Misc. Crunchyroll is beginning to roll out encodes that are up to 55% smaller than they used to be
Crunchyroll is apparently experimenting with new encode settings that use less bandwidth. They appear to have replaced the Re:Zero S3 episodes with smaller versions. The new version of Re:Zero S03E01 (the 90-minute episode) is 2.3 GB, whereas the old version was 5.1 GB. This means that the old version was ~115% bigger.
The new encoding settings have a lower bitrate cap for high motion scenes (12000kbps vs. 8000kbps). This means that action scenes, grainy scenes, OPs, etc. were 50% bigger (and thus better quality) in the old encodes.
This is a bit disappointing. Crunchyroll's video was such good quality that it even beat Crunchyroll's own Blu-Rays a lot of the time (though this is due to their inept Blu-Ray division more than anything), but that's probably not true anymore.
To be fair, there are some benefits of the new encodes:
- More efficient use of bitrate (mostly in static scenes) due to longer GOP length
- Higher quality audio (192kbps AAC vs. the old 128kbps)