a hardware media player in my room. It cannot (And will never) deal with Hi10p.

Personally, I find it less comprehensible for people saying “smaller file size” — Hard drive space is still cheap. Maybe less so than this time last year, but it’s still only going to go down over time. Internet bandwidth is getting faster, too.

@Shiela: And I would counter by telling you to look at the detail on Haruaki’s uniform in that same picture set. In the Hi10p sample, the lines are blurred and there is a chroma shift error in the collar near the corner. (In particular look at the area where the collar joins the jacket) This is significantly better in the 8bit image. Also look at the lines in Kana’s hair where they come to a point.Though the gradient area is somewhat smoother, this appears to be more due to the smoothing filter on the image. I would be willing to wager that slight banding is present on the original BD source. Banding at that scale, I would not reject one of my own re-encodes for that level, but I would probably re-consider the Hi10p encode.
2012-02-10 at 12:22:38

Havoc10K writes:

@Drano

Stop making an idiot of yourself, first of all you should read up on 10bit encoding and pretend you understand it. Give it some thought, and then try to understand what is written there.

It’s not really that difficult to understand but real encoding requires a nice rig and not your common gaming PC. Then you will see a real difference between 10bit and 8bit encodes.
2012-02-11 at 01:18:32

Abcdqfr writes:

You guys are delusional. You’re just feeding yourselves placebos to support a pointless argument. There really isn’t a noticeable difference between 8 and 10 bit…
And if you INSIST that one is noticeably better than the other, it’s definitely negligible.
It would be so minuscule that it wouldn’t be worth going through the trouble of changing encodes IMO. And you’re DEFINITELY not going to notice something so subtle while you’re watching the show…

8 bit, 10 bit, it don’t fuckin’ matter… -.-
2012-02-11 at 02:01:51

Abcdqfr writes:

Oh, yeah, and thanks for the subs! Fine work you’re doing here, keep it up!
2012-02-14 at 02:54:36

Drano writes:

@Havoc10K
Funny how you tell me to understand about 10bit, when you obviously don’t understand encoding.
Encoding videos almost always happen at a software level, meaning that there is NO DIFFERENCE between rigs except for how fast they’ll encode.
The only way to have 2 different encodes using the same codec and settings on 2 different rigs would be if you’re using hardware acceleration, which doesn’t exist for 10bit contents (yet).

I’m not questioning the superior quality of a 10bit encode.
I’m just saying that no encode can be of higher quality than the source itself. And as there are no commercial releases of videos in 10bit yet, there can’t be a higher quality 10bit encode yet (unless you’re targeting a specific file size, which is a totally different matter altogether).

I suggest the next one, who’d like to tag me as “unknowing” or whatever first collects some experience in video encoding and does some research on the matter. Also, do read my posts in their entirity, instead of just one half and think about them a little more carefully.
Thank you.
2012-02-15 at 06:51:01

DarkChaplain writes:

@Abcdqfr

I’m surely noticing the difference in filesizes, and how much space I gain solely by switching from 8bit encodes to 10bit ones.

The only bitching I can fully understand is when people want to watch their anime on devices that can’t handle 10bit. But then again, these devices most likely will have major issues with the embedded subtitles anyway.

So no, if you want to watch on your PC, it is damn easy to set up the 10bit support, it saves space and has the potential to give a better quality video.
2012-02-15 at 20:05:26

Abcdqfr writes:

So 10bit takes up more space with the sacrifice for ‘potentially’ better video quality? That’s all fine and dandy, once that potential is realized, but until it’s worth it, it just aint worth it…
2012-02-16 at 01:53:24

mindbomb writes:

10 bit will always provide better video, but to get the most out of it, you need a 10 bit graphics card (nvidia quadro) and a 10 bit monitor (high end dell)

And a decoder and renderer with 10 bit output ofc.

Though I agree with the choice to stick with 8 bit video.
The world revolves around the bluray specification.
Anything short of a very massive increase in compression isn’t worth breaking decoding on so much hardware.
2012-02-24 at 04:26:54

SupraGuy writes:

@DarkChaplain: Disk space is cheap. A 2TB eSATA drive costs less than a CPU upgrade, assuming that I can just socket in a newer CPU into my existing mobo. I could probably buy 2 or 3 drives if I had to upgrade the mobo and RAM, too.

The PC that is my main TV needs an upgrade to play back 10bit without stuttering, so my current solution is to re-encode. Often I just re-encode the provided Hi10p video, but for BD rips, I’ve been grabbing my own BDMV sources and encoding that, then embedding the fansubs into it. I even have a few cases where I feel that my 8 bit encode is equal to the 10bit, and similar in filesize, but since I’m not all that concerned with storage space, my encodes tend to be larger than they need to be.
2012-02-26 at 05:17:07

Qwerty writes:

From what I’ve understood the main point of going to 10bit is that it helps with decreasing file size therefore there shouldn’t be a difference in picture quality. For example I have an anime at 720p 8bit averaging at about 400MB an episode while my 10bit one 720p Hi10p averaging about 85MB. The 8bit is only 40 sec loner than the 10bit. Although some/most of this may be from the muxer’s ability, but it still remains that the 10bit did helped with size decrease. Now I can’t compare the picture quality as they are not the same anime, but if your having quality differences it is more likely your software.
2012-02-27 at 00:41:52

Abcdqfr writes:

@Qwerty
I’d saw you can’t compare them at all since they’re different anime. With a radical difference like 400-85MB, 10bit wasn’t the only difference in encodes, I’m sure…
2012-02-27 at 00:42:09

Abcdqfr writes:

I’d saw
*say
2012-02-27 at 16:20:42

Qwerty writes:

@Abcdqfr
Most of the animes I have are 720p 8bit and are all averaging about 400MB. The main point being that the 85MB anime was radically different in size because of it being in 10bit.
2012-02-27 at 20:13:01

Abcdqfr writes:

@Qwerty
I’m just pointing out that a difference that radical is probably due something more than just the fact that it’s 10bit. There’s more than likely some other differences that’s making the file size so much smaller. Especially considering the fact that they’re entirely different samples.
2012-02-28 at 01:04:09

Qwerty writes:

@Abcdqfr
That is why I said “Although some/most of this may be from the muxer’s ability.” By this I mean that the person(s) who put it together may have been the some/most of the reason for the radical size difference.
2012-02-28 at 13:14:21

Havoc10K writes:

10bit encodes retain the same if not better quality while having smaller filesizes of the 8bit versions.

First of all I don’t see a point in further arguing about it, 10 bit is superior to 8bit, like it or not. But I know people hate change and until the new thing becomes a standard, haters gonan hate.

Secondly, I do not understand why we are talking about this in comments about the show where the group stated it clearly:
“Still 8bit. I see no reason to go to 10, there are no quality increases and it breaks hardware.”

So basically, all your arguments are void.
2012-02-28 at 22:57:23

DarkChaplain writes:

@SupraGuy
“Disk space is cheap. A 2TB eSATA drive costs less than a CPU upgrade, assuming that I can just socket in a newer CPU into my existing mobo. I could probably buy 2 or 3 drives if I had to upgrade the mobo and RAM, too.”

I’ve been looking for a new HDD for a few months now, but the factory crisis still is showing its aftereffects across europe. I could have easily agreed on HDDs being dirt cheap early 2011, with 2TB going for less than 70€, but end of 2011 these prices were going up over 200€ and much more within WEEKS and still aren’t down to normal levels. Lucky if you get an internal HDD for less than 120€ over here, and that won’t change for a few months longer.
eSATA isn’t that far spread here either, with eSATA HDDs being either rare, small or damn expensive.
Compared to that, I paid ~330€ for a full upgrade of Motherboard, Power Supply, 8GB RAM, Video Card (HD5750) and an AMD Phenom II X4 965, aka Quad @ 3.4GHz. That was one upgrade in many years for a relatively low price and it will last me for a few years. The current harddrive prices are disgusting considering what the rest cost me, and I refuse to pay more than double of what I paid years ago for the same product.

And while I’m at it, even my old dualcore @ 2GHz with a piss-cheap video card is able to play 10bit just fine. It is a matter of the right software environment for the most part. Most people I personally spoke to that had issues with 10bit didn’t even bother configuring their stuff properly before complaining.

tl;dr
10bit doesn’t break hardware, it just shows who actually tries to keep up with recent developments and who’s too stubborn, lazy or simply stupid to perform the necessary preparations.
2012-02-29 at 05:44:48

SupraGuy writes:

@DarkChaplain: I’ll grant that drives are hard to find now, but that is not a situation that will be ongoing forever. I bought a couple of 2TB drives less than a month ago, each costing me about $120 CAD, and an external eSATA enclosure for one of them for $27 CAD. By comparison, a new CPU and mobo is still more expensive.

I have bothered with a proper configuration, thanks, and I am getting adequate decoding, provided that I don’t want to use my computer for anything else while I’m watching video. While I am accustomed to being able to use GPU decoding, so that my CPU can either run at a low usage rate, or it can do something else for me in the background. This is not possible with software decoding, which at the moment is the only choice for 10 bit. Unfortunately the PC that I have connected to the main TV is often doing stuff in the background, and while it was perfectly adequate to run BD video, or 1080p x264 encodes before, it is no longer able to do that with 10 bit.

It doesn’t break hardware as in rendering it unusable ever again, but if I can’t use the GPU decoder, then it might as well be broken.

As far as video quality goes, I still say that the comparison shows that the 10 bit video was over-smoothed, which means that the video quality isn’t better, it’s just different artefacts showing up. I bet that if the 8 bit video were similarly over-smoothed, you’d get the same reduction in banding, and possibly better filesize as well.
2012-03-03 at 05:45:00

Abcdqfr writes:

I don’t mean to pester, but how long are you guys planning on putting the rest of this one off? I Imagine you’re prioritizing a/some new series over this one: How far along is that/those one(s)?
Thanks
2012-03-04 at 00:20:26

Omega_Weapon writes:

abcd – just get it from the other BD group thats doing it… I think they’re better than Coalgirls anyways, they encode in Hi10P + alot better filesizes
2012-03-04 at 12:14:53

Havoc10K writes:

It’s funny how people call it Hi10p, 10 pixels ? really ?
😀
2012-03-04 at 18:25:49

Abcdqfr writes:

@Omega
Who’s this other group?
I’m particularly fond of Coalgirls since they’re using UTW’s scripts. It’d be nice to archive theirs since that’s what I watched with the TV rips. Not only that, they’re just simply better IMHO 😛
2012-03-05 at 15:15:53

Omega_Weapon writes:

@abcd
Final8 – their releases are Hi10P and their file sizes are TWICE as small and they offer 2 versions… 720p + 1080p AND!!! yes there is an AND… they are using UTW script. Seems like a win in my books!
2012-03-07 at 03:47:56

Abcdqfr writes:

@Omega et All
😀 😀 😀
See ya’ll with Final 8! ;D
2012-03-18 at 10:03:15

castor212 writes:

Just saying tenshi, in episode 8’s “next episode”, there is missing sign.
2012-03-19 at 12:14:59

xxcx writes:

Uhm are these bluray releases?
2012-03-19 at 20:02:15

Nettosama writes:

@xxcx:

Yes, BD releases.
2012-03-25 at 19:57:46

Bloodios writes:

@Havoc10K
I don’t see how it would be funny. What’s wrong with callingHigh 10 Profile Hi10P?
2012-03-26 at 01:35:37

Sum_of_Thunder writes:

I wandered through these comments in the hope of finding something useful, like dl links.

The fractioning of the fansub community is part of the larger picture that should be considered. There is safety in numbers in this enterprise and some have given up on us and how un-user friendly we’ve become. Not to mention our unattractive dialogues. At some point, we can become small enough to effectively squeeze to a shut down. Japanese animation has to be that much better just to be worth the increasing grief involved in putting up with us and the hoops some want to make people jump though to participate. Of course, the hoops go away if people simply allow 8-bit and 10-bit to coexist and let people choose what they want. We should be about advancing anime, not fomat wars.

C3: Cube x Cursed x Curious

133 Responses to C3: Cube x Cursed x Curious

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