Dragon Ball Z "Seasons" On Blu-ray: News & Discussion

[Jabberwock xeno]

the grain removed or lessened without the loss of a significant amount of detail. It's not that hard to remove grain without losing too much detail in Photoshop even for somebody like me. I understand that logistically it becomes infeasible to do it manually for every frame, but I would think that with professional tools at their disposal they could do a lot better then this.

Go tell this to a professional.

Also record it, I'd like to see the video of you being laughed at. Remember to mention about how you did it in Photoshop so it's totally possible.

Far to many fans who know little to nothing of video keep making wild overreaching statements about how easy it is to do this sort of stuff.

Go look at Sword and the Stone from Disney to see how they did.

Nearly all of DBZ is archived on 16mm. You aren't going to degrain much of that without destroying it.

You should re-read the latter part of my statement:

I understand that logistically it becomes infeasible to do it manually for every frame, but I would think that with professional tools at their disposal they could do a lot better then this.

I admitted that what I was suggesting was infeasible to do, because , I know it is, my point was that they should be capable to do a better job then what they did, at least. I may not be a professional, but I assure you I know a lot more then you think I do. Also, I think you misunderstood what I was saying, I meant editing the frames after they are digitized, in other words, basically what was done for kai.

I know very well how impractical that is, but that doesn't mean that what they did here and with the orange bricks was as good as they could do while having it still be feasible.

[MarcFBR]

Also, I think you misunderstood what I was saying, I meant editing the frames after they are digitized, in other words, basically what was done for kai. .

I understand exactly what you are saying. I'm saying Kai is still kind of a smudgy blurry mess on Blu-ray.

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I won't speak for you but I certainly wouldn't call that crisp or say that it kept the detail.

If you want what they did to Kai done... well it's already been done (not to mention Funi's filmstock is a far far grainier copy than what Toei has.)

The season sets are specifically what was cost and energy effective for the audience they were selling the sets to.

[Jabberwock xeno]

I won't speak for you but I certainly wouldn't call that crisp or say that it kept the detail.

No, you;d be in the right to say that. I was under the impression kai looked a lot better then that. In fact, every bit of footage of kai I have seen looks a lot better then that.

This all has me thinking though. There;s a friend who got their dragon boxx footage via some iffy means with altered video, and their episodes retain all of the detail and crispness of the release, but has almost grain. I have no idea how this was done. I'lll try to get him to send me a comparison.

The season sets are specifically what was cost and energy effective for the audience they were selling the sets to.

Yeah, I know, but isn't everything? They make what they think will sell among the prduct's intended audience. The dragon boxes were aimed

[samuraix123]

Just bought season 8! So now I can say...Once again! This DBZ collection is complete! What's next Funi? How long you gonna wait to take my money again? I'm hoping they release the original series next!

[Hipster-Trunks]

Just bought season 8! So now I can say...Once again! This DBZ collection is complete! What's next Funi? How long you gonna wait to take my money again? I'm hoping they release the original series next!

I just completed my DBZ blu ray collection too. I was super skeptical at first, but I have to say that I think they did a nice job. Not perfect, but I'm very happy with it. I think they nailed the colors, and did a fantastic job removing the grain. I've been hoping that they'll give Dragon Ball and GT the same treatment, but I don't think they'll do it.

One thing that's been bothering me is the background music volume level compared to the dialogue volume level. I think the music on my DVDs (original singles) is louder, which I prefer. On the blu rays the dialogue seems much louder to me. Has anyone else noticed this?

[JEFFMAN219]

Just bought season 8! So now I can say...Once again! This DBZ collection is complete! What's next Funi? How long you gonna wait to take my money again? I'm hoping they release the original series next!

I just completed my DBZ blu ray collection too. I was super skeptical at first, but I have to say that I think they did a nice job. Not perfect, but I'm very happy with it. I think they nailed the colors, and did a fantastic job removing the grain. I've been hoping that they'll give Dragon Ball and GT the same treatment, but I don't think they'll do it.

One thing that's been bothering me is the background music volume level compared to the dialogue volume level. I think the music on my DVDs (original singles) is louder, which I prefer. On the blu rays the dialogue seems much louder to me. Has anyone else noticed this?

I've notice this with the English dub with the Japanese music

[JEFFMAN219]

Just bought season 8! So now I can say...Once again! This DBZ collection is complete! What's next Funi? How long you gonna wait to take my money again? I'm hoping they release the original series next!

Nice bro!! You probably won't have to buy another DBZ blu ray release again.

[EmmaWinters]

I've been hoping that they'll give Dragon Ball and GT the same treatment, but I don't think they'll do it.

Funimation doesn't have film masters for Dragon Ball, so they couldn't do it even if they wanted to.

[JEFFMAN219]

I've been hoping that they'll give Dragon Ball and GT the same treatment, but I don't think they'll do it.

Funimation doesn't have film masters for Dragon Ball, so they couldn't do it even if they wanted to.

I've been hearing that a lot. But my question is how do you know that they don't have the film masters? Did funimation say that they didn't have them in a recent interview?

[EmmaWinters]

But my question is how do you know that they don't have the film masters?

While working on the series, Funimation received digi-beta masters from Toei. They didn't get film masters until 2007, but they only got them for Dragon Ball Z. We know this, because in 2008/2009, Funimation sourced Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT's home releases from their digi-beta masters. This is why the Dragon Boxes are so popular; in addition to being uncropped, they were scanned from the film by Toei themselves.

I guess you could say "well, maybe Funimation secretly has them", but that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. They wouldn't go out of their way to get film masters and not use them. Maybe someday they'll put up the money for better masters, but until they do, they aren't able to put out a true high definition release of Dragon Ball or GT.

[kei17]

It's quite certain that FUNi don't have film masters of GT because Toei have been providing only videotape masters to licensees when it comes to GT. Also, FUNi's videotape masters look exactly the same as the ones that other foregin licensees and Japanese broadcasters use, which means that they're not FUNi's own transfers. On the other hand, there is no proof that FUNi don't have access to film masters of DB. As pointed out by some people, they've been using the same videotape masters for the original DB, but maybe that's just because of the lower popularity of the series compared to Z. Re-transferring and remastering in HD do cost a lot more than just reusing old videotape masters, and they might have thought that they had no good reason to give the expensive treatment to DB which would obviously sell less than DBZ. In addition, I've never heard of any other instances of Toei producing videotape copies of DB episodes themselves before the DBox.

[Puto]

If you look at FUNi's DB releases though, it's obvious from the look of the video that they DID use film for the episodes that they licensed back in 95 (1-13) and old masters for 14+. Only conclusion I can draw from this is that they got film when they licensed it back then, and some sort of digital master when they licensed the rest of the series in 2001.

You say you haven't heard of any other instances of Toei producing videotape copies of DB episodes themselves before the DBox, so I gotta ask: do you know of any instance of Toei sending out footage to anybody at all for the original DB after the year 2000 but before the DBox? That would help clear up some of this.

[eledoremassis02]

Oddly on the madman Saga of Goku DVD I found this. It's a split second after the eye catch in either epsiode 1 or 2.

Does the blue bricks do this too? Could be film, or on a tape (if the source film was cut wrong). Any ideas? Kinda off topic but it's cool


On a side note, these epsiodes do seem to be a bit better quality than the rest

[samuraix123]

Just bought season 8! So now I can say...Once again! This DBZ collection is complete! What's next Funi? How long you gonna wait to take my money again? I'm hoping they release the original series next!

Nice bro!! You probably won't have to buy another DBZ blu ray release again.

I have no plans too for a long time! haha I'm even now considering not buying the Boo saga of Kai but idk yet though so I guess we'll see. I'm more interested in them bringing out the original series on Bluray.

[BluezaBladeNZ]

Oddly on the madman Saga of Goku DVD I found this. It's a split second after the eye catch in either epsiode 1 or 2.

Does the blue bricks do this too? Could be film, or on a tape (if the source film was cut wrong). Any ideas? Kinda off topic but it's cool
(snip)

On a side note, these epsiodes do seem to be a bit better quality than the rest

I had a look at my Saga of Goku set and that black frame wasn't there strangely enough. Looked at the start and end of eyecatches for both episodes 1 and 2.

[superrayman3]

I guess you could say "well, maybe Funimation secretly has them", but that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. They wouldn't go out of their way to get film masters and not use them.

It also doesn't make sense for them to go out of their way to acquire and announce the fact that they have the DBOX masters for the DBZ movies and not use them either, yet here we are over 3 years later and still no DBOX the Movies release in sight.

[eledoremassis02]

Oddly on the madman Saga of Goku DVD I found this. It's a split second after the eye catch in either epsiode 1 or 2.

Does the blue bricks do this too? Could be film, or on a tape (if the source film was cut wrong). Any ideas? Kinda off topic but it's cool
(snip)

On a side note, these epsiodes do seem to be a bit better quality than the rest

I had a look at my Saga of Goku set and that black frame wasn't there strangely enough. Looked at the start and end of eyecatches for both episodes 1 and 2.

Odd, I'll re-give it a check and report back

[MarcFBR]

It also doesn't make sense for them to go out of their way to acquire and announce the fact that they have the DBOX masters for the DBZ movies and not use them either, yet here we are over 3 years later and still no DBOX the Movies release in sight.

Welcome to the anime industry. A company getting a license to something doesn't mean it will ever come out, or that they will ever see the masters.

Or even that they've licensed it. Occasionally there are miscommunications.

The fact something was announced just says it was announced. Nothing more.

And even if they did actually get them, it doesn't mean they changed their mind on it being viable to actually release them from a business perspective.

[eledoremassis02]

Odd....I can't find it... the file name is vlcsnap-2015-02-02-20h07m25s59 so that would be the time stamp

[DrBriefsCat]

I guess you could say "well, maybe Funimation secretly has them", but that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. They wouldn't go out of their way to get film masters and not use them. Maybe someday they'll put up the money for better masters, but until they do, they aren't able to put out a true high definition release of Dragon Ball or GT.

On the contrary, I once came across an old video interview from the mid-'90s in which a former Funimation employee mentioned film transfers having been made in Dallas for the show. The video used to be easily searchable on Youtube, but may have been taken down in the last year or two.