Color Correcting the Dragon Box - 3 Part Spectacular

[ionutbigiu1]

Well sometimes to get the proper color correciton you only have to do is be patience , experiment a lot, and do your homewoerk when it comes to different sources . But not to copy some silly releases like sesason set or kai set . You can create a pallete , the problem is that poeple have almost zero knowdlege about how a proper CC should look like . But yet again each with their own, as long as anyone is happy with their colorcorrection, all should be happy . But copying kai colors to dragon box or level sets to dragon box or season sets to kai or season sets to dragon box and so on , that thing aint color correction . Also i am aware that color correciton has been attempted in the past , but this is not de wey to fix the entire series.

Who cares about whether or not if it's technically called a "color correction". Color matching is not silly, it's the most realistic approach considering you have a complete full set of reference sitting right in front of you. Color correction out of random uncalibrated source from the internet, on the other hand, is silly.

Well the silly part is that this is not Star Wars Despecialised . You are talking about a full grown series that you have almost not even half of the reference to use right in front of you and the references are most of the time more or less f*cked up , because of the simple fact the color reserach is almost null taking in consideration releases like season sets and whatsoever . If you have references that are more or less usefull and consider them as perfect as they can be for a color match..well who knows..maybe each with their own because in the end beauty is in the eye of the beholder xD .Usually when you try to replicate something that was already poorly managed , lets guess together what the result would be , still a poorly result , color correction needs so much more than that , oh so much research and so many others .

And 1 more thing , nothing is randomly calibrated my fellow . If it would be like that haha nobody would even bother color correcting . But your reserach and my reserach are months or maybe years away so that is fine nevertheless.

[lansing]

color match tools would have been fine if you have a true reference to use but for dragon ball you don't have...season sets like all release aren't accurate you allways said our color work is a fail , what make you say that? your power level card? there is a lot which have wrong colors and some have even been released before it was done in anime lot of them are just redrawn and sometimes use totally wrong colors or aren't the same in the anime how can you know which ones are from the cels and which ones are wrong? for example the one with gotenks and buu isn't outside but in kamisama palace in the time room but here it's outside

[spoiler]
][/spoiler]
credits goes to dbcollection.fr for their carddass

Those images are exactly what I'm talking about on uncalibrated scans with some cheap ass scanner. Look here at the same two cards that were shot on the same camera, it's not the most accurate in the world but you can see that the color of Buu is consistently the same for both.
https://youtu.be/nlIiv9EQMDc?t=1m8s
https://youtu.be/12n8TyumJu0?t=57s

The fact that some cards may have a different background from the anime is a solid prove that actual cels have had used while making the cards, they are not screen capture from the TV. Yeah they're as reliable as you can get for color accuracy as of what we used to see in the 90s.

using season sets like if they are the real accurate reference is a real mistake, overbright and crushed black have hide some tint that have altered colors, and oversaturation isn't good , if you copy season sets color with your match tools you'll get the crushed black, overbrightness, oversaturation and the tint and like dr dre show it in the topics, sometimes you'll also get artifact

Oversaturation and overbrightness from the season set is not a big deal because they can easily be fixed before doing the color match. As I can see Funimation have also fixed it themselves beginning with the Buu saga. Crushed black is the only true problem the Funi copy has but that is how it is

[HakkaiBills93]

okay that's what we talked before saying that you need to cross the references you get and not rely just on one image . those cards aren't the only color references you can get, in hondan collection you also have some good cards

when i said before that by watching images, released etc you can see which version are the best,
if i said that the color match tools is not the best for doing db it's that this tools work best to use one references shot to apply on a footage so if you need to correct it it's not really usefull, you can easily alter colors to match your goal without it as you already know true colors.

overbrightness or crushed black aren't things you can easilly correct or show me how look your piccolo screen from db ep 109 , funi footage (like for the dbox sometimes ) have so much brigness that you can't recover all details no matter what you do the missing spot like the mountain, you can recover it a little but not perfectly .

i didn't say that you can't use match tools to make the things like you want but it's not the best way if you don't have a true reference with 100% accurate colors

[lansing]

okay that's what we talked before saying that you need to cross the references you get and not rely just on one image . those cards aren't the only color references you can get, in hondan collection you also have some good cards

Man you need to start using some punctuation. I have a hard time trying to figure out what what you're trying to say.

And no that is not what you said. Your means of collecting reference images is referring to those random uncalibrate scanned cel you found on the internet. You even doubted that the accuracy of the dragon ball z cards by using a flawed comparison.

And my uses of the dbz power levels cards is to add support for the color accuracy of the season set, since they looked alike.

when i said before that by watching images, released etc you can see which version are the best,
if i said that the color match tools is not the best for doing db it's that this tools work best to use one references shot to apply on a footage so if you need to correct it it's not really usefull, you can easily alter colors to match your goal without it as you already know true colors.

There is NO color correction tools that can do that. The only tool that make sense is by using a LUT, that is mapping one color to another given a reference and a target, which is exactly what Dr. Dre's tool is doing automatically.

overbrightness or crushed black aren't things you can easilly correct or show me how look your piccolo screen from db ep 109 , funi footage (like for the dbox sometimes ) have so much brigness that you can't recover all details no matter what you do the missing spot like the mountain, you can recover it a little but not perfectly .

Post the image, I don't know what you're talking about.

[Bruma rabu]

While I do like Dr Dre tool, it seams to bring out macro blocking. Though I belive it's the source it's self and the fact that it's a low bit rate. I have gotten some scenes to look good but others no so much.

[lansing]

While I do like Dr Dre tool, it seams to bring out macro blocking. Though I belive it's the source it's self and the fact that it's a low bit rate. I have gotten some scenes to look good but others no so much.

Just denoise your reference. If your reference has grain in them, they will be matched too.

[Robo4900]

Just denoise your reference. If your reference has grain in them, they will be matched too.

No, don't do that. Denoising DVD footage is usually a bad idea, and won't solve the problem at all anyway; denoising is designed to remove grain; the problem Bruma rabu is talking about is macroblocking.

While I do like Dr Dre tool, it seams to bring out macro blocking. Though I belive it's the source it's self and the fact that it's a low bit rate. I have gotten some scenes to look good but others no so much.

Do you mean the macroblocking in the extreme dark and light areas that are brought out in much better clarity in the CC?
If so, I'm afraid that's a problem you can't really fix.

[lansing]

Just denoise your reference. If your reference has grain in them, they will be matched too.

No, don't do that. Denoising DVD footage is usually a bad idea, and won't solve the problem at all anyway; denoising is designed to remove grain; the problem Bruma rabu is talking about is macroblocking.

He's probably talking about this one, which is just a grain problem.

[Bruma rabu]

Just denoise your reference. If your reference has grain in them, they will be matched too.

No, don't do that. Denoising DVD footage is usually a bad idea, and won't solve the problem at all anyway; denoising is designed to remove grain; the problem Bruma rabu is talking about is macroblocking.

While I do like Dr Dre tool, it seams to bring out macro blocking. Though I belive it's the source it's self and the fact that it's a low bit rate. I have gotten some scenes to look good but others no so much.

Do you mean the macroblocking in the extreme dark and light areas that are brought out in much better clarity in the CC?
If so, I'm afraid that's a problem you can't really fix.

I don't think he ment for my source to be denoised but the reference picture by it self.
And yeah I did an a n b check and it's in the source its self. I wonder I herd the Japanese boxes don't have macro blocking or at lest to the extent of the North American release. Anybody know how big of a difference

[Bruma rabu]

He's probably talking about this one, which is just a grain problem.

Yes and I've seen more worse results. But yeah, thanks sound like it'd work. Can't believe I didn't think of so obvious lol.

[Robo4900]

He's probably talking about this one, which is just a grain problem.

No. Don't be silly. If it was purely a grain problem, it wouldn't be purely present in the darker shots. Look at the 45s mark; the problem is there. Look at the 1m mark; the problem isn't there.
Because that part of the sky is so dark at 0:45, the subtle details of the painting are badly handled by the compressor, making awful macroblocking when you bring the light up as with this CC. The grain causes it to move a little, so the grain is having a small effect on the thing, but it's not the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem is simply bad encoding.

I wonder I herd the Japanese boxes don't have macro blocking or at lest to the extent of the North American release. Anybody know how big of a difference

All DVDs have macroblocking, that's how video compression works. It's just a question of how noticeable it is.
The Japanese DBoxes really aren't that well-encoded; they use high bitrates that don't really change that much, so the low-motion scenes are bloated, and the high-motion scenes can be a little starved.

And no, the NA boxes having more visible macroblocking is just a rumour stemming from them having a slightly lower bitrate than the Japanese counterpart.

[lansing]

He's probably talking about this one, which is just a grain problem.

No. Don't be silly. If it was purely a grain problem, it wouldn't be purely present in the darker shots. Look at the 45s mark; the problem is there. Look at the 1m mark; the problem isn't there.
Because that part of the sky is so dark at 0:45, the subtle details of the painting are badly handled by the compressor, making awful macroblocking when you bring the light up as with this CC. The grain causes it to move a little, so the grain is having a small effect on the thing, but it's not the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem is simply bad encoding.

He's talking about his second image, not the video.

[Robo4900]

He's talking about his second image, not the video.

The image is from the video. It's the same thing. The images are just to highlight the problem.

[Bruma rabu]

You're probably right but I'll still give a test and see if theres any difference.

[lansing]

He's talking about his second image, not the video.

The image is from the video. It's the same thing. The images are just to highlight the problem.

There ain't no macroblocking, there's no block in those scenes. Bruma used the wrong term, but it's ok and I told him what they are.
But for you man, just what is with you to make comment on this when you haven't even use the program?

[Robo4900]

There ain't no macroblocking, there's no block in those scenes. Bruma used the wrong term, but it's ok and I told him what they are.

Don't be naive. Of course macroblocking is what it is. Grain doesn't look like that, it doesn't move like that, and from my experience with Dre's tool, even on the rare occasion it has a hiccup to do with grain, that's not how it looks, and even if it was, nuking all the grain in the episode to fix a couple of slightly odd-looking shots would not be the solution here.

But for you man, just what is there to make comment on this when you haven't even use the program?

And how would you know that?

[lansing]

There ain't no macroblocking, there's no block in those scenes. Bruma used the wrong term, but it's ok and I told him what they are.

Don't be naive. Of course macroblocking is what it is. Grain doesn't look like that, it doesn't move like that, and from my experience with Dre's tool, even on the rare occasion it has a hiccup to do with grain, that's not how it looks, and even if it was, nuking all the grain in the episode to fix a couple of slightly odd-looking shots would not be the solution here.

But for you man, just what is there to make comment on this when you haven't even use the program?

And how would you know that?

This feels so like I'm talking to a noob. Where did you see all those square shape looking blocks in the video? I didn't see it, what is there to argue about?

And denoising the reference will do absolutely nothing on the details of the target, because...you're doing a color match...

[Bruma rabu]

Ok from some testing it looks like blurring the reference image improves it, but not by a lot at lest for this shot. From what i can see its give it better uniformity but I'm no video buff. Looking at the rest though it was better it did give better results.https://streamable.com/824ve
Original
[spoiler][/spoiler]
No blurring done to the reference picture
[spoiler][/spoiler]
Blurring added to the reference picture
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[HakkaiBills93]

Man you need to start using some punctuation. I have a hard time trying to figure out what what you're trying to say.

And no that is not what you said. Your means of collecting reference images is referring to those random uncalibrate scanned cel you found on the internet. You even doubted that the accuracy of the dragon ball z cards by using a flawed comparison.

And my uses of the dbz power levels cards is to add support for the color accuracy of the season set, since they looked alike.

i don't use random cels but i watch LOT of cels, AND images AND lot of foreign tv recording including broadcast videos SO after seeing them it's easier to say which colors are right and which ones are wrong

Post the image, I don't know what you're talking about.

here the post where i show db 109 overbright issue.
No matter what you'll do you'll never recover it, so if you use a source that have this kind of issue, you'll just copy the issue on a source which maybe don't have it. that's what i was meaning by not use overbright or crushed black release


and here almost the same shot from an old footage episode

as you can see it miss a mountain behind piccolo cause to the excessive brightness of the dbox

if you can recover the mountain exactly like that i will knee front of you, all people that tried also make it slightly visible cause it was too much overbright, overbright like too much crushed black make unrecoverable details
some dragon ball episodes have this kind of dark on ending at the very end you can't see behind the bulma house or if you get something it's just unwatchable like that

There is NO color correction tools that can do that. The only tool that make sense is by using a LUT, that is mapping one color to another given a reference and a target, which is exactly what Dr. Dre's tool is doing automatically.

about the tools you talked about, i didn't use tools to copy colors but software like after effect with plugins that can alter each colors as i want/as i can do , so with all i have seen myself by searching on each release, images , cels and even cards, i alter the colors to make each people having their rights colors, so yes as i can build a profile with this software i can create a kind of palette for color correcting footage. It's not because you ignore how to use something that it didn't exist.

As video work with color channel, if you alter the green color to match piccolo skin correct colors, alter cyan color to match bulma's hair color and sky color, and yellow color to match kintoun or super saiyan hair color and red color to match goku's gi channel etc you'll get the right colors (or will be close to them) as everything using cyan, green etc colors will be affected the same way.

for example here is two screenshot from very well conserved recording of dragon ball from 1980 that have no tint and didn't seems degraded that make me think that bulma's hair is greenish on dragon ball and just became light blue with very slight green on dragon ball z



there is allways green in her hair even if she change her hair color
if you also watch video games color
this one is from the z period

and also this one use green on her hair

[Bruma rabu]

Are you saying if you fix gokus gi everything falls into place?