Question about the infamous French dub.

[TVfan721]

I was going through my old PM's and came across an old conversation I had with a former member here. He was going on about the French dub and how it was the worst dub in the world. Didn't go into much detail though. From what I gathered, the French company (whoever it was) did something to the video and as a result, the dub had the worst video quality of any dub and apparently every dub in Europe was based off the French dub so they all got shit quality, can anyone here confirm this? Also, what's this thing about other European dubs (that got it from the French dub) having to up pitch the music so everything would match up?

[Eire]

-What does dub have in common with video quality?
-Person from USA dared to say that something was worse than their?
-Not all dubs in Europe were based on that (German and some Spanish/Catalan weren't)
-Video quality? The DVD doesn't seem to be different than standard, nor seemed versions aired across Europe. I guess he had a problem with versions recorded on VHS tapes- "TV-Rips" to e found here and there were recorded in early 2000s from already old VHS videos that usually didn't have an amazing quality to begin with.

Also, what's this thing about other European dubs (that got it from the French dub) having to up pitch the music so everything would match up?

???

[Tanooki Kuribo]

-What does dub have in common with video quality?

Because he's talking about a specific dub. He's asking why the video quality of that dub was so bad. I don't understand why you would question this, it's a pretty basic question he's asking.

-Person from USA dared to say that something was worse than their?

Sure, why not? The video quality here in the US ranges depending on what you're watching and what format you're watching it on. And compared to the video quality of some of the Spanish episodes I've seen on TV, the US wasn't the worst.

[Puto]

PAL TV is 25fps whereas film is 24fps (actually 24/1.001 fps, but let's not get too technical). To play a show animated at 24fps on 25fps TV, you need to either speed it up (which results in the audio being pitched up, though nowadays algorithms exist that can correct this) or convert the framerate with some sort of telecine process (which is typically destructive to the video and results in a quality loss). Most European dubs picked the former, hence the music being slightly pitched up.

[VegettoEX]

The pitch has to do with NTSC to PAL conversions. Standard NTSC frame rate is 29.967 frames per second (North America + Japan), while standard PAL frame rate is 25 frames per second (most of Europe, minus you weird SECAM folks).

In a nutshell, the math doesn't work to get from ~30 -> ~25 by duplicating or removing frames. In order to fix the frame rates between the two standards, things are sped up by about 4%. It's less perceptible in video (particularly in animation, which itself was traditionally done around 12 frames per second, duplicated up to 24 frames per second -- which itself is the standard NTSC film frame rate -- and then adjusted on the video side to 29.976 frames per second without affecting the audio), but you definitely hear it in the audio.

There are ways to speed up audio without affecting the pitch (especially these days), but the thing is, that takes effort. So what you're left with is a master recording of new French dialog at its proper pitch plastered overtop the Kikuchi score that's been sped up by about 4%, generally leaving you with no way to watch it with BOTH aspects of the audio at the proper speed or pitch.

Or Puto could also just explain it before I do.

[Puto]

4%, not 8%, but yeah.

[VegettoEX]

Ignore my dumb fingers. Corrected.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I was going through my old PM's and came across an old conversation I had with a former member here. He was going on about the French dub and how it was the worst dub in the world. Didn't go into much detail though. From what I gathered, the French company (whoever it was) did something to the video and as a result, the dub had the worst video quality of any dub and apparently every dub in Europe was based off the French dub so they all got shit quality, can anyone here confirm this? Also, what's this thing about other European dubs (that got it from the French dub) having to up pitch the music so everything would match up?

Since I'm not from France, I can't say this definitively, but I believe I can clarify a few things. Firstly, I don't think they ("they" in this case meaning the AB Groupe) "did" anything to the video. They were just given very poor video masters from Toei (which is something they were infamous for doing back in the day).

As far as being the "worst dub in the world"...I personally wouldn't call it that, but they did a couple of things that might prevent it from being classified as a perfect dub. Among the shortcomings were...

1) They changed a lot of the names of characters and attacks, and rewrote the script on several occasions to the point where the characters were saying something totally different than what they were saying in the original Japanese version. There were several changes, but the biggest one that comes to mind for me is that they changed all instances of "Saiyans" to "Space Warriors." Even the term "Super Saiyan" was replaced with "Super Warrior." Well, okay, "Super Guerrier," but you get the idea.

2) They cut a lot of scenes. France was the first country to get a dub of the animes, and back then, they didn't have the editing technology that's commonly available today. So, rather than do touch-ups to a scene if it was too violent (like digitally removing blood), if a scene was too violent, they would just cut it altogether rather than censor it.

3) Many "attack noises," which is my personal term that I use to describe things like grunts, shouts, and screams, were not dubbed. Some people don't mind this, but for me, that's very distracting. The AB Groupe would either remove the vocal audio altogether or just use the original Japanese audio. In some cases, this wasn't terrible. For example, Eric Legrand, the French voice actor for Vegeta, actually sounds...relatively...similar to Ryo Horikawa. Not to the point where you can't tell them apart, but similar enough that you would think Horikawa's screams could be Legrand's screams as well. Here's a clip of Vegeta going Super Guer--sorry, Super Saiyan--in the French dub. In other cases, though, it definitely didn't work. Goku, who was given a very deep-voiced male voice actor in France, sounded nothing like Masako Nozawa...and the transitions raised some eyebrows.

As for the other things you mentioned...while not all European dubs are based on the French dub, most of them are. The pre-edited video masters of the French dub was distributed to most of Europe, and so almost all of the European dubs are, in effect, "based" on the French dub. Many of the other European dubs have the exact same visual edits, and dub scripts that were very faithfully adapted...from the French dub. Super Guerrier and all. The concept of "dubbing a dub" is not new, and has happened before, even recently. 4Kids, for example, owned many of the international distribution rights to the shows they dubbed. So with the exception of Asia, a lot of international dubs of shows dubbed by 4Kids in English...were based on those dubs. That was the case with "Pokemon," "Yu-Gi-Oh," "Sonic X," and to a lesser extent, "One Piece" (the Mexican Spanish dub). Those dubs have the same music, visual, and sound effects edits as their English counterparts. Even the scripts are adapted from the English dub scripts.

Heck, this was even seen recently with Kai. Controversy erupted in Latin America when it was revealed that Mexico and Brazil received the Nicktoons-edited English dub of Kai for dubbing purposes.

Anyway, back to DBZ. There were exceptions here and there as far as "dubbing a dub" was concerned. While Germany received the same materials that most of Europe did, they based most of their dub scripts on the German manga translations. "Space Warriors," are even called "Saiyajins" in that dub (and yes, that extends to "Super Saiyajins"). Fellow Kanzenshuu-er Timo also mentioned that the German dubbing company was so unimpressed with the French opening theme that they asked the AB Groupe if they had anything different, and were then given a video of "Cha-La Head Cha-La." Which was then dubbed into German. AND SOUNDS AWESOME! Germany hasn't released DBZ in uncut, bilingual format, however. They claimed that part of the reason for doing this was because they would have to ask the AB Groupe for the uncut footage since they were never given uncut footage, and it would be very time-consuming and expensive to go through every single edit and re-sync everything with the new, uncut footage. So as far as DBZ on DVD is concerned, Germany essentially got edited, dub-only TV tapings.

As far as the "up-pitch" thing...not sure what they mean there. The audio has been up-pitched, but that doesn't have to do with getting the voices to sync. Asian and North American film runs at 24 frames per second, whereas European, African, and--I think--Middle Eastern film runs at 25 fps. One of the ways to convert NTSC film to PAL film...is to just speed it up by one frame. So, in speeding the episodes up, the pitch of the audio goes up ever-so-slightly. That's why, when you watch European footage of certain movies or shows, all the audio is just a titch higher...it's because it has been sped up. Nothing can really be done to avoid speeding up the footage a bit, although it seems as of late that they have found a way to speed up the film without raising the pitch, so that way at least the proper pitch is maintained.

Finally...it may be worth noting that, for all the things the French dub didn't do that great at, these were corrected in the French dub of Kai. All names are the original Japanese names, the scripts are much more faithful to the original Japanese scripts, all of the "attack noises" are dubbed by the French actors, and they have both an edited and an uncut dub (and the edited dub put digital painting to use, so they were able to air a lot of previously cut scenes by just painting out blood).

EDIT:...Ugh...go figure that two people beat me to explaining the film speed difference. My bad.

[Cold Skin]

TheBlackPaladin pretty much said it all.

Just a few more things about the original French dub:
- The translation was not only bad (with totally invented lines), it was also incoherent, changing all the time, which means not only did they change names from the Japanese audio, but they would suddenly change names from their own translations in previous episodes. Suddenly, the Kame Hama Ha would become "Infinite Light" or "Pulverisation of Light", etc...
- They wanted to simplify things for kids, which also meant that a lot of characters having names ended up having no name ever mention... including Kakarotto for a long time.
- The voice actors were likely badly directed. While most of them are famous and competent voice actors which you can hear on major movies or TV shows, they exagerrated their tones, like not taking it seriously. They proved to be excellent and really in-character in the Kai version, which was taken much more seriously both in terms of translation and tone.
- The editing of the scenes that TheBlackPaladin mentionned was really horrible. As he said, they just skipped scenes... but they did it regardless of any sense of coherence. Basically, it was as if you pushed the "next chapter" button on your DVD remote, skipping the problematic sequence regardless of what the characters were doing or saying before and after the skip.

[kei17]

As far as being the "worst dub in the world"...I personally wouldn't call it that, but they did a couple of things that might prevent it from being classified as a perfect dub. Among the shortcomings were...

The dub definitely is not the worst quality-wise, but it is in a different way. As you said, the French dub has affected so many dubs in other European countries in a negative way. The most sinful might be a better term. AB Groupe did help DB get famous in Europe at the same time though..

France was the first country to get a dub of the animes

Do you mean France was the first in the world? If so, that's wrong. TVB in Hong Kong started broadcasting the series about a week earlier than TF1 in France. Sorry for being nitpicky, but I can't help it.

[TheBlackPaladin]

France was the first country to get a dub of the animes

Do you mean France was the first in the world? If so, that's wrong. TVB in Hong Kong started broadcasting the series about a week earlier than TF1 in France. Sorry for being nitpicky, but I can't help it.

Oh, no need to apologize, by all means, I stand corrected! I did think it was the first dub in the world...to be fair, though, I was only off by one week!

[LiamKav]

In a nutshell, the math doesn't work to get from ~30 -> ~25 by duplicating or removing frames. In order to fix the frame rates between the two standards, things are sped up by about 4%. It's less perceptible in video (particularly in animation, which itself was traditionally done around 12 frames per second, duplicated up to 24 frames per second -- which itself is the standard NTSC film frame rate -- and then adjusted on the video side to 29.976 frames per second without affecting the audio), but you definitely hear it in the audio.

I think it can cause an issue with paning shots. The screen seems to slightly jump every couple of a seconds or so, possibly based on where the actualy animated change occurs in the second. Maybe,

[Raykugen]

-What does dub have in common with video quality?
-Not all dubs in Europe were based on that (German and some Spanish/Catalan weren't)

The spanish and catalan used the french dub to their translations

[Puto]

Some parts of the Spanish and Catalan dubs were based on the French dub and some parts were not. There was some giant video on exactly what happened with that, but basically what happened was that at some point, Spain (who were airing two episodes a day) caught up to France and had to translate from the uncut version because the French dub wasn't done yet.