After 80 days of rendering, I've finished a 4K remaster of Joe Hisaishi's 2008 Budokan concert — and it sounds as good as it looks
After 80 days of rendering, I've finished a 4K remaster of Joe Hisaishi's 2008 Budokan concert — and it sounds as good as it looks
Eighty days of render time later, it's done: the 2008 "Joe Hisaishi in Budokan" concert (the Studio Ghibli 25th-anniversary one), remastered to 4K and posted movie by movie — Ponyo, Laputa, Porco Rosso, the Spirited Away vocal pair, Totoro, Nausicaä. The Encores — MADNESS and "Ashitaka and San" — are up too, so the whole concert is now complete, start to finish.
Upfront: this is my channel, and it was a labor of love, not a commercial thing. What I cared about most was the music.
I took the concert's original LPCM audio and losslessly remixed it — folding the 5.1 into a full, present stereo image so nothing gets lost, no quality thrown away. Then I went through it with real attention. On Futatabi, the Tam-tam and Gran Cassa are in the recording but disappear on speakers even though they're right there on headphones; I brought them back into balance so you finally feel them. The result holds together whether you're on studio monitors or earbuds, with the depth and weight this orchestra earned that night.
And the picture to match. The 4K brings out the room — the light on the instruments, the faces in the orchestra, Joe at the podium — with a clarity the original broadcast never had. Gorgeous is the word people keep using, and I'll take it. But the video's the bonus; the music's the point.
I kept all the human moments, too — the bouquet from Miyazaki, the congratulations, Joe walking off under the applause. It's a concert, an event, and I didn't want to cut that away.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVYCZI8dIN6E
I learned a lot living inside this music for three months. And to me, it never gets tiresome.
I'm curious what parts of the music mean the most to you?
TheFNGee
