How's the quality of this release compared to maruchan's?

I have no idea. I imagine it is very similar since they are around the same size. His second track is DTS, while both of mine are AAC. There probably are differences in video quality since I used x265 while MaruChan used x264. His might be more favored since many people still don't trust x265.

@Shing - You did the right thing - x265 is the way to go. And opus, aac, vorbis, etc have same quality as DTS, so you are right there too. But why is it 3.2 GB? Even at crf25 which produces output almost identical to the original, the size should have been far smaller? For anime crf28 (the default) is what I normally do because its only when I put both the original and the 28 side by side, pause the video and check carefully do I notice differences. Keep up the good work. Thank You.

I believe that the file is 3.2 gigs is because of a multitude of factors. For starters, it includes two tracks. 5.1 tracks are pretty big, even for AAC. Also, my encodes have so far never gone past crf 22. I usually encode at crf 18 or 20. I feel that going above crf 22 produces very noticeable compression artifacts that makes the video not as pleasant to watch. The same crf can produce different results depending on the source. I usually adjust the crf to maintain a certain quality threshold that I personally prefer. The crf I use combined with the slower or very slow preset produces mostly artifact-free video that I have no problem putting out. It might not be perfect, but it is definitely watchable. I'm no encoding guru, I just enjoy trying new things and producing pleasant video for people to enjoy.

To clarify really quickly, the file is 3 gigs because I want it to be 3 gigs.