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Last active April 4, 2024 21:27
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Family Guy Disney+/Stan 1080p Copies Explanation and Differences
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fg_broadcast.md

Sources using this master (that I know of) as of the time I'm writing this:

Quick TLDR: Consider these copies as if you were traveling back in time and watching these when they originally aired, in better condition and quality. They are better than the DVDs but have various TV censors, bleeps, and cut/shortened scenes, so it's up to you if it's an overall better copy.

Where did these 1080p copies come from?

Source

FOX Studios Animation Archive Portal (Digital Copy Archive); Which is now owned by Disney, which makes sense why all of a sudden a lot of FOX content was added to Disney+ and licensed to other services like Stan. This is a portal which FOX (now Disney) Staff can use to download FOX Animation content for whatever need they have (Social Media, Marketing, etc.). The Disney+ S01E01 matches exactly S01E01 found on the portal to the pixel.

Master

Broadcast Masters; These copies match the TV broadcast censorships listed on movie-censorship.com. The region of these broadcast masters is unconfirmed but it seems to be Germany as S01E05 kept a German-exclusive deleted scene, and S09E01 is a two-parter which matches how it aired in Germany. This means all the Broadcast censorship as well as German-specific censorship is expected.

Why does it flicker every now and then?

tl-dr; Adobe Premiere 6 for Mac had a bug with speed adjustment and splicing of clips. There's no official fixed copy in existance anywhere on any source, yes even the DVDs and the original broadcasts you watched back in the day, you just didnt notice it on your 14" CRT.

When FOX was originally editing together the episodes they were using Adobe Premiere 6 for Mac which had various problems to do with splicing and changing the speed of clips which caused it to do nasty deinterlacing, so that includes when they Freeze-frame an entire frame or a portion of the frame.

Blame Adobe, not FOX, not Disney. There wont EVER be a copy with that issue fixed unless Disney re-animates those scenes or finds the original project files before the original edits were made (extremely unlikely). It's funny too as Adobe Premiere today still doesn't properly support Interlaced material gracefully, too much to get into but yeah.

Source: Post #15 at http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127912

Is this an Upscale?

Well yes, but actually no.

This isn't an upscale of a DVD, or a VHS, or another encode. But it wasn't animated in 1080p. So what gives? It's basically an upconvert from whatever real frame resolution to fit 1440x1080 (4:3 1080p, then pillarboxed to 16:9). This is evident as non-animated live-action scenes are real 1080p, e.g. S02E03 Da Boom's ending.

When someone says Upscale, everyone immediately assumes the word means someone took a DVD and used Machine Learning or AviSynth to resize it with benefits like sharpening, denoise, etc. But the original meaning of the word is simply to scale a signal (digital or not) from one to another for whatever reason. Upscaling doesn't specifically mean it has been ran through some program, script, or machine learning software. However, that doesn't mean upscaling isn't bloat.

If the animation isn't really 1080p, is there a benefit of this copy over the DVD? Yes! The DVD has plenty issues caused by the DVD mastering and encoding process as well as it being compressed quite a bit. This copy never touched DVD, it doesn't even know what DVD is. This copy was intended for broadcast as I mentioned earlier and as such it is in a much better condition in many many ways.

Think of this like Anime, which most of them are also not animated in 1080p (yeah, :O) but still release as 1080p for style reasons or just because its easier to translate for broadcast or compatability while keeping resolution, detail, condition, even if some of that resolution could be considered upscaled or bloat.

Source of Anime resolutions (there's lots, heres one): Anibin's Blog

Alright, look, I don't really care, I just scrolled down, just tell me if it's good, should I watch it there?

Yes! It's better than all other sources available and will forever be unless FOX or Disney finds original project files or does some kind of miracle work on the first few seasons. Just note, these are broadcast masters as explained so there is differences to the DVDs, read here for more information. Finally, Some services have slightly different encodes/copies of the same source material. Stan for example had encoded it as 25.000 FPS using PAL Speedup (no frames or blending happens, its just sped up along with the audio, so voices are higher temp and pitch)

The following is a quick examination of what to expect (regardless what source or way you watch Family Guy):

Season 1 is by far the worst condition due to the heavy use of Premiere 6's bugs which were explained earlier, most likely due to FOX demaning alterations often since it was the first season. This makes sense as S01E01 is by far the worst with the issues so we can assume that had the most alterations.

Season 2 is better. Season 3 onwards is very nice with only the occasional problem.

Funny enough, Season 6 and 7 are one of the worst in terms of sharpness, feels blurry with the colors possibly a bit off too, but it's still not an upscale, still nice, and still better than the DVDs.

PROs:

  • DVD-caused issues are either gone entirely, reduced, or not as bad; DVD-caused issues can include burn-in interlacing, chroma, haloing (aka glow), flickering, noticeable compression on high-motion, weird vertical pixelated lines (I don't know a word for it).
  • Detail retention is a lot higher; On the lines, backgrounds, or in some scenes with a high speckle count background/floor, the difference in quality and condition can be quite noticeable.
  • Sharpness of lines are great; This is mostly due to the haloing of the DVD being reduced or mostly removed, however, it has a different form of haloing known more as double-ringing which in my opinion is less of an eyesore and less obtrusive of the art style (but not ideal either way).
  • Chroma location is fixed; While the DVDs chroma location cannot technically be incorrect, it technically is. The DVDs use Chroma-location of 2 (top-left) or 1 (center) depending on the season. The problem here is that is not what the ITU e.t.c recommends for MPEG-2. Players like VLC, MPV, MPC e.t.c use a static chroma location to playback based on the codec instead of reading it from the metadata (I find it stupid, and that is more of an issue with the software, not the DVD, but alas). These copies use the ITU recommended H.264 chroma-location so players like MPV e.t.c play it back correctly.
  • Chroma is a lot higher condition; These copies have much better chroma quality/accuracy/sharpness/whatever you like to call it. This means issues like chroma droop or edge-softness caused by bad/soft chroma do not exist in these copies.

CONs:

  • 24000/1001 FPS; the show was animated in 24 FPS and post-production editing was done in 30 FPS (possibly NTSC 30 specifically, meaning 30/1.001fps, 60i); Post-production being stuff like credits on screen, fades in/out, Computer-done Zooms, Pans, Edits, and Freeze Frames. This means we are potentially missing out on a bit more fluidity.
  • AAC audio; Compressed, but I genuinely can't tell any difference even on my nice $300 headsets.
  • 2.0 (Stereo) audio channels; The DVDs have 5.1 (6 channels, one being LFE) for Season 4 onwards. Could be potentially missing out on entire audio effects.
  • TV broadcast copies with censorship; Bleeps and differences to the DVD's including cut scenes or shortened scenes (or in some small cases scenes being animated differently, as in animated less of a budget compared to the DVD, usually to do with the backgrounds having less detail)

ERRORs (found so far):

  1. S01E05's chroma position is incorrect, It's chroma is 1 pixel too far to the left. Originally I thought this to be a Chroma location value mistake, but it isn't, the chroma is simply encoded 1 pixel too far to the left. This means it cannot be fixed without transcoding. To fix this, load the video in with a Chroma Location of 0 (center-left), shift the chroma to the right by 1 pixel, then encode the result with FFMPEG's default chroma location, which should be the ITU's recommended based on the video input stream which FFMPEG takes care of.
  2. S01E05 left in the german-exclusive deleted scene to do with President PEZ Dispensers. This was removed from all US broadcasts as well as all the DVDs except the German DVD.
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