Dragon Ball and the PAL audio pitch adjustment/correction

[Dragon ball master]

If you watch dragon ball in European countries, then you might hear that everything is slightly faster and the frame. Rate is a bit better than what we got in America. But I still don't understand how if the dub is originally Pal pitched, then why for the dubs that get re-uploaded on to YouTube They're not in pal pitched like does the sources that they get are not pal or they just convert it. Does anybody have a way I can watch the dragon ball movies in a 4,3 Pal pitch? Because I want to remaster the big green dubs of OG movies 1-3 in better quality.

[bkev]

I would actually be very interested to hear people's thoughts on this as well. I can provide no expertise but have found some uploads out there to be pitch-corrected ... yet, wouldn't that affect the voices too since the original masters were from 25FPS masters? Always wondered quite how that worked.

[VegettoEX]

If I had to guess, you could rip the music from soundtracks that's used in the background, pitch shift it on its own to match the speed of what's used in the PAL show, place two separate tracks in an audio program (1: the show, 2: the pitch-shifted audio you made), inverse the pitch-shifted audio you made to cancel out as much as you can, export that probably pretty rough "voice-only" track, and then re-import back in on its own new track the original (un-pitch-shifted) music?

It's not going to be very good, and I'm sure there are newer/better options for doing it... but probably also not particularly worth any amount of significant effort.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Does anybody have a way I can watch the dragon ball movies in a 4,3 Pal pitch? Because I want to remaster the big green dubs of OG movies 1-3 in better quality.

Not sure I entirely understand what your asking, but the Big Green movie dubs are uncut, so you could sync them to any source you like if you want a better experience than the Toonami UK rips.

Also, I'm not an expert on PAL vs NTSC, but as I understand it, the former has more total lines of resolution than the latter (625 vs 525), so if you want to watch a PAL-based dub like Big Green would you not prefer to stick with it?

[LostTimeLord]

Does anybody have a way I can watch the dragon ball movies in a 4,3 Pal pitch? Because I want to remaster the big green dubs of OG movies 1-3 in better quality.

What software are you using to remaster the movies? Some editors will let you change the playback speed of your footage to match exactly the frame rate of the project. There's also software like Avidemux, which can re-encode the video/audio with PAL speedup applied or reversed.

[Saiya6Cit]

Hi there,
It makes me happy to see there are people who care enough about dragon ball as much as wanting to get the best video and audio quality possible, and you know what? We deserve it.

What does PAL pitch mean?
”When these films are converted to DVD using the PAL format of 25 frames per second, they are simply sped up by 4%. This means that both the footage and the soundtrack play 4% faster (and the soundtrack is a slightly higher pitch – two thirds of a semitone) than when shown at the cinema.”

Had to google that.


I am not involved with anyone doing it but not long ago I posted about these guys in Latam who are working on a great remastering procress. The audio is in Spanish but they must have the video and music quality that you are looking for. Most hispanic content creators can at least read in English so you may contact them. This is a link to my previous post: viewtopic.php?p=1772993#p1772993

[Kakacarrottop]

If you watch dragon ball in European countries, then you might hear that everything is slightly faster and the frame. Rate is a bit better than what we got in America. But I still don't understand how if the dub is originally Pal pitched, then why for the dubs that get re-uploaded on to YouTube They're not in pal pitched like does the sources that they get are not pal or they just convert it. Does anybody have a way I can watch the dragon ball movies in a 4,3 Pal pitch? Because I want to remaster the big green dubs of OG movies 1-3 in better quality.

I got a bunch of Region 4 PAL DVDs of the old Funi/Saban dub a few years ago, and for some reason there's no 4% PAL speedup on them, even though most of my other DVDs have it.

[LostTimeLord]

there's no 4% PAL speedup on them, even though most of my other DVDs have it.

Because they'll have been converted to PAL by blending and/or skipping frames, as if they were native 60Hz NTSC video. So the speed remains unchanged, but you get motion issues as a compromise.

Nowadays, Au and UK Dragon Ball DVDs tend to be encoded in NTSC, even though it's incompatible with very old equipment; PAL speedup still happens for broadcast (and BBC iPlayer), but with pitch correction.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Having rewatched the Big Green dub of movie 1 synced to the TOEI remasters (it's out there if you know where to look) something I found really weird is at two points in the movie (when Roshi is asking Bulma to poke him and at the end when Goku flies off) they call the Dragon Balls "Crystal Dragon Balls", every other time they use "Crystal Balls", which is what they are generally referred to as in the Big Green dub.

[MasenkoHA]

Having rewatched the Big Green dub of movie 1 synced to the TOEI remasters (it's out there if you know where to look) something I found really weird is at two points in the movie (when Roshi is asking Bulma to poke him and at the end when Goku flies off) they call the Dragon Balls "Crystal Dragon Balls", every other time they use "Crystal Balls", which is what they are generally referred to as in the Big Green dub.

Did the Big Green dub really change Roshi asking Bulma to let him poke her boobs to asking her to poke him???

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Did the Big Green dub really change Roshi asking Bulma to let him poke her boobs to asking her to poke him???

Sorry, my post was misleading and I should have clarified. Roshi asks for "one little kiss" in exchange for his Dragon Ball. I guess that was whatever the studio behind the Big Green dubs' attempt at censorship, although Roshi's nosebleed wasn't cut.

[MasenkoHA]

Did the Big Green dub really change Roshi asking Bulma to let him poke her boobs to asking her to poke him???

Sorry, my post was misleading and I should have clarified. Roshi asks for "one little kiss" in exchange for his Dragon Ball. I guess that was whatever the studio behind the Big Green dubs' attempt at censorship, although Roshi's nosebleed wasn't cut.

Oh gotcha. I think that's what the Harmony Gold dub did as well, and implied the nose bleed was the aftermath of Bulma punching him in the nose off screen or something.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Oh gotcha. I think that's what the Harmony Gold dub did as well, and implied the nose bleed was the aftermath of Bulma punching him in the nose off screen or something.

Yes it did, Harmony Gold also had a weird line about Goku not wanting to be turned into a shish kebab when he meet Yamcha, but otherwise it was pretty accurate. Honestly though when it comes to faithfulness you can't go wrong with any dub of Legend of Shenlong. Hopefully one day the Frontier Enterprises dub will be found. Would be interesting to see how they handled it (if that dub exists).

[90sDBZ]

The PAL speedup thing is something I'd only briefly heard of back in the day, and it wasn't until more recently that I read up on it extensively and had my mind blown.

I remember watching the Rocky movies on TV years ago before later getting the DVDs. The DVDs, while still sped up, were pitch corrected, while the UK airings weren't. For years I remember thinking the soundtrack sounded "better" on the broadcast than on DVD, but couldn't put my finger on why. Turns out I must have just prefered the higher pitched versions of "Eye of the Tiger" and "Hearts on Fire".

More recently I rewatched the 5th movie on TV after getting used to the correct pitch for years. I could immediately tell something was off, as Rocky Jr sounded way more high pitched than he was supposed to, to the point that he sounded like his voice hadn't broke yet.

It's just crazy to me that so much stuff I watched on TV and DVD over the years was sped up, and it's only really Blu-ray and streaming that have solved the issue.

Even now Sky Plus uses the sped up versions of US movies and shows.

It's one of those things that won't bother you if you don't know any better. I can personally tolerate it, but if I have the option I'll obviously choose the correct pitch.

It's funny because PAL gaming had the opposite problem, where instead of being sped up it was slowed down (although the speed difference was more noticeable here).