Could original audio for DB/DBZ/DBGT be saved, if Toei released series on Laserdisc?

[coola]

Creamy Mami got released to Blu Ray not too long ago, what i strange, is that audio quality is noticably worse than one used on Laserdisc release, it makes me wonder, why Pierrot didnt use these audio masters?

I realise 52 episodes is less of hassle than about 500 episodes series, but..seeing how LD were so popular back in the day, i think Toei could handle it, Urusei Yatsura also got LD release https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4yI2FqJi6I

[HakkaiBills93]

Nothing will never say it. For example movies have been released on laserdisc but some people says that the dvd audios is less good than the LD (never make any comparison as i don't have laserdisc)
all depends on Toei policy and back in the time decision about the storage.
For example Saint Seiya have been released on official VHS by Toei but the audios is not so differrent than the DVD/ Bluray maybe slightly better than not as drastic as the broadcast audios now available by some way, they could have released the best audios but it's not the case.
With Company you never know. other example with Dragon Ball GT : Toei have the master audios but dvd was muffled except the tv special which strangely have stereo audio

There is no evidence that Toei don't have the master audios anymore, (can be the main reason why they decline kei's17 audios) maybe they allways have them somewhere and just have used the muffled audio from the lower cost backup they did. as they don't really care, they didn't use them

In France for an anime called sailor moon, i heard that no VHS release, no tv airing was using the uncut French dub but strangely when kaze released them, the french uncut masters never aired was used ... you can never know the truth as sometimes they lied (AB group lied from a time when they say that they don't have less censored french version than the ones released on VHS and the censored french only dvd but when the collector goes out, it was with almost no cut, they also lied when saying that anime was dubbed censored. brigitte lecordier (french voice of goku) told me that when they have recorded each episodes, it was 100% uncut (also why french title cards are dubbed in dragon bal box 2 but never aired) .

[Bruma rabu]

If Toei had released the entire series on Laserdisc? Yes. Even if Toei hadn't used the audio them self's fans could have just rip the audio and mux it in with DBox footage or what ever other release they wanted. Would it be easy no, but it would have been much easier than the way it was currently done and at better quality.

[HakkaiBills93]

If Toei had released the entire series on Laserdisc? Yes. Even if Toei hadn't used the audio them self's fans could have just rip the audio and mux it in with DBox footage or what ever other release they wanted. Would it be easy no, but it would have been much easier than the way it was currently done and at better quality.

sure it would have be easier but the question was more in a legal aspect, lot of things could have made things easier , but things have goes the opposite way, all have gone in the mosts selfish hands it's like that. that's all

[Bruma rabu]

sure it would have be easier but the question was more in a legal aspect, lot of things could have made things easier , but things have goes the opposite way, all have gone in the mosts selfish hands it's like that. that's all

I just ment that Toei could of done it and if they didn't it wouldn't havr been as big of deal as it was.

[Robo4900]

movies have been released on laserdisc but some people says that the dvd audios is less good than the LD (never make any comparison as i don't have laserdisc)

It's the same. Only difference is the LD master was PCM(Lossless/uncompressed), while the DVD master was 384kbps AC3, so while in technical terms the DVD master is worse than the LD, in practical terms, you'd never notice the difference. Don't get me wrong, I always advocate lossless audio, but saying the LD has superior audio to the DVD is somewhat deceptive.

With Company you never know. other example with Dragon Ball GT : Toei have the master audios but dvd was muffled except the tv special which strangely have stereo audio

To clarify: Toei have the original master audio for GT, but straight-up didn't use it for the DVD, the reason being that for the DVD masters they created of the series episodes, they only used materials from the film master of GT, which uses the same, crappy, optical audio we're all used to. This was likely done as a carry-over from the Dragon Box restorations of Dragon Ball and Z(And before those, the Slump Box), the idea being that they knew those shows didn't have their master audio, so they didn't think to check if they needed to change their process when doing GT. Either that, or they didn't realise until they were making a digital copy of the TV special, and decided it was too late to go through the hassle.

The TV special used the old D2 videotape master of GT, which is blurry, faded, and the visual information of each of the 24 frames in a second is slowly faded up from the bottom of the frame over 2 and a half frames, to smooth it out to 60 fields, meaning the master is weirdly interlaced, which is why they avoided using that master wherever possible. It looks fine played back deinterlaced to 60fps, or played back on a CRT TV, but it's not 3:2 pulldown'd, so a traditional IVTC won't restore it to its original 24fps rate, making it a rather poor master to use for DVD.
However, the D2 videotape master uses a PCM copy of the master audio. And, like all of GT from episode 5 onwards, the TV special's master audio is in stereo.

Funny thing is, TV stations in Japan were wise to this from the beginning, so if you watch GT on a modern TV rerun in Japan, you'll hear it with the original master audio, with episodes 5+ being in stereo.

There is no evidence that Toei don't have the master audios anymore, [...] maybe they allways have them somewhere and just have used the muffled audio from the lower cost backup they did. as they don't really care, they didn't use them

You'll have to forgive me for not having it to hand, but I believe there's an interview in which a TAVAC(The company that handled Toei's master audio, basically. I believe they also provided the studios episodes were recorded at, and did the mixing, etc.) employee, or perhaps a high-up like the CEO or something, said that the original cinetapes were all thrown out or erased and reused for other things, with the only copies of the episodes known to remain being the com-opt tracks on the film masters Toei hangs onto of each episode.
A couple of episodes had copies made and used for CD audio dramas and in one case a cassette tape(Z episodes 229 and 237 on CD, and I believe episode 2 on cassette), but that's all we know to be in existence.

It is possible that copies were made of the Dragon Ball master audio, which were put away in a vault somewhere, and everyone's just forgotten about it(I wouldn't put it past Toei to do something so grossly incompetent), but no evidence suggests this, so like the Russel's Teapot thought experiment that there's a teapot in orbit around the sun somewhere between the Earth and Mars that we've just never been able to observe, while you couldn't disprove it, it's not really a possibility that would be worth considering in reality.

(can be the main reason why they decline kei's17 audios)

I would say that the main reason was most likely that he was some fan contacting a Toei representative out of the blue, telling them he has audio for them. It's possible the representative didn't even know what he was even talking about. Now that Chris Sabat has the audio, it's possible he might be able to get it passed up the ladder in a way that it would reach Toei the right way.
No offense intended to Kei, I'm sure he tried his best to reach out to Toei about this, but it's kind of hard to avoid the trap he fell in with this one.

In France for an anime called sailor moon, i heard that no VHS release, no tv airing was using the uncut French dub but strangely when kaze released them, the french uncut masters never aired was used ... you can never know the truth as sometimes they lied (AB group lied from a time when they say that they don't have less censored french version than the ones released on VHS and the censored french only dvd but when the collector goes out, it was with almost no cut, they also lied when saying that anime was dubbed censored. brigitte lecordier (french voice of goku) told me that when they have recorded each episodes, it was 100% uncut (also why french title cards are dubbed in dragon bal box 2 but never aired) .

It's highly annoying about how AB Groupe and such seems to have handled the French dubs of those shows. Though, it is possible they edited the masters they recorded to make the edited masters, and just threw out what they cut, meaning no copies of the uncut French dubs of these shows exist.

[HakkaiBills93]

i wasn't talking about you when talking about movies laserdisc audios better than dbox, lot of people said it on the net.

I think also that Toei was also maybe not caring about audio quality, that's maybe why they decline audios, i never have seen any official evidence about what Toei did from original master audios or cinetape , we often see strange things with companies (for example chinese dvd of saint seiya use the same remastered masters for saint seiya from Toei but with no crop and better sharpness as others release have the crop

i also see some release of some anime which retain their original see you next time cards on foreign dvd and not on r2j , sometimes like for gt even sponsor card is on the release and not in the final product r2j (taiwanese dvd)

i used french example as sometimes you can't even rely on what companies says officially (AB lied about not having less cut version of most of his anime when were released on VHS and strangely when the collector box was out it was the most uncut version aired in France) i know like i said before that it was dubbed uncensored but what happened after that is probably that AB edited the audio to fit the censored version but i realy feel sometimes that the uncut version exist somewhere, for example the last box sold in France was Dragon Ball Box 2 and strangely this box only have one and only cut all remaining is uncut (japanese song retain, all tv cut aren't cut on this box except piccolo vs shen talking in namek) it even have episode title dub in france (it never aired like that)

i just think that AB have lot of version of dragon ball and never make order on them, they surely find the master audio AFTER that dbz box 1-2-3 and db 1 was out, they even found dbgt french uncut dub that have episode title and next episode preview dub in french for the last airing on the french "mangas" channel on 2011 (this airing was using dbox video with episode title, eyecatch, next episode preview and all was dub)

that's why i just say that no one can know if they have or not them somewhere or if they would have used them if laserdisc of the series was made

the only 100% sure things is that if a release of them would have been made anywhere in the world it could have been easier for the fans gathering them instead the way the things are (1 man only have every single episdodes in the best remaining quality)

[DB1984]

Toei was the only studio in Japan to throw away their original audio masters.

This video sums them up perfectly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qileP4bAzek

[Robo4900]

i wasn't talking about you when talking about movies laserdisc audios better than dbox, lot of people said it on the net.

And I was saying those people are wrong.

I think also that Toei was also maybe not caring about audio quality, that's maybe why they decline audios

We don't know. The former would explain some things, so it might be true, but we can't be sure about either, really. And given the latter is based on the former, it's an idea that sits on very shaky ground.
Again, it's highly unlikely that anyone at Toei has any clue who Kei is, so as far as the representative who read and responded to his email was concerned, he was just some rando claiming to have stuff for an official release of some show Toei used to do 25 years ago. Like with so many pieces of conventional wisdom about Dragon Ball, the idea that Toei declined Kei's offer because they don't care about audio is based on dubious assumptions with no evidence to back them up. All we know is that the one representative he talked to didn't think what he said was worth passing on to anyone higher up. We can't really extrapolate any further from that outside of pure speculation.

i never have seen any official evidence about what Toei did from original master audios or cinetape

I'll have to see if I can dig out that TAVAC interview for you.

i used french example as sometimes you can't even rely on what companies says officially

The actions of one company who licensed Dragon Ball don't speak for every company that is involved in Dragon Ball.
Just because EA created a slot machine for children disguised as a video game game using the Star Wars license, that doesn't mean Disney or Lucasfilm want to set up gambling institutions for children. Similarly, just because AB Groupe were incompetent liars with their Dragon Ball masters, that doesn't mean Toei are incompetent liars. Various examples of Toei's history show that they've been incompetent with restoration and such of Dragon Ball, but you can't very well use something AB Groupe did and say that's a reason to think Toei did a similar thing; different companies with different philosophies, different people, different countries, etc...

that's why i just say that no one can know if they have or not them somewhere or if they would have used them if laserdisc of the series was made

Well, Toei are weird, they've made a lot of rather baffling commercial decisions in the past, so it's impossible to know either way.

[superrayman3]

I just had an interesting thought that I don't think has been brought up yet, would it be possible that AB Groupe or some other international distributor from the 80's were given copies of the cinetapes in some form or another and retained those masters accidentally, if so we may have been going about this whole thing all wrong and high quality audio may have been in plain sight all along, highly unlikely I know but it's still within the realm of possibility so who knows (AB Groupe did have access to high quality audio for their French dub at the time so it is possible).

[Robo4900]

I just had an interesting thought that I don't think has been brought up yet, would it be possible that AB Groupe or some other international distributor from the 80's were given copies of the cinetapes in some form or another and retained those masters accidentally, if so we may have been going about this whole thing all wrong and high quality audio may have been in plain sight all along, highly unlikely I know but it's still within the realm of possibility so who knows (AB Groupe did have access to high quality audio for their French dub at the time so it is possible).

Well, for GT, any company that got the old videotape master of the show got a copy of its master audio. No way of knowing if a similar thing happened with DB or Z, but I'd say it's highly unlikely.

[superrayman3]

Well, for GT, any company that got the old videotape master of the show got a copy of its master audio. No way of knowing if a similar thing happened with DB or Z, but I'd say it's highly unlikely.

GT I'm not too worried about as I'm fully aware of the D2 master audio copies and know those still exist, but DB/Z are up in the air, I brought up the idea because think about this for a minute, AB Groupe and maybe some other international licensees in the 80's (but AB for sure) acquired the series while it was still airing in Japan so there is a slight chance Toei still had access to the cinetapes or copies of them as AB got very high quality M&E tracks, so original cinetape "broadcast" audio may have been sent as well (heck maybe Toei acquired the cinetapes back from Fuji TV assuming they still held onto the tapes for a bit after the initial airing and made copies of them and sent the copies to AB, again as I acknowledged in my previous post highly unlikely but not entirely impossible).

[HakkaiBills93]

I just had an interesting thought that I don't think has been brought up yet, would it be possible that AB Groupe or some other international distributor from the 80's were given copies of the cinetapes in some form or another and retained those masters accidentally, if so we may have been going about this whole thing all wrong and high quality audio may have been in plain sight all along, highly unlikely I know but it's still within the realm of possibility so who knows (AB Groupe did have access to high quality audio for their French dub at the time so it is possible).

Well, for GT, any company that got the old videotape master of the show got a copy of its master audio. No way of knowing if a similar thing happened with DB or Z, but I'd say it's highly unlikely.

About Dragon Ball GT , AB should have master audio of course, their crappy release of the series french dub only use stereo audio for japanese opening , ending (but not so good quality...) anyway about db, dbz it's only possible but i don't think that they have kept cinetape. AB group is well known for chaotic storage for theirs stuffs, for example they have found not so long time ago less censored city hunter french dub than the usual used for the dvd, the same for captain tsubasa... but for what i know cinetape was returned to Toei after first use. It's the same with the BGM , sfx tracks use for dub

They have several versions with lot or less cut that they used randomly before on TV (sometimes you could have the less cut and then episode after the one with more cut (also true in their censored dvd as for example the 18 last episodes was released two times on VHS : first censored (but with mention uncut lol) and the one after 100% uncut but the dvd are the censored one)

@robot: i wasn't saying toei did the same as AB just that it's POSSIBLE, it's just to say to never keep what a company says for the truth. i agree that it's very poorly probable as some others series suffers the same things.
Do you really think Toei will say " We allways have the master audio or better audios but for X reason we forgot to use it for the Dragon Box"? if they made an error or that it was too much costly used it, they'll never said it.
You just need to watch how terrible is the japanese dragon box authoring (bright, dark, sometimes it have a filter on the whole image (around ep 33 of db for example) , chroma bleeding, chroma blending, slight black bar on the left and right that can appear, dissapear from one frame to the next, more cropping than the level sets for dark reason etc... but they will never explain why it was done like that.

About broadcast audios from kei17, maybe when he came to them, they wasn't aware of all the things, but don't think they didn't keep an eye on youtube, torrent website, forums (one of the staff here said once that they already have been contacted by companies to give some members informations for fansub things (something like that, they will said it better than me).

It's possible that some companies have kept original masters, maybe someone of the old staff , producers or others have their own recording of the dragon ball series (it seems kei said it once here).
I was just meaning that it's not because something isn't release that they don't have . They can have the masters audio separately somewhere but forget to used it as theirs master have the bad audio on the film along .

[Robo4900]

I brought up the idea because think about this for a minute, AB Groupe and maybe some other international licensees in the 80's (but AB for sure) acquired the series while it was still airing in Japan so there is a slight chance Toei still had access to the cinetapes or copies of them as AB got very high quality M&E tracks, so original cinetape "broadcast" audio may have been sent as well (heck maybe Toei acquired the cinetapes back from Fuji TV assuming they still held onto the tapes for a bit after the initial airing and made copies of them and sent the copies to AB, again as I acknowledged in my previous post highly unlikely but not entirely impossible).

I asked a friend of mine who's super-well versed on this stuff about this, and he said "The CEO of TAVAC said in an interview that the original master tapes were erased after broadcast and re-used. According to him, foreign distributors received M&E tapes and nothing more. It was also said in the interview that the master audio doesn't exist and that the only thing they have for TV shows is the optical film tracks."
This is the interview he refers to, unfortunately it's only available in Japanese.