IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix (2005) Discotek BD Remux

There IS technically already a remux of Discotek’s blu-ray release of this anime: https://nyaa.si/view/1860007

…but that one doesn’t even bother to split the episodes for Toonami Cut season 2, nor does it bother to split the episodes for any of the IG Cut folders. Well, not only have I gone and done just that, but I also added the commentary tracks into the episodes themselves. But the biggest liberty I took by far is the addition of Hybrid Audio, custom-made audio tracks made for the IG Cut but using the Toonami audio where appropriate, as well as some custom audio reworking to try and hopefully make my edits and fillings as intense sounding as Toonami’s version.

Yeah. I’m one of those who prefers the Toonami version’s soundtrack overall, but that’s not to say I agree with ALL of their choices. You can read the txt files included for more info.

Anyway, I’ve even ripped the extras for you, and the IG Cut’s subs have also undergone some patchwork on my part too, OCR’ing the blu-ray sub files into an Aegisub-friendly format. And if for some reason you’re content with any future encode of this series, my sub revisions and hybrid audio tracks are also available to download separately, also partly in the event I happen to make any future changes to the audio and sub files. For episodes 1-4, for some odd reason, the English stereo tracks found on the blu-ray, despite coming from the Japanese DVDs, apparently, USE TOONAMI’S MUSIC CHOICES. But I went and fixed that so that these tracks now come from the old Bandai USA uncut volume 1 DVD, which uses the IG version’s music choices instead, just like the 5.1 tracks. Synced and with the next episode preview audio added at the end, of course. I even made a custom English audio track for the Japanese broadcast version of episode 24, along with revised subs to be consistent with the episodes.

In terms of video, for the Toonami version…
-Episode 3: originally, in the IG version, Takeshi appears shocked after Ricardo uses his smokescreen to dodge his punch. For some odd reason, the Toonami version has him shocked for a moment, then for the rest of the shot, it jump cuts to him smirking again. This, to me, doesn’t make any sense, hence why I used the IG version of the shot instead.
-Episode 14: during the shot where Bjorn says “It’s showtime”, there’s a brief frame of the opening reception flashing. The IG version doesn’t have this problem, so again, I used the IG version of that shot so it appears uniform.
For the IG version…
-In episode 1, during the part of the eyecatch that has the background turn from black to white, for some odd reason, the episode on Discotek’s disc replaces it in favor of a black screen. I dunno why they did that, maybe it was some problem with the master of the episode they were sent, but if that’s the case, then the very least they could’ve done was take part of the eyecatch from another episode and splice it into episode 1 so it looks clean, which is what I did (specifically, from episode 3 or 6, I can’t remember exactly). If the eycatches are pretty much identical throughout the entire 26 episode run, surely this can’t be a hard problem to fix, I feel.

How did I do all that while still technically calling it a remux? Well, for the Toonami version, at the very first possible still frame (no movement in anything in the shot whatsoever) closest to the trouble shot (before the trouble shot, not after), I used VideoRedo to split the video at the best possible frame of the still shot (that makes part 1). For part 3, I split the video at the first possible frame directly AFTER the trouble shot. To fill in the rest, IE, part 2, I did my splitting shebang for the IG video, cutting off the parts before and after what I don’t want to keep. Then using MKVToolNix, I used the Append function for all three parts; the unedited audio and subs for these episodes should sync up fairly well regardless; there might be a single frame difference, but you probably won’t notice.

The IG version of episode 1 was MUCH harder for me to figure out as, try as I might with the VideoRedo method, I just couldn’t make a clean cut, nor could I make the cuts seamless and not result in any future problems. So for part 2 of the eyecatch, here’s the solution I came up with after much trial and error: I took it from another episode after splitting it by the chapter in MKVToolNix, then split it again at the closest possible timestamp so I only have the eyecatch frames themselves to work with, copied the MP4 file via FFMPEG to make it Premiere Pro friendly, did my stuff in there, exported the final product, put it into an MKV file via ToolNix, and THEN!!! Appended all three parts of episode 1 (part 1 I could split before chapter 3, part 3 I had to split by the timestamp happening directly after the eyecatch). And since all of these are interlaced videos, to the best of my knowledge, let’s just say the timing won’t be what you’re used to all the time if you were to work with progressive scan (and believe me, I SERIOUSLY considered just running all of them through FFMPEG and deinterlacing them, but it’s a REALLY good thing I don’t have to).

WHEW!!! Talk about a long explanation! But to make a long story short, hopefully you’ll enjoy what I made (BTW, this is important too: I optimized all of my subs and audio for the IG cut to be played in VLC, so if you’re running MPC or PotPlayer, you might have to do some audio and sub negative delaying (ain’t tried the latter program yet, BTW, but hopefully negative delaying won’t be necessary). Hope you got lots of drive space to spare.

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