Pokefan531's Posts

For my Miraculous Ladybug videos, I am open for voice acting roles for those videos. As you guys have already seen, the two videos have their voice filled, but only done by Text-To-Speech programs, like AT&T and Vocalware. They don’t have options for expressions, and just sounds like they’re reading off the script. Not that they sound bland or anything, but they don’t express anything specific like concerning or be surprised, something like that. I only did the yelling by increasing the volume with reverb, but I think actual voice acting would improve a lot. Doing such expressions almost like the actual show would sound better. I am willing to repost my two videos as a redub and use new MMD models on it. Also, I am planning to make another Miraculous Ladybug video next month that is a sequel to the one from August. Open Roles are open for the first two weeks or longer extended to by the end of November.

Characters - Users:
Marinette/Ladybug - coccinellegirl
Adrien/Cat Noir
Chloe - CreativeToonsTV
Lila - coccinellegirl
Alya
Nino - Jonicito1994/Pokefan531
Nathaniel
Alix
Rose
Juleka
Kim
Caline Bustier
Gabriel/Hawkmoth

Also Pokemon X&Y characters:
Serena
Shauna
Trevor
Tierno
Malva
Prof.Sycamore - Jonicito1994/Pokefan531
Lysandre

Not all of the characters have to be filled for voice acting. It’s a matter of when it’s enough to do this project. Also, first four of MLB characters on the list are major ones. I filled myself to Sycamore since I feel like I fit his role.

My MMD Videos with computer voice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4ghOaIVEsE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFaKngCmWCA&t

First off, I want to share a link to a fanart of Bunnix.

https://www.deviantart.com/jenniferpistol309/art/Bunnix-798858388

(Only links given, just to give viewers to a person who made this amazing fanart!)

Written few days ago. I decide to put out my thoughts about the title above because I really found this episode to be very interesting!

I saw TimeTagger at Sunday recently, and I actually found this episode to be my favorite of the season, and we got another great superhero.

Spoilers Ahead!

TimeTagger

This episode bring us another superhero, Bunnix. Well, Alix’s watch from Timebreaker is brought up again for an important plot. Bunnix got freed from the pillar, and later, it is revealed that she is an adult version of Alix. I do like how her adult self looks and acts, and Adult Alix is mature and brilliant. Bunnix helps Ladybug and Cat Noir to defeat TimeTagger, who also came from the future that Bunnix was supposed to be on. Seeing Bunnix in action is very interesting. It was choreographed pretty well on how the battle went. Bunnix is a really cool superhero. She is pretty reckless, and while she can fight on her own in many cases, she will realize that she would need a team if things didn’t go out well. I like the fact that present Alix is really interested on her future life. In this episode, I think Bunnix is the strongest on the team. Well, knowing Alix’s tomboyish nature, she would be strong and reckless. Wow, Adult Alix has grown taller.

I had theories about Alix’s watch back in 2016, after seeing all 26 episodes and re-watching Timebreaker and the Pharaoh, I would believe her watch would be brought up again, involving with the superheroes. Her watch with a hologram was the only item that is magical, besides Kwamis and Miraculouses. Also in the Pharaoh, the museum has relations with Ladybug, knowing how old Ladybug is and how Tikki knows some things in the museum. Alix’s father and brother are historians, so it would make sense that the watch could relate with the superhero mystery later on. It turned out to be true.

Although, I would say that Bunnix is my favorite superhero of Miraculous Ladybug, it is currently. Her design is cool, and everything about Bunnix in the episode was executed well, it might be the only or one of the very few episodes of grown up version of Alix as Bunnix. It seems like Alix got her miraculous on her own, and also helps Ladybug and Cat Noir and be on their team. What I did like about future Alix/Bunnix is how she’s brilliant, strong, mature, and reckless. The future part seems long like 5-10 years, so we know a little about future Bunnix, and if present Alix becomes Bunnix, I expect it would happen near the end of the series. Or maybe after Season 3, I don’t really know as of now. We would have to see how that turns out in later seasons. I honestly didn’t expect Alix to be eventually a superhero, and I just didn’t have any theories on the season 2-3 opening photos. So far, I did enjoy future Alix Kubdel/Bunnix very much. I would like to make an MMD model of them. Gotta find some time though.

Other things interesting are seeing future Chris and how Lila gets to babysit the kids at the end. I don’t find that much of a problem, because her main talents are lies, as shown in Oni-Chan especially. She can make lies really good, and so it’s no wonder how Lila decides to babysit. I wonder how Marinette feels about this… Although, I want to wait to see how Hawkmoth and Lila work out later in the series. Also, TimeTagger seems pretty powerful.

As much as I find TimeTagger episode very interesting, it has few issues. One would be Mr. Pigeons and Hawk Moth. He got akumatized 24 times, and Hawk Moth uses the same guy 24 times. It seems like Ramier isn’t safe in Paris, and should find a good place for him to spend time with the pigeons. He got suggested by Cat Noir to find a different kind of animal to be obsessed with. Future Alix says there is Mr. Rat in the future, and it is most likely him, so there’s no stopping him from getting akumatized many times. My other minor issue is how Cat Noir is kinda weak. Not as weak, but kinda falls a bit less helpful. Him suggesting Ramier to like a different kind of animal while staying in Paris isn’t really a good advice, given his emotional issues. Also, he would be the blame to destroy Bunnix’s watch. Still, he’s still useful, just not as strong in this one. I can give those a pass.

My main curiosity since this episode is how the future superheroes and miraculouses are gonna be handled. As much as I like the story of Bunnix in this episode and understand the mysteries on the watch, I don’t want more or all of Marinette and Adrien’s classmates to become heroes, whether temporally or permanent. I didn’t want the concept of being a hero in paris, mainly Ladybug and Cat Noir, to be less special or unique. I didn’t want all of the classmates to be heroes since it would become too predictable and lowers the concept of being unique as a civilian. I get Alya and Chloe, and also Nino. I also get Alix because of the histories of the watch, but it would be better if other future heroes are outside of most of Marinette or Adrien’s friends, or even families. It would likely suit better for newer characters later on. I wanted the future superheroes to have interesting story, and even origin, just like current six of them. We will have to wait and see how this is gonna be handled. I do enjoy seeing fan transformation of existing characters, it’s just that I’m concerned of how future heroes will be introduced, and this curiosity isn’t really directly on this episode. I get that some of you have different thoughts, and I understand.

Overall, I do like this episode so far, and I give it an 8/10. It’s a really interesting episode, and Bunnix in the future is my big highlight. Mysteries of the watch and Bunnix’s future got an interesting story. Lila and Hawkmoth’s situations are really mysterious. And knowing how Ladybug and Cat Noir are still around seems interesting. I would say it’s my favorite episode of the season so far. My actual favorite would be Evillustrator.

What I think about Alix? In the first season, she rarely talks. Only few episodes with few lines. Only Timebreaker, Alix gets enough lines and presentation. She seems okay. In the second season, she appears more often and shows that she’s Marinette’s friend, and friends with most classmates, and takes art class with Nathandel. Also, Alix is more developed since the second season. I plan to review Evillustrator and Lady Wifi, two of my other favorites. I do also plan to compare Adult Alix/Adult Bunnix with another character from a certain movie. My hint is a movie that got panned since it came out a year and a half ago, and a character had barely any purpose and not executed well.

As to advertise my video, I made my own Miraculous Ladybug MMD video (w/ Pokemon) back at Fall 2018:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4ghOaIVEsE

Today, I will be reviewing Miraculous Ladybug on the production quality. This goes on video quality and knowing its original format. We will be going over the base resolution, framerate, audio, and others. I’ve done some test by analyzing different sources of the show, and to see the techneical side.

Miraculous Ladybug credit goes to Zagtoon. Images are used for demonstration.

Video Resolution

On TV stations and on digital distribution, it is common to air or stream it on 1080p. In fact, most anime are digitally drawn on lower resolution than 1080p. For Miraculous Ladybug, this is the case.

Miraculous Ladybug is rendered at 720p, across all episodes and specials as of current. By taking some frames from Netflix stream, it is clearly upscaled from 720p. I did some check by looking at individual screenshots of the show and look at it on Photoshop. Looking at the characters hairs and some edges, you can tell that the source is upscaled.

It is common for a 3D animated TV show to render at lower resolution than 1080p, aside from the texts and the credits. The credits are clearly 1080p while the background is just upscaled to 720p. The text are clearly sharp and doesn’t have anti-aliasing. The Ladybug icon on the left is also 1080p. On the opening, only the text are rendered at 1080p, but it’s not as sharp as the credits. Still, it doesn’t have jagged edges on the texts. Again, it is mixed with 720p background. Also, the logo scene seems to fit well with debicubic filter.
I’ve tested upscaling filters with Avisynth on the frames to see what was the best. It seems like the studio actually use Bicubic scaling with Blur=1, and Ringing=3 setting. It is the default filter setting on Avisynth’s Bicubic filter. I’ve check some masking between original frame and debicubic and use bicubic again, there was no difference aside from blurring out small compression artifacts caused by streaming.

So clearly, the show is upscaled from 720p with Bicubic filtering, with texts being full HD, especially seeing the credits.

(Although, the scene where Plagg gets sucked in on Stormy Weather, the vertical resolution looks like it’s half. We know the show is not interlaced, but what happened?)

(Look at the edges of the objects when watching 1080p quality. It is certainly upscaled. Images from Robostus episode and The Bubbler)

Tonemapping

Like most 3D television shows, all scenes are tonemapped to sRGB/rec.709 colorspace. No HDR or wide color gamut is natively supported. Since it is tonemapped to SDR displays, at certain points, Ladybug’s outfits seems to have slight red value cut. It is seen when the red shades are over 255 red value, that it can’t go brighter and either shows red banding, or red highlight details may be lost. However, the problem is minor, since other color values are present to shade over it.

Overall, the show looks colorful and looks nice for any displays.

(The suit seems to lost some the bump mapping due to compressed tonemapping? Images from Stormy Weather.)

Framerate

By looking at available sources, it seems like the show is rendered at 24fps. By watching Princess Fragrance and The Mime from official Miraculous Ladybug Youtube channel, I can hear the speed difference from most sources that plays at 25fps. It supposed to sound like the 24fps version. Background music tracks and the theme song are available. They seem to match the episodes’ audio speed by reconizing the tempo. A lot of sources are seen as 25fps, with the audio sped up without altering the pitch. Technecally speaking, it would be 23.976fps instead of 24fps, but still is.

Framerate Conversion list

As said above, a lit of sources found are playing the episodes at 25fps with sped up audio, but no audio pitch has changed. It’s common for PAL conversion to speed up 24fps content to match their 50hz displays (aside from portable displays and computer monitors show natively 60hz). However, in recent years, they use better technology to speed up the audio without altering the pitch, so that it stays true to the pitch of the original format. That way, no one can tell the difference.

Since PAL regions use the format above, I’ll list the countries and channels that airs in 60hz or NTSC regions.

South Korea:

The show is aired in the original format. It’s 24fps on all channels that airs the show.

Japan:

The show airs in the original format.

Brazil:

The show airs in the original format.

Canada:

Quebec airs the french version, but airs it at 24fps. Family Channel airs it the same way too.

United States:

On Nickelodeon, they would air it at 25fps. Even though most content in the country would air at 24fps, 30fps, or 60fps, Nickelodeon decides to air their shows at 25fps to make more room for commericals to earn more revenue. That also means they cut the credit sequences for the same reason too, with the credits displayed on last 30-seconds of each episode. The audio pitch is unaltered, however. Even their streaming services airs the show at 25fps. Few of their early episodes has wrong conversion on their website, by converting from 25fps to 24fps, albert, with interlaceing, for some weird reason. They look terrible when Nickelodeon had them on their website back in 2015. It is unknown if KidsClick airs it in the original format since I never watch the show from their platform.

Latin America:

This is the most weird conversion of them all. While the show airs at 24fps, Disney Channel LA did the inverse of PAL conversion. THAT MEANS the audio pitch is LOWER than most sources! When I saw their commericals or clips of the recordings taken from their channel, I can hear the audio pitch being altered, but not the typical PAL way. It is very uncommon for NTSC standards to do this sort of thing. I even went to Costa Rica to hear how the show plays over there. I hear the audio pitch being lower as of last year. This is very rare for any channels over there to do this. I don’t know what source Disney Channel LA got for the episodes, but it seems like they got 25fps ones and decides to think it is converted already for PAL regions. Very weird. However, streaming services outside the channel never had this issue. It is unknown if PAL countries like Argentina did this too. Their Disney Channel is basically the same, except it’s their timeline and broadcasts in PAL format, 50hz.

It is possible that each country can air the show in their own local channel. However, you would have to be in the spanish community to know if they’re playing the show correctly.

Netflix:

As far as I know, they have the episodes at 25fps everywhere.
iTunes:

Not sure if they still have it, but I remember them having 25fps playback.

Youtube:

Only Princess Fragrance and The Mime are available. It is in the original format, and so as the clips on their Youtube channel.

Overall, it is commonly seen as 25fps in most platforms. I’m not sure if they preserve 25fps on Shouts Factory’s DVDs R1.

Blu-Rays

There hasn’t been a Blu-Ray release for the series. It’s not uncommon for the series to be released on Blu-Ray. Star Wars The Clones Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Samuari Jack, and Batman Animated series has got blu-ray releases at 1080p. DVDs are never HD, and are usually compresses poorly due to using MPEG2 codec from 1990s. You can only find the HD versions on digital platforms. I only know iTunes would do digital release of their episodes. You may have to rip the episodes yourself from other digital platforms. I know not many TV series here have blu-ray releases, but majority of the medias are movies and anime. In Japan, they have very high sale rates on Blu-Ray releases. Not only you get to watch the episodes without internet, but you have very high quality studio like video at the highest resolution with barely video compression artifacts.

Audio

It is common to have stereo audio on TV shows. However, Netflix seems to have 5.1 Surround Sound audio for the show. Usually, the voices are at the front speakers, while you hear the rest of the sound everywhere, with panning from one or multiple speakers to the next. Nickelodeon has aired the show in surrounded sound format before on their HD channels.

Censorship

Miraculous Ladybug is a family friendly TV series, and nothing weird or inappropiate is in it. It was intentionally made for worldwide audience. However, very few television networks made their censorships to any shows. Miraculous Ladybug never got cuts or alterations for anything, but rather small decisions.

On Disney Channel UK, they did a simple motion blur on some scenes to avoid or reduce fast motion lights to reduce risks of seizures. Most notably, the transformation scenes, catching the Akumas, flying butterflies restoring damaged properties, and fast fight scenes that takes big part of the screen. On Frame-by-Frame, the image either have the next frame blended on the current frame, previous frame blended on the current, or both.

Reducing seizures by motion blur may help, but the show doesn’t have any strobe or seizure induring scenes. Most broadcasts would leave the show alone. Even Japan leaves the video untouched, despite having paka-paka laws in place on TV broadcasts for airing Electric Soldier Porygon in December 1997. All TV shows have the “Watch in bright lit room” notice on the beginning of the episode in Japan.

Saudi Arabia has skipped Copycat for some reason.

(The bottom one is from Disney Channel UK. All episodes are censored this way to reduce fast bright objects.)

Conclusion

Miraculous Ladybug is rendered at 720p 24fps, with sRGB/rec.709 colorspace. The framerate, whether you’re watching 24fps or 25fps, you wouldn’t hear the audio pitch being different on the latter, so it’s fine. The audio is maxed to 5.1 Surround Sound. Censorship goes from very small to none.

The overall TV show’s quality seems pretty good for a TV series. Netflix has all the episodes for two seasons. Even if watching upscaled content, it still looks pretty fine. The audio and sound editing seems pretty great. The animation is smooth overall. The second season is the best season so far. It can be possible that later on, the series may start doing native 1080p rendering. It could be due to the fact that ray tracing on the studio’s budget would take too long to render 1080p. Hopefully, native 1080p may soon be used for the future.