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Dragon Ball Series Preservation (* unfinished project *) - much info & ongoing discussion — Page 2

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Molly said:

I used the best resources that were available to me and handled them the best I could. That is all I’ll say.

Why so cryptic?

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Why so demanding? And why keep trying to make accounts when you know you’re no longer welcome here?

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Bannedcartoonfan said:

I love this series(all of it Dragon Ball, Z and even GT sorta) but it has consistently gotten pretty shitty home releases. The closest we came to perfection is the Japanese Dragon Boxes for the original series all of the original series as those were made from the original negatives, but unfortunately they are out of sync, had their next episode previews out of order, need to be color and as many fans know, have rather poor Japanese audio. Toei junked the original master tapes after each episode was broadcast as the idea of any of the series getting some sort of home release seemed ridiculous to them. Thankfully the original broadcast audio does exist, albeit on VHS and Beta-max recordings of the episode’s original airing, however many of the fans who own these refuse to release them, and very few have gotten through the cracks.

Here is what I’m planning:
-I have the high quality rips and iso’s of the R2 Dragon Box sets which I will be using for the footage. I will make sure that they are the best encodes they can be to preserve quality(no I WILL NOT be scrubbing the image. The grain is there to stay!)
-For video editing I have Virtualdub, Avidemux and Premiere Pro. I will be using these programs to color correct the footage and put the next episode previews in their proper place before the credits.
-I also have the uncut Funimation audio with the original Kikuchi score and plan to get the uncut dub with the Faulconer score as well.
-Now this is the tricky part: I insist on using the original Japanese broadcast audio but it is rather hard to find, especially for all of the series. I already have the audio for episode 153 of Dragon Ball and episodes 1-17 and 95 of DBZ. I know there was a Japanese release called the “Big Box” in the late 90’s that included the original master audio for 2 episodes later in the series but have been unable to find a copy. If anyone has ANY episodes that I don’t have or knows where I can go/who I can contact to find something PLEASE let me know. I believe that Animax(or some station in Japan)still airs episodes of Dragon Ball GT with it’s original stereo audio(the first few episodes were in mono the rest in stereo)synced to Dragon Box footage and I believe there is a bootleg Mandiran release of the series that uses master sent to TV stations with high quality mono audio. I have been planning to tackle Z first of course, but seeing as materials for GT are easier to find I may do that first. So the final product for each series should be something like this:
-R2 Dragon Box footage
-Japanese Broadcast Audio
-English dub with Kikuchu score
-English dub with American music
-English subtitles

Any interest?

Heck yes. Now more than ever before, especially with the terrible 30th Anniversary set that Funimation is putting out. This is the kind of project I’ve been thinking about in a long time. I wish you all the luck in the world to get this project going. God speed, good sir.

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AntcuFaalb said:

How’s this? It’s episode 1 from the Dragon Box release.

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/P6YLNNNX

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/2M1JNNNU

For the record: None of this is by eye. I can do the entire series like this with relative ease.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post 102 is worth more.

I’m late to the party, but I think this is the best song. Enjoy!

—Teams Jetrell Fo 1, Jetrell Fo 2, and Jetrell Fo 3

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Yes, I am interested! That would be an awesome project!

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 (Edited)

AntcuFaalb said:

AntcuFaalb said:

How’s this? It’s episode 1 from the Dragon Box release.

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/P6YLNNNX

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/2M1JNNNU

For the record: None of this is by eye. I can do the entire series like this with relative ease.

That looks reallly good! And you say you can do the whole thing relatively easy?

Btw what is the status on this whole project? Seems like the original poster hasn’t been on here. I’d love to get my hands on a dragon box set with that color correction. Hell I’d even correct it myself if I knew how you did it. I wouldn’t even mind dubbing in my own US audio from the orange brick set if I have too, I just don’t know where to get a rip of the set. All I can find is the orange bricks.

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A friend is attempting to fix the Funi 30ANIV BluRays of Z, and he’ll prolly hand them off to me to encode. (Which means I’ll prolly do the same voodoo I did with the Levels.)

Might only be worth 480, he suggested (because the processing he’s using to mitigate the filter damage does include some blurring), though his experiments have been at 720.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Molly said:

A friend is attempting to fix the Funi 30ANIV BluRays of Z, and he’ll prolly hand them off to me to encode. (Which means I’ll prolly do the same voodoo I did with the Levels.)

Might only be worth 480, he suggested (because the processing he’s using to mitigate the filter damage does include some blurring), though his experiments have been at 720.

Honestly I don’t see a point in doing anything with FUNi’s 30th anniversary set since it’s trash through and through. There’s friggin artificial grain added to the footage for christ’s sake presumably to mitigate complaints about the lack of grain which was stupid because it would have been easier to just tone back the DNR and everything wouldn’t have been so bad, something between the grain on the level sets and Kai would be the sweet spot imo (the level sets while fantastic looking had a little too much grain for my tastes, Kai on the other hand has too little grain, it isn’t as bad at the 30th anniversary sets mind you but Kai still went a little bit overboard), add that and the fact that the cropping for the 4:3 framing is complete overkill and it’s a waste of time, even if one could make it look better it’d just be a stop-gap measure at best, you’d be better off working on deinterlacing the DBOX footage (assuming it needs to be deinterlaced) and working from there.

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Superrayman3 said:

and the fact that the cropping for the 4:3 framing is complete overkill

I think only the very first episode of the series has the extreme cropping issue, so not a real issue since they’ll have the level set for that.

and it’s a waste of time, even if one could make it look better it’d just be a stop-gap measure at best, you’d be better off working on deinterlacing the DBOX footage (assuming it needs to be deinterlaced) and working from there.

But yeah CCing the DBOX (are there any original Japanese broadcast rips that are good for color reference?) would be the best chance at having a decent copy of the series.

Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.

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The Dragon Boxes are progressive.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Molly said:

The Dragon Boxes are progressive.

I thought they were, the thing is whenever I rip my JP DB DBOX Vol 1 single, the footage is always interlaced be it using VLC or editing with virtualdub (which is what I tend to use for video editing), extracting the m2v from the vob file doesn’t help either so I wasn’t sure if they were or not, what makes things even weirder is the fact that I used to be able to rip DVDs and open them without interlacing at all (unless the source was interlaced from the start) and now ever since I moved to a new PC everything I rip from DVD is interlaced, even discs that I know are progressive, so IDK what’s going on.

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Depends on how the software is set up to handle the m2v data; whether it is set to telecine or not.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Molly said:

Depends on how the software is set up to handle the m2v data; whether it is set to telecine or not.

I figured out the problem, turns out VirtualDub-MEPG2 has a setting enabled by default called honor “repeat first field” flags which apparently I had completely forgotten about (it’s been years since I actually worked with DVD stuff so I’m a bit rusty with the settings from a fresh install of VirtualDub-MPEG2), turning that setting off restored the original progressive image and framerate to my DB DBOX Vol 1 single and thank god, I just thought my memory was off and I was going crazy, good thing I wasn’t.

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Yes, I would LOVE to see this happen… I have the Dragon Box and the Pioneer dub already, but what I’m missing is the Funimation dub. I know it gets a bad rep, but I grew up on the English broadcast dub, and i must say, as much as i love the original Japanese and Pioneer dub, i sure do miss the Funimation dub

i even considered going in the files that i have and adding the Funimation dub to each episode myself, but that requires the audio, something i dont have, and the knowledge on putting an audio track in a video file, something i also dont have… it’s so frustrating

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Anyone happen to have a preview for the episode “Gohan Attacks” (from “Fighting Power… One Million?”) ?

I currently have two TV sources for the episodes in that general area (one from Toonami UK which came from the big tv-rip torrent, one from Cartoon Network US which came from the spleen). Both are missing the preview. Between the two sources, I can find all the recaps and previews in that general area.

Thanks in advance.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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As far as i know, there is already a team of people working on the entirety of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z doing scene by scene colour correction.

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Jason0839 said:

As far as i know, there is already a team of people working on the entirety of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z doing scene by scene colour correction.

And what of Dragon Ball GT? Is someone working on that, too? If they’re doing DB and Z, they might as well do GT to complete the original run.

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HarveyPlissken1138 said:

Jason0839 said:

As far as i know, there is already a team of people working on the entirety of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z doing scene by scene colour correction.

And what of Dragon Ball GT? Is someone working on that, too? If they’re doing DB and Z, they might as well do GT to complete the original run.

Does GT even need CC? I never found the colors to be off on the GT Box, compared to the normal FUNi releases anyway.

“Star Wars has, and will always be a restaurant.”

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That’s because the Funi releases for GT are based on the same masters as the R2s, with incorrect colors.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Molly said:

That’s because the Funi releases for GT are based on the same masters as the R2s, with incorrect colors.

Ah, that makes sense…

“Star Wars has, and will always be a restaurant.”

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Honestly would love for the OVA and Game exclusive animations of “Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans” to be restored. Though that might be for another thread

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For the record, most of my DB* knowledge is thirdhand.

Not that I haven’t had a lot of involvement; if the handle “WinxBloom1980” or the tags “Baaro” and “DragonTeam” ring a bell…

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)