Cross-Eyed Vejita Lands! My Take on the Remastering.

[MajinVejitaXV]

So, I got my set today and watched 3 episodes tonight. While I reserve my full judgement until I've watched everything, I just wanted to share some of the fantastic remastering work that FUNimation had done on this set:


Here, a friendly white chili pepper makes a cameo in Head Cha La


Here, Raditz has obviously kicked Goku so hard that the 'original Japanese film master' ripped. Must be all that 1080p.


Here, a hair has been left so Goku and Piccolo know where to land when they face Raditz.


And here, Piccolo shows his terror at the speed with which a hair has wrapped itself around his antennae. Note the '6' pattern, an obvious allusion to Piccolo's demonic status at this point in the series.

I could go on, but for now I can only say this: It's embarrassing. There's dirt and glue all over the place, and a simple viewing makes it quite obvious that the "remastering" FUNi did involved a lot of automated processes but not a lot of QC or human intervention.

Make your own judgements. I'll be back in a week or so with my full review of the set.

-Corey

[JAPPO]

This is real or fake?

[Mystery Person X]

This is real or fake?

Obviously he's just making it up

[MajinVejitaXV]

This is real or fake?

Direct screenshots, taken from PowerDVD.

-Corey

[JAPPO]

This is real or fake?

Obviously he's just making it up

That's what I thought.

[Mystery Person X]

That's what I thought.

The eye-rolling smiley indicates sarcasm.

[JAPPO]

Just for the heck of it, I'm gonna remaster a screenshot.

[MajinVejitaXV]

Just for the heck of it, I'm gonna remaster a screenshot.

But the box says "Digitally Remastered" and they used 2 million dollars of equipment! You can't possibly do better than they did!

-Corey

[Acid_Reign]

lmao

Dude, that's too much. Seriously. This definitely makes me do a double-take on those other screens. (Sorry Tanook)

Look forward to seeing the review!

[Brad Redfield]

What kind of remastering...?

Seriously, that's just lazy. It's pretty obvious FUNimation just ran their masters through an automated process/machine and hoped for the best. Nope, can't be bothered to put some actual effort into this! Not at all! Only the best for DBZ!

Was that rip in picture two present on previous releases? Because that's horrible.

[JAPPO]

It took more time to upload than to make (like 10 seconds):



I could have made it perfect in 10 more seconds.

[MarcFBR]

As far as I can tell, there was no 'actual' remastering done.

Color settings were changed with sliders, then went thru each episode, then each episode was just blurred the shit out of to remove grain.


That is NOT remastering.

[EvilGamerX]

You got to love it when the white lines go across the ENTIRE screen.

[BrollysKin]

Blurred? How are these blurred to you?

[JAPPO]

If you mean the guassen blur (or whatever) effect like in Photoshop, then I don't think so.

[Smooth Criminal]

That's.... Pretty bad.

But again, the set was cheap so I'm not gonna complain.... The picture quality is good overall..

[nathantheguitarist]

Holy fucking shit!

This is bad, and only after three episodes?!

Damn... I wish the Ocean Sets would hurry up and go down on amazon

[SatoSky]

Damn... I wish the Ocean Sets would hurry up and go down on amazon

Don't bet on that. Aren't those discs out of print? Or does that apply to just the first three Z movies?

[MarcFBR]

They used Digital Noise Reduction blurring to 'remaster' the set, that is why the grain appears to be 'gone', if you compare it to the other DVDs of the series, and comparisons of the few cel scans on the net.

Small instances of fine detail is gone, and if you look things have been blurred out.

I AM NOT saying it looks blurry, they blurred it out when it was at 1080p, so its not noticeable looking at it like this, but it HAS been blurred out.

[Mystery Person X]

Blurred? How are these blurred to you?

No offense, but how are these not blurred to you?

It's clear that the way FUNimation removed the grain was by using DNVR (digital video noise reduction), a kind of smart blur feature that attempts to blur the image within each area-of-a-single-colour without going over the lines and blurring the lines between each colour. However, if it isn't good enough at recognising when it should and shouldn't blur, you get a bizarre image like this where most of it looks really sharp, but any areas of fine detail with (a) small dots/lines, (b) lots of lines very close together or (b) distinctions between subtly different colours (like in the grass screenshot) are a blurry mess.

In blurring out of all the grain, FUNimation have blurred out some of the fine detail as well. This makes it a bit pointless for them to have even transferred it in HD, since obviously the only point of HD is to show more detail. This transfer obviously looks a lot nicer than all of FUNi's previous releases, but that's not really saying much, is it?