Dragon Radar ~ English subs & audio for your Dragon Box [v1.1.0 "Freeza"]

[thejeremymenace]

Dragon Radar
English subs & audio for the R2 Dragon Box
https://github.com/gravitypriest/dragon-radar



What is it?
Dragon Radar will take video from your R2 Dragon Box, and subtitles & audio from your R1 Season DVDs or Funi DBox, and mux them together into an MKV container.

What's the story here?
This is something I've been working on, on and off, for quite a long time -- it all started in the fall of 2013 when I wanted to watch the first DB series with Dragon Box quality, but of course, there was no easy way of watching it with subtitles. With a little bit of know-how, free DVD software utilities, and some slightly tedious episode syncing, I was able to take the subtitles from the Blue Bricks, sync them, and patch them to the DBox DVDs.

Since then I've re-written my scripts a number of times, refining and tweaking them and collecting more frame data for each series. You may remember this thread where I posted a basic version of my subtitle sync script.

I've kept all this to myself for a while, mostly because my code was a clusterfuck -- lots of gross batch files, hardcoded C:\Users\blah... kind of stuff. But, I've rewritten everything in such a way that everyone can easily use. I want to share this knowledge and ability with the community -- I can't count the number of times I've seen people asking how they can get subs on their Dragon Boxes.

Grab the latest release here.

Download the first listed .zip file, unzip and follow the instructions in the online readme on how to set up and run it.

How about an example?
Here's a short clip from DBZ #147

If you run into any issues, find a bug, or find something wrong with the audio/subtitle timing, please let me know! You can open an issue on Github if you have an account, or post in this thread with included screenshots and/or the dragon-radar.log from the program directory. Or bother me on Twitter if you want my attention ASAP.

I'm excited to finally share this -- no one should have to suffer Funimation's video quality.

[EmmaWinters]

This is way too cool. I hope you find the time to finish this.

[RoarkVegeta]

For sure paying attention to this thread. Just got two of the Japanese boxes, and while I know the story like the back of my hand (and have the manga) it's never a bad idea to have subtitles. Stick with it!

[thejeremymenace]

Updated OP with an example clip of what the result would look like: Dragon Box + Orange Brick sub/dub

[Puto]

What are you going to do about next episode previews?

[thejeremymenace]

Unfortunately, I'm only syncing the subs, not creating any, so if the source doesn't have them -- so anything besides the Funi DBox, or the GT singles if I decide to sync them down the road -- there won't be any.

[Danfun64]

I'm amazed that you started work on the DBZ singles. It could be argued that the consistent crap of "Season 3" is better than the Frankenstein mix of good voice acting and bad provided in the Orange Bricks.

Of course, for subtitle fans the DBGT singles are more important

[thejeremymenace]

Yeah, it was more out of curiosity than anything. The Z singles for 'Season 3' cut not just the eyecatches, but some of the redundant scenes around the eyecatches as well, so there's weird silences in the middle of the episode. I also tried to make the dub OP fit the regular OP as well by repeating it in a creative way:

Rock the Dragon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVVykwQzbLk
Faulconer OP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYm3OcglNk4

[simtek34]

I also tried to make the dub OP fit the regular OP as well by repeating it in a creative way:

Rock the Dragon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVVykwQzbLk
Faulconer OP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYm3OcglNk4

There is a version of Rock he Dragon from Budokai 1 that has no character lines in the background. And is already extended to fit that song. Also, the buu saga version of the Faulconer theme has no lines in the background either,

[thejeremymenace]

Didn't know about the extended RTD -- pretty neat!

As for the Faulconer OP, the non-voiced version has a different guitar lead, so that was my incentive to 'extend' this one instead.

[Danfun64]

DBZ Movie 8 has a modified faulconer theme that fits the whole Japanese intro.

On another note, rare as they are, do the toonami broadcasts have the missing scenes surrounding the eye catches? If not, is there a way to take the audio that is in the orange bricks and transplant it into the dbz singles audio?

[Danfun64]

As I mentioned before, it would probably be better to work with the PAL dvds for the two Captain Ginyu sets, and the NTSC dvds for the rest of the DBZ Singles. Apparently the NTSC to PAL conversion was done in such a way that the length of the video is the same. However, the PAL Captain Ginyu dvds contain slightly more content.

[clutchins]

Would this program be able to support:
-DBZ Seasons on Blu-ray
-Level Sets
-UUSE
-Special Selection DVD
?

And am I reading correctly that you are working on supporting the original DBZ singles?

[sangofe]

Unfortunately, I'm only syncing the subs, not creating any, so if the source doesn't have them -- so anything besides the Funi DBox, or the GT singles if I decide to sync them down the road -- there won't be any.

You can get the subbed NEPs from db that were created by fans. Check your pm.

[Danfun64]

How accurate are they? Are they more accurate than the NGN subs? [like those are easy to find ]

[sangofe]

How accurate are they? Are they more accurate than the NGN subs? [like those are easy to find ]

Yes, they are.

[thejeremymenace]

Would this program be able to support:
-DBZ Seasons on Blu-ray
-Level Sets
-UUSE
-Special Selection DVD
?

And am I reading correctly that you are working on supporting the original DBZ singles?

Special Selection DVD is, to my knowledge, frame-identical to the Dragon Box version of those specials, just a different encode. All I'd need is the IFO and PGC info to tell Dragon Radar where to demux from.

Any Blu-rays are as of now, unsupported. The reasons being -- one, I don't have them and can't research the frame differences, and two, the Blu-rays are 24 FPS and all my framedata is done in NTSC drop frames (~30 fps). It wouldn't be too complicated to create another schema for 24 fps timing but it would still take another 291 episode walk to sync them. Oh and three -- those subs are in 1080p, and the destination video (Dragon Box) is of course 480p. The subs would be too big, and I haven't yet found a satisfactory solution for scaling picture-based subtitles.

UUSE and singles are a longshot. They are interlaced, missing eyecatches sometimes, have silly frameskips where the cells meet up, an authoring nightmare from a demux perspective, and quite frankly -- super annoying to sync. I've done the Ginyu and Freeza discs and that was quite enough for me, at least for a while.

That said -- I can document my process on how I obtain the framedata, and I will welcome any and all contributions if anyone wants to try out syncing these discs themselves.

Unfortunately, I'm only syncing the subs, not creating any, so if the source doesn't have them -- so anything besides the Funi DBox, or the GT singles if I decide to sync them down the road -- there won't be any.

You can get the subbed NEPs from db that were created by fans. Check your pm.

Unfortunately, for the time being, this won't support merging any VobSub files or creating text subs. Right now it's only going to fetch what's on the Funi DVDs.

[Danfun64]

What about the Orange Bricks based español singles?

[clutchins]

Special Selection DVD is, to my knowledge, frame-identical to the Dragon Box version of those specials, just a different encode. All I'd need is the IFO and PGC info to tell Dragon Radar where to demux from.

Not true. I've examined both videos and there is a definite frame difference between certain segments.

UUSE and singles are a longshot. They are interlaced, missing eyecatches sometimes, have silly frameskips where the cells meet up, an authoring nightmare from a demux perspective, and quite frankly -- super annoying to sync. I've done the Ginyu and Freeza discs and that was quite enough for me, at least for a while.

That said -- I can document my process on how I obtain the framedata, and I will welcome any and all contributions if anyone wants to try out syncing these discs themselves.

I hope somebody, if not you will continue the singles. I myself have always wanted to sync the original dub to the Dragon Box and using a custom OP and ED based on "Eternal Sacrifice" from the Broly DVD. If it is just possible to sync the content from the recap up through the closing narration, I would reeeeeally appreciate anyone willing to tackle it.
I can theoretically do the same thing with the UUSE audio too. Instead of the OP found on disc, I'd probably just substitute a 5.1 mix of the Menza theme.

Unfortunately, I'm only syncing the subs, not creating any, so if the source doesn't have them -- so anything besides the Funi DBox, or the GT singles if I decide to sync them down the road -- there won't be any.

You can get the subbed NEPs from db that were created by fans. Check your pm.

Unfortunately, for the time being, this won't support merging any VobSub files or creating text subs. Right now it's only going to fetch what's on the Funi DVDs.

Adding those subtitles should not be difficult. Each preview is only thirty seconds; it's not like you're retiming the entire episode.

[clutchins]

Any updates on the v1.0 .exe?