Thanks to Reza making me aware of a German HDTV recording, after about 2 weeks of downloading I finally have it and am working on editing the English dub into this version. I am mixing the English dialouge bits with the German audio, so the final result will be a mixed dub with better quality for the non-talking parts.
Decided it would be a good idea to do a quality comparison before I get too far into this work, and just spent a ridiculous couple of hours getting these screenshots :P. I was using a program called Avidemux to get exact frames, and after getting all the shots captured, realized that the image quality was very poor for some reason so I had to switch over to VLC which makes it almost impossible to get exact matching frames (plus the runtimes are different between versions). Anyway, the frames are still matched up pretty well.
The HDTV version isnāt an amazing upgrade, but it does look a bit better. The coloring looks better to me, and there is more detail visible which is more noticeable in some shots than others. I also notice a layer of grain which I donāt really see in the DVD version. I suppose its possible that this HDTV print could just be upscaled, colored better, sharpened more with less noise filtered, but it looks better to me and is particularly appreciable when actually watching the video. If you examine the many shots very closely there is clearly more detail visible and the color looks much better and not all washed out.
Screenshot comparison album:
French DVD vs German HDTV
(right click on images & open in new tab to view fullsized shots)
http://imgur.com/a/4k6pC
(dvd images have been upscaled to HD size, original resolution is of course much lower)
The runtime on this German HDTV version is 1hr41min versus 1hr46min on the French DVD. So far, I havenāt really noticed any cut scenes but I have yet to do a very careful examination (will likely do this as I complete the new English dub). The framerate on this French version I have is 23.976fps and the German HDTV recording is at 50fps, and the audio goes out of sync between the two versions in a matter of seconds - so, there is likely a difference in runtime due to framerates as well as any slight scene differences. Iām not 100% sure the 50fps is accurate or if its just set in the file headers this way, I have experimented with altering the FPS flag to 25fps which results in a file that is 3hours long and plays very slowly :
Anyway, hopefully this comes along nicely, and soon