Question about Funimation's remastering process

[Banduck]

Does anyone know how Funimation's remastering process works? Which filters would I have to use to get a similar result?
I am especially interested in how the "watercolor" look was achieved.

Spoiler:

I know most of you hate this look, but I'd like to know what DB and GT would look like with the same remaster.

[mute_proxy]

There's a spanish BluRay release of DB you can check to see the result (it's kinda worse though)

[Robo4900]

Take a nice version of Dragon Ball. Levels, Dragon Boxes, original singles, anything really.
Funimation started with a nicely cleaned-up version that underwent an extensive process to remove dirt, scratches, tape marks, etc., resulting in something similar to the Levels, but with the full film frame showing.

Step 1: Blur it enough that the grain goes away.
You could use some level of temporal denoising too, or some other smart kind of denoiser, but essentially all denoisers boil down to a blurring process.
The result should look a lot like Dragon Ball Kai, but even blurrier/softer.

Step 2: Run a sharpening filter on a high intensity setting.
The reason why the shading is really sharp-edged, but the outlines and such are blurry and indistinct is that, to counterract the blurriness of their denoiser, they ran a sharpening filter. Superficially, it restores some of the image sharpness, but it also damages the picture and creates halos.
Fundamentally, this is the filter that causes the most controversy about Funimation's filtering; on one hand, casual viewers appreciate the sharp look, but on the other hand, this is what destroys the texture of the backgrounds, creates halos, makes the inconsistent sharpness in the image in general, etc...
If you want Dragon Ball to look like Funimation's remastering, though, this is the key filter that gives that look.

Optional step 3: Crop it to widescreen.
Even those who don't mind step 2 generally hate this step, but it's a critical part of why a lot of people hate the OBs and Season BDs in particular. Crop the picture to widescreen.
Realistically, you'll get worse results than Funi got if you apply this to already-4:3 footage, since Funi's 16:9 crop allows them to show extra picture on the sides, meaning the overall picture can be a bit bigger than if it was just a dumb 16:9 centre crop of a ready-made 4:3 picture.
But, if you're determined to get, specifically, the OB/Season BD look exactly right, then you'll want to crop. The Orange Bricks used a universal centre-crop; only the 16:9 portion of the picture in the middle of the frame is visible. The Season BDs were reframed shot-by-shot manually by someone at Funi.

--

However, before you go applying this filter, note that Funimation's movie remasters don't look like the series. The reason is that Funi's goal with remastering Dragon Ball Z is to make it look like a low-grain show that was shot on 35mm film, with a medium DNR on top. Something akin to Batman: The Animated Series, or Funi's own remasters of the DBZ movies (as well as Toei's Blu-ray remaster of those same movies).
The reason the series has its unique, controversial look is that Funi are more concerned with the grainless look than they are with having something representing the original artistic intent of the show. Realistically, if you want to go for a look approximating what Funi are going for, without making it look all shitty, you should aim to have it look like either DBZ Kai, or the Animax/Toei remasters of the two TV specials; degrained and quite soft, but with very little (if any) sharpening.

[Banduck]

There's a spanish BluRay release of DB you can check to see the result (it's kinda worse though)

You mean the Selecta Vision remaster? I don't think it looks like the Funimation remaster at all.

Step 2: Run a sharpening filter on a high intensity setting.
The reason why the shading is really sharp-edged, but the outlines and such are blurry and indistinct is that, to counterract the blurriness of their denoiser, they ran a sharpening filter. Superficially, it restores some of the image sharpness, but it also damages the picture and creates halos.
Fundamentally, this is the filter that causes the most controversy about Funimation's filtering; on one hand, casual viewers appreciate the sharp look, but on the other hand, this is what destroys the texture of the backgrounds, creates halos, makes the inconsistent sharpness in the image in general, etc...
If you want Dragon Ball to look like Funimation's remastering, though, this is the key filter that gives that look.

First of all, thanks for the detailed explanation
This is the thing I don't understand - when I use a sharpening filter it looks like this:

Spoiler:

denoise & upscale

sharpening

(I used a DBZ scene to compare if the result looks like in Funimation remaster)

Yes the background art looks a bit like Funimation , but the foreground objects/characters are extremely oversharpened.
I have tried different filters, this one was actually the one with the "best" result.
I also tried to use a strong dehalo filter after that, but then the picture got blurry again.

I read that Funimation used "Digital Vision Phoenix" for the DBZ remaster. More precisely the "DVO Clarity" filter.
But unfortunately the software doesn't seem to be available to the public.

Realistically, if you want to go for a look approximating what Funi are going for, without making it look all shitty, you should aim to have it look like either DBZ Kai, or the Animax/Toei remasters of the two TV specials; degrained and quite soft, but with very little (if any) sharpening.

Yeah I'm just experimenting a little bit, I don't think I'm going to remaster the whole show.
Because of DBZ and all the remastering discussions related to it, I'm starting to get interested in this kind of stuff

[Ajay]

Avisynth's WarpSharp will give you that Funi look.

[Trachta10]

I think you can get that software here
https://www.sgo.es/dvo-tools-mistika/

other ways to reduce noise, upscale, etc and free
https://github.com/NVlabs/noise2noise
https://github.com/NVlabs/selfsupervised-denoising
https://github.com/IBM/MAX-Image-Resolution-Enhancer
https://github.com/brade31919/SRGAN-tensorflow
https://github.com/idealo/image-super-resolution

[Lightningexpose]

That was a lot of words to guide him no closer to what he actually wants. I see you really don’t want to see more of that filtering

As for how it’s actually done, it doesn’t even require DNR. I still have an image from years ago where I feel it pretty much nails “the Funi look” and didn’t require DNR:


Sadly this was so long ago and I can’t remember the exact tool used but it might be the one Ajay said.

[Robo4900]

That was a lot of words to guide him no closer to what he actually wants. I see you really don’t want to see more of that filtering

My understanding is that Funi's Blu-rays use heavy DNR and heavy sharpening to achieve their look (Ajay seems to think WarpSharp is the specific sharpening filter to use), which is exactly what I said in my post, and exactly what OP was asking for.

If I'm wrong, by all means, explain your understanding of it.

[Lightningexpose]

Well, the author is asking for the “Funimation” look, I.e. that shower-glass looking ugliness. He says above that he does not regard Selecta’s DB remaster to be in the same category.

Your process, though, (barring step 3) just outlines how to achieve the Selecta look. DNR+sharpen. So yeah I made a joke about it being a very long winded way of not helping achieve the look.

My post highlighted that despite Funi using DNR, to get that signature shower glass-looking aesthetic they have it ultimately comes down to one type of filter that I had in my hands back in the day but don’t remember its exact name anymore. And that it doesn’t require DNR to achieve the look.

The thread’s title is “funimation’s remastering process” so it makes sense you listed out their process, but if it wasn’t gonna help the OP achieve the look you may as well have just said “they scan the film in HD then do some filtering”

[Banduck]

As for how it’s actually done, it doesn’t even require DNR. I still have an image from years ago where I feel it pretty much nails “the Funi look” and didn’t require DNR:

Your process, though, (barring step 3) just outlines how to achieve the Selecta look. DNR+sharpen. So yeah I made a joke about it being a very long winded way of not helping achieve the look.

Yeah, the lines in your picture look like in Funimation's remaster, but I was actually referring to the whole remastering process, including the DNR.
I was especially interested in how Funimation managed to make the background art so sharp and at the same time not oversharpen the foreground art.
After a lot of trial and error I managed to achieve a similar look, but I think you really need Digital Vision Phoenix to achieve exactly the same look.

Also, I think you can't compare the Funi and Selecta remaster.
The Selecta remaster has a rather soft look, and looks more faithful to the original.
Example:

Spoiler:

[Robo4900]

Well, the author is asking for the “Funimation” look, I.e. that shower-glass looking ugliness. He says above that he does not regard Selecta’s DB remaster to be in the same category.

Your process, though, (barring step 3) just outlines how to achieve the Selecta look. DNR+sharpen. So yeah I made a joke about it being a very long winded way of not helping achieve the look.

My post highlighted that despite Funi using DNR, to get that signature shower glass-looking aesthetic they have it ultimately comes down to one type of filter that I had in my hands back in the day but don’t remember its exact name anymore. And that it doesn’t require DNR to achieve the look.

The thread’s title is “funimation’s remastering process” so it makes sense you listed out their process, but if it wasn’t gonna help the OP achieve the look you may as well have just said “they scan the film in HD then do some filtering”

lol. Good points, I guess.

I just assumed DNR+sharpen would yield the Funi look since that's how Funi did it. I guess it depends on the filter.

[Lightningexpose]

No you don’t need their Phoenix whatever software. At the end of the day, all video/image filters can be programmed using any programming language.

I still have some more examples from back in the day:
https://imgsli.com/MjE2ODg
https://imgsli.com/MjE2ODc

As you can see it’s very much like Funi’s remastering process post-scan. Applied on levels and it might be exactly that.

You can rest assured I wasn’t using their software since iirc I did these before the season sets. I was like 14 and on a mission to get “HD DBZ” and of course to my 14 year-old eyes this looked to be it. I didn’t think it would also be it in the eyes of so called professionals working at funimation, though. I should’ve patented it to prevent it getting on official releases

Anyway, I can get this filtering again by programming from scratch on Python with some CV libraries but I don’t have the time to do that right now. If I ever do I’ll post the script here.

[eledoremassis02]

Can you post clips? I wonder if it does the cloud dance

[HakkaiBills93]

in this topic name "remastering" sound more like an insult than anything else when you see the awful result
i wonder why someone actually want to reach the same result? do you have a show that you hate so much that you think "funimationized" the footage will make you happy?"

[Trachta10]

an example of this with dragon box, is a spanish fan project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TbNsTdJblY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYg7iejb7cA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxZP-Wl1ap0

[ikaos]

an example of this with dragon box, is a spanish fan project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TbNsTdJblY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYg7iejb7cA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxZP-Wl1ap0

One thing to note is that that video makes the Dragon Box look worse than it actually is. It looks like they applied DNR before they even did the comparison shots. Otherwise I guess it's a similar, smudgy look.

[ArmenianPepsi]

an example of this with dragon box, is a spanish fan project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TbNsTdJblY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYg7iejb7cA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxZP-Wl1ap0

One thing to note is that that video makes the Dragon Box look worse than it actually is. It looks like they applied DNR before they even did the comparison shots. Otherwise I guess it's a similar, smudgy look.

Oh yeah i've seen that DB AI Project stuff myself too. How anyone could think this actually looks good is beyond me. It give me Orange Bricks vibes with the DNR smudginess and stupidly boosted colors

[Trachta10]

an example of this with dragon box, is a spanish fan project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TbNsTdJblY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYg7iejb7cA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxZP-Wl1ap0

One thing to note is that that video makes the Dragon Box look worse than it actually is. It looks like they applied DNR before they even did the comparison shots. Otherwise I guess it's a similar, smudgy look.

this is how it looks in Z




https://twitter.com/dbaiproject/status/ ... 3151243265

[ikaos]

One thing to note is that that video makes the Dragon Box look worse than it actually is. It looks like they applied DNR before they even did the comparison shots. Otherwise I guess it's a similar, smudgy look.

this is how it looks in Z

https://twitter.com/dbaiproject/status/ ... 3151243265

Why does it look like it has fake grain attached to it? All the examples on the twitter are de-grained.

[jaisonas]

One thing to note is that that video makes the Dragon Box look worse than it actually is. It looks like they applied DNR before they even did the comparison shots. Otherwise I guess it's a similar, smudgy look.

this is how it looks in Z

https://twitter.com/dbaiproject/status/ ... 3151243265

Why does it look like it has fake grain attached to it? All the examples on the twitter are de-grained.

It does have fake grain or dithering and the twitter examples also have some on it. In all honesty, this is one of the best upscale attempts i've seen. The fake grain hides the upscale artifacts quite well and the linework isnt all smudged up