A while ago, I completed an edit of Dragon Ball wherein I removed as much filler as I possibly could. It was first known as Dragon Ball RF (the RF standing for Reduced Filler) but the release of the most recent film (Resurrection 'F') all but forced me to change the title, so I chose Dragon Ball Recut instead.
About The Editing Process:
First of all, it's dual-audio. Using the Dragon Box as the source for video and Japanese audio, and the Blue Bricks as the source for the English dub and subtitles, I have gone through the entire series and edited out as much filler as I possibly could.
Priority was given to the original Japanese track. By that I mean that I edited around the Japanese track first, and then edited the English track accordingly. I did so for a couple of reasons: the first of which is that the Japanese track is in mono, making it very difficult to manipulate in any significant way, so whatever edits I made had to accommodate the Japanese track first and foremost. The second reason is that I personally don't much care for the English dub. At the beginning of this project, I paid much more attention to the dub and tried to edit it in such a way that would be more faithful to the original Japanese dialog. However, it very quickly became apparent to me that the English dub was a lost cause, so I stopped caring about it after the first few episodes or so. For that reason, there may be a line inconsistency or two found on the English track due to Funimation constantly changing the dialog entirely from what it was originally supposed to be (if they hadn't done that so frequently, it wouldn't have been an issue).
Episode lengths (and file sizes) vary, due to the nature of the editing process. I tried to keep the episodes around 24 minutes or so, but it was really a matter of finding a good ending point for each episode. For that reason, some episodes run for about 18 minutes while others can go for as long as 32 minutes. I tried not to go much longer than 30 minutes per episode, but sometimes it couldn't be helped.
Total Amount of Footage Cut:
I recently did some number crunching in order to give me a rough estimate of just how much footage I cut from the show, and here's what I came up with.
- Disregarding the OP and ED themes, eyecatchers, title cards, and NEPs, that leaves each episode BEFORE EDITING at about 20 minutes and 26 seconds of actual show time.
- Multiply that number by 153 episodes total, and you're left with 52 hours, 6 minutes and 18 seconds.
- My recut of the show (again disregarding OP, ED, eyecatchers, title cards, and NEPs) comes out to about 29 hours, 5 minutes and 3 seconds
- That leaves us with a grand total of 23 hours, 1 minute and 15 seconds worth of actual show footage cut, all of which was filler in one way or another.
I know this project has been around for about a year or two now, but I've seen some people ask about it elsewhere on the forums so I decided to make a thread for it here in the hopes of making it a little bit easier to find. Also, I put a lot of time and effort into this project and, while I primarily did it for myself, I figured that it wouldn't be the worst thing to let more people know about it. Some people around here have said some very nice things about this project, and I appreciate the kind words. I am proud of the final product and I hope others are able to enjoy it as much as I do.
I can't share links to this project here because of the rules, nor do I want to explicitly tell you where you can find it because I'm not sure how acceptable that would be either. But it is relatively easy to find if you look for it (google is your friend).
And now, introducing my next works in progress...
I'm currently working on a recut of Dragon Ball Kai to remove any filler that remains. You may be thinking that it's weird to choose to recut Kai as opposed to Z seeing as how Kai has most of the filler already removed anyway, but that was actually the incentive for me, at least at first. Why remove the filler from Z when Kai has already done most of the work for me? Dragon Ball Recut was very labor-intensive, so any excuse to do less work is okay with me. I figured going through Kai would just be a matter of tweaking some things here and there and that it would be a breeze. While that proved to be true at first, I am just about finished with the Freeza saga now and it has become just as exhausting an editing process as Dragon Ball was.
I'm basically going through and fixing Kai, trying to make it more of what people originally hoped it would be. That includes, among other things, removing any remaining filler that I can, uncensoring everything that I can, and correcting dialog mistakes in the English dub.
This project differs from Dragon Ball Recut in that I am giving equal priority to the English dub this time around because I quite like it.
And, because I will probably get asked this right off the bat:
UPDATE (2/12/2019): Episodes 001 to 047 are completed! I decided to release in chunks this time around. These episodes cover the Saiyan, Namek, and Freeza arcs in their entirety. See this post for more info.
UPDATE (4/12/2019): Episodes 048 to 082 have been completed! These episodes cover the Android/Cell arc in its entirety. See this post for more info.
UPDATE (9/20/2023): It's done.
Dragon Ball Z Recut
(Added on 9-7-2016)
I'm also beginning work on a recut of Dragon Ball Z while I wait for Boo Kai to show up in North America. Why recut both Z and Kai, you ask? Because I'm a damn fool, that's why! Honestly, though, I started Kai first, and then about halfway through realized that I also want to recut the original Z for the OG Japanese dub and Kikuchi music. So now I'm doing both. Yay.
UPDATE (9/20/2023): No promises at this time. I'm so tired.
I welcome any feedback and questions from all of you hardcore Dragon Ball fans. I may also post here occasionally asking for your help and opinions on things.