Has Dragon Ball been remastered to HD or not?

[HakkaiBills93]

so dragon ball can't be HD

Not strictly true. Film is an analog medium, if they had a good master they could scan it in HD if they wanted to.

i talked about the so called hd torrent only , a possibility of a new hd scan is poor that i'd rather like to think it will never be done taking in consideration that on the amazon japan prime, the movies was only an upscale with DNR

[ionutbigiu1]

Hello,
Young folks, I have shared my account with my friend jasonspidey in the past for information gathering and scientific purposes for his research and interaction with this awsome community. I hope this will clear any confusions created along the way.
As genjosanzo(genjosanzo8) aka HakkaiBills93 said.. Yes, I am indeed from Romania, and this where my story ends. Jason is on his own now and everything should be on its place.

Good luck everyone on your projects and searching .

Best regards.

[HakkaiBills93]

Hello,
Young folks, I have shared my account with my friend jasonspidey in the past for information gathering and scientific purposes for his research and interaction with this awsome community. I hope this will clear any confusions created along the way.
As genjosanzo(genjosanzo8) aka HakkaiBills93 said.. Yes, I am indeed from Romania, and this where my story ends. Jason is on his own now and everything should be on its place.

Good luck everyone on your projects and searching .

Best regards.

it's off topic but i'll answer that yes i am genjosanzo8 and? i personnaly send pm a moderator here when i register saying why.
So like i have no pb after that it means it's okay. anyway people here should have recognize me easilly so your message is useless and about you=jasonspidey or not it's the same, people aren't idiot it doesn't matter here anyway

[ionutbigiu1]

Hello,
Young folks, I have shared my account with my friend jasonspidey in the past for information gathering and scientific purposes for his research and interaction with this awsome community. I hope this will clear any confusions created along the way.
As genjosanzo(genjosanzo8) aka HakkaiBills93 said.. Yes, I am indeed from Romania, and this where my story ends. Jason is on his own now and everything should be on its place.

Good luck everyone on your projects and searching .

Best regards.

it's off topic but i'll answer that yes i am genjosanzo8 and? i personnaly send pm a moderator here when i register saying why.
So like i have no pb after that it means it's okay. anyway people here should have recognize me easilly so your message is useless and about you=jasonspidey or not it's the same, people aren't idiot it doesn't matter here anyway

I am sorry , I do not engage in this type of discussions... the message was forwarded to me to post it here on his behalf. Wish you all the best .

[musicto]

Apologies, I don't know why but when I took the screenshot of the Yu-Gi-Oh! movie the player took it in the resolution of my laptop screen . So for the sake of clarity here's a true comparison with the correct resolutions:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/125105

I guess the only perk of the previous (wrong) comparison is that the DVD pic was technically an upscale and you can clearly see the HDTV rip has extra detail. So they possibly come from the same transfer, and some detail was lost during the Japanese DVD downscale process. This case is a little crazy. The masters for the original Yu-Gi-Oh! series are stored on DigiBeta tapes (in SD). So yes, there's no film reels for it and thus no true HD release possible

Now the movie (which is not even the best movie of the series for me lol) was commissioned to play in the west first (2004) and then it was later released in Japan (with extra footage). Since it's a movie with more budget than an anime episode (of course), it now appears that it was indeed produced in film and inked digitally like you said. Otherwise there's not really any other way to explain the extra detail in the HDTV. As far as I know, digital animators by that time didn't animate in native HD (heck some still animate movies these days in SD and not native HD), so the extra detail should be visible only because of the higher resolution of that film transfer. It's funny, movie was released in 2004, everyone thought that the Japanese DVD was the best quality possible out there and more than 10 years later comes Animax and bamboozles us with that gorgeous transfer. Movie has a crappy art style though

It's a shame that Toei treats their titles so badly. I just wish they would just give the responsibility of the Dragon Ball transfers to Sony (since it now has a majority stake in Funimation). If they are so worried about reverse importation they could make Sony burn subtitles on the western release and then they could use that transfer to sell it in Japan at the humongous prices they charge. IMO Sony is one of the best companies out there when it comes to remastering of film transfers. Just look at the hundreds of articles or comparisons (with DVD releases) of their releases of Hollywood classic movies like the Blu-Ray release of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or the recently released 4k release of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).

One can only hope

[tellyzbad1]

I'm only seeing this thread now, for the first time, so maybe someone has already said what I'm about to say.

I don't think it's a "new HD transfer". But I do agree it looks superior to the DBox.

Two most likely cases are: a very smart sharpening filter onto the Dragon Box; or, they are using the same video used for DBox just before they were compressed and downscaled to DVD format. With the 2nd option, I'm assuming the (very likely) case that the transfer of the film was done not in full HD, but higher than SD resolution.

Here's some quick CC I done and this source footage looks great for CC'ing:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/126569

[Baggie_Saiyan]

While Toei had HD masters of, possibly, all three of the original Dragon Ball series the entire time.

That would not surprise me. This is the same Toei that made Funimation sit on Kai's Buu arc for years just for a TV deal and waited nearly a year and a half to let Super be subbed on streaming sites.

With how big DB is in Japan now they should be releasing the original 3 on Blue-Ray at some point, or at least that's what would make sense to do.

Actually this is one thing I understand Toei not doing. You have to remember home video in Japan is not as cheap as NA releases $30 vs $200 for DBS for example. Plus Z and DB are long shows, that requires huge investment and commitment plus they're old it doesn't have the new factor of DBS and furthermore no broadcast audio makes any BD release from Toei kinda pointless, ¥10,000 for shitty audio?

Also Kai acts as the "HD" release. It doesn't seem like it's worth it to be honest.

[Puto]

I'm only seeing this thread now, for the first time, so maybe someone has already said what I'm about to say.

I don't think it's a "new HD transfer". But I do agree it looks superior to the DBox.

Two most likely cases are: a very smart sharpening filter onto the Dragon Box; or, they are using the same video used for DBox just before they were compressed and downscaled to DVD format. With the 2nd option, I'm assuming the (very likely) case that the transfer of the film was done not in full HD, but higher than SD resolution.

Here's some quick CC I done and this source footage looks great for CC'ing:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/126569

Are you sure those pictures aren't backwards? The colours on the picture labelled 'CC' are far, FAR worse than the ones on the picture labelled 'Orig'.

[tellyzbad1]

I'm only seeing this thread now, for the first time, so maybe someone has already said what I'm about to say.

I don't think it's a "new HD transfer". But I do agree it looks superior to the DBox.

Two most likely cases are: a very smart sharpening filter onto the Dragon Box; or, they are using the same video used for DBox just before they were compressed and downscaled to DVD format. With the 2nd option, I'm assuming the (very likely) case that the transfer of the film was done not in full HD, but higher than SD resolution.

Here's some quick CC I done and this source footage looks great for CC'ing:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/126569

Are you sure those pictures aren't backwards? The colours on the picture labelled 'CC' are far, FAR worse than the ones on the picture labelled 'Orig'.

Uh yeah I didnt care too much about setting up after the original upload failed. Shouldn't take Conan Edogawa to tell which one is the actual CC'd version, though. XD

Also, I do NOT agree that this is some small Avisynth job by some encoder on the internet. Genjo's just been blazin' it up as per usual.

[sintzu]

Actually this is one thing I understand Toei not doing. You have to remember home video in Japan is not as cheap as NA releases $30 vs $200 for DBS for example.

I didn't think about the prices so that does make sense, especially when a new show like Super doesn't sell that much so an old one would probably do worse. Why are they so expensive there ? you'd think they'd want as many people to be able to buy their shows like in the west and other countries.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Actually this is one thing I understand Toei not doing. You have to remember home video in Japan is not as cheap as NA releases $30 vs $200 for DBS for example.

I didn't think about the prices so that does make sense, especially when a new show like Super doesn't sell that much so an old one would probably do worse. Why are they so expensive there ? you'd think they'd want as many people to be able to buy their shows like in the west and other countries.

For long running shows it's less about home video sales as they make their money elsewhere so by setting prices high they know it'll be offset by the few hard core fans wanting to buy, kids the primary target aren't gonna buy them.

For late night shows they pretty much make most their money by home video sales so they have to make BDs expensive. Now we have Simuldubs perhaps we can have simulhomereleases (like with ResF) cuz many shows get cancelled before they get the chance to be released internationally.

[KBABZ]

So I listened to 2007's episode 104 of the podcast today, and Mike said (in the context of Dragon Ball being released on Blu-Ray) that the Dragon Boxes do NOT have an HD master. So there ya go.

(also in ep103 Meri's Top 5 is live-action anime adaptations she'd like to see, and one of them is Ghost in the Shell, LOL)

[HakkaiBills93]

I'm only seeing this thread now, for the first time, so maybe someone has already said what I'm about to say.

I don't think it's a "new HD transfer". But I do agree it looks superior to the DBox.

Two most likely cases are: a very smart sharpening filter onto the Dragon Box; or, they are using the same video used for DBox just before they were compressed and downscaled to DVD format. With the 2nd option, I'm assuming the (very likely) case that the transfer of the film was done not in full HD, but higher than SD resolution.

Here's some quick CC I done and this source footage looks great for CC'ing:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/126569

Are you sure those pictures aren't backwards? The colours on the picture labelled 'CC' are far, FAR worse than the ones on the picture labelled 'Orig'.

Uh yeah I didnt care too much about setting up after the original upload failed. Shouldn't take Conan Edogawa to tell which one is the actual CC'd version, though. XD

Also, I do NOT agree that this is some small Avisynth job by some encoder on the internet. Genjo's just been blazin' it up as per usual.

you don't know what you are talking about , like KBAZ said there is no HD master of Dragon Ball so it's an upscale , anyway only the line are sharpener not the overall, if you have higher resolution master ALL should look the same and like i show before i can have the same sharpening line that will be impossible with real true master

No HD scan have been done around 2003 for the dbox nor for Dragon ball, nor for saint seiya or Hokuto no ken , Toei around 2008 make a new expensive transfer of Hokuto no ken with color correction and the same for Dragon Ball Z to make Dragon Ball kAI (if you carefully compare this hokuto no ken box and dragon ball kai you'll see the same Blurry lines and noise reduction (and it make me think that they have make dragon ball kai cause it was too expensive to rescan 508 episodes this way
you are trolling like allways enigmo

[KBABZ]

Would like to point out that just because the master isn't HD doesn't mean it can't be a higher resolution than the DVDs. After all there's 600 pixels between 480 and 1080. Not to mention it's likely on film, which has no "resolution" as such because it's an analog medium; it all depends on how high the quality is when they scan the Master film reels into the computer.

[HakkaiBills93]

Would like to point out that just because the master isn't HD doesn't mean it can't be a higher resolution than the DVDs. After all there's 600 pixels between 480 and 1080. Not to mention it's likely on film, which has no "resolution" as such because it's an analog medium; it all depends on how high the quality is when they scan the Master film reels into the computer.

Do you really think that when a company made a scan of a movie they make it at a random resolution? 720p is HD (as the video is 960x720) so if it was really not a "fake" it means that it is HD scan else it's an upscale
anyway it's not the matter here as only lines are sharpener not the overall and that's impossible if it is natural, when you scan a movie higher resolution you have everything sharpener or nothing if you only have one of the things better than the other it means that there is artificial treatment there isn't more possibility

it's a little like dbkai and levels kai have everything blurier than levels not just the line

[MadSpecialist]

Something interesting floated around the Internet this week. I don't know what to make of it but it definitely is interesting.

A 720p "WEBrip" encode of Dragon Ball episode 1 had briefly surfaced and disappeared. I took a look at it and it does look a step above the Dragon Box.

Now before I continue, I'm not advocating piracy or encouraging it on this thread, this is simply a discussion about what might be going on behind the scenes.

What do I think? Well, I'm not sure of anything but it seems like an HD transfer of the film print. First I present a few screenshots of the encode. (I made sure to get a lot of Bulma in memory of Hiromi Tsuru).

https://imgur.com/a/bdrIA

Next, I did a little bit of digging, particularly at the Japanese Netflix to see if it had originated there and I did see something interesting there as well. When I went to take a look at the resolution control, I saw the maximum was at "910." This number presumably being the height. Had it been in 480p or somewhere around there, the maximum would have been "560" as shown in the following screenshot.

https://i.imgur.com/EtpftnY.png

So what do you guys think? Is this a legitimate remaster from Netflix or is this just a really good DNR/upscale job?

Although this doesn't really confirm or deny if it's genuine, the chapters in that "WEB-DL" happened to be the same (including time codes and how they're labelled) as an encode of Dragon Ball's Dragon Box from 2012 or so. Otherwise it seems like a good, probably unofficial upscale.

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned but this reminded me of a couple of videos kei17 once posted on his "InternationalDBZ" YouTube channel that was sadly taken down.

Here's one of his examples reuploaded of what Dragon Ball could look like in HD.
[spoiler][/spoiler]
I tried correcting the colours too.
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Ashura]

NTSC Digibetas are 720x486... "more resolution in pal" is kind of a misnomer when you convert something from NTSC to PAL. Usually it's scaled a bit to compensate.

This is an upscale, but a pretty good one. If it's official or not, I don't know, but what gives it away are these shots:

https://i.imgur.com/RlDeNMB.png
https://i.imgur.com/0csUqDt.png

In good upscales of 16mm cel-based material, usually there's a lot of detail in closeups but when something is further back/the cel is tinier, there's a lot less for the upscale algorithm to use to create data, so the smaller details tend to get a little murkier. Look at Bulma's eyes, specifically, in those shots. More hazy.

If you have a good source, a lot of old materials can upscale really, really well. It really depends on what state the masters are in, though.

By the way, something being 720p wouldn't stop a company from upscaling it to 1080p. A lot of anime is animated at 720p and so a lot of shows are scaled up to 1080p for Blu-ray. So long as they do it well, you'll never really notice. To a degree, it helps hide the sharp edges a bit anyway.

[tellyzbad1]

Are you sure those pictures aren't backwards? The colours on the picture labelled 'CC' are far, FAR worse than the ones on the picture labelled 'Orig'.

Uh yeah I didnt care too much about setting up after the original upload failed. Shouldn't take Conan Edogawa to tell which one is the actual CC'd version, though. XD

Also, I do NOT agree that this is some small Avisynth job by some encoder on the internet. Genjo's just been blazin' it up as per usual.

you don't know what you are talking about , like KBAZ said there is no HD master of Dragon Ball so it's an upscale , anyway only the line are sharpener not the overall, if you have higher resolution master ALL should look the same and like i show before i can have the same sharpening line that will be impossible with real true master

No HD scan have been done around 2003 for the dbox nor for Dragon ball, nor for saint seiya or Hokuto no ken , Toei around 2008 make a new expensive transfer of Hokuto no ken with color correction and the same for Dragon Ball Z to make Dragon Ball kAI (if you carefully compare this hokuto no ken box and dragon ball kai you'll see the same Blurry lines and noise reduction (and it make me think that they have make dragon ball kai cause it was too expensive to rescan 508 episodes this way
you are trolling like allways enigmo

Firstly, genjosanzo8, don't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, lol.

Those screenshots you posted of Z, saying "look I dids the same thingz"...no, your screenshots are nowhere near as natural-looking as these DB eps. You sharpened...EVERYONE knows how to sharpen video, one way or another--stop acting like you showed us something special.

And then no, where did I say it was a HD transfer? I just said higher than SD (640x480). Also, film scanning is a more complex process than just specifying "give me one boneless 640x480 pixels scan". I'm sure usually the metric specified is DPI and I'm no expert in understanding that stuff but it's within common sense to know 640x480 is wayyy too small for any scan.

My point is, this doesn't look like an "avisynth job" like you're rambling on about. I even said in my first post it's possible it was a very smart sharpening tool used on the DBox. OR, if it's official and what the Netflix stuff actually look like, then Toei provided video before it underwent DVD compression and downscaling.

Also...your point about Hokuto no Ken...I already know, you're like 5 years late. The reason why Hokuto no Ken and Kai 1.0 look alike, not just in terms of blurriness, but also colour correction, is because they were done by Q-tec. That is Q-tec's method of remastering. It's irrelevant to anything in this conversation.

Also, you guys need to focus on the lack of chroma bleeding in these episodes than the DBox. I don't know how that arised. I myself know how to accomplish chroma bleeding removal, but from what I remember, it wouldn't look as good as this.

And Ashura, could you talk a bit more about what you mean regarding the eyes looking hazy? I assume you mean the "haziness" that arises from sharpening, because of artifacting. But, I zoomed in a lot and it looks perfectly soft (no arifacting).
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[HakkaiBills93]

Uh yeah I didnt care too much about setting up after the original upload failed. Shouldn't take Conan Edogawa to tell which one is the actual CC'd version, though. XD

Also, I do NOT agree that this is some small Avisynth job by some encoder on the internet. Genjo's just been blazin' it up as per usual.

you don't know what you are talking about , like KBAZ said there is no HD master of Dragon Ball so it's an upscale , anyway only the line are sharpener not the overall, if you have higher resolution master ALL should look the same and like i show before i can have the same sharpening line that will be impossible with real true master

No HD scan have been done around 2003 for the dbox nor for Dragon ball, nor for saint seiya or Hokuto no ken , Toei around 2008 make a new expensive transfer of Hokuto no ken with color correction and the same for Dragon Ball Z to make Dragon Ball kAI (if you carefully compare this hokuto no ken box and dragon ball kai you'll see the same Blurry lines and noise reduction (and it make me think that they have make dragon ball kai cause it was too expensive to rescan 508 episodes this way
you are trolling like allways enigmo

Firstly, genjosanzo8, don't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, lol.

Those screenshots you posted of Z, saying "look I dids the same thingz"...no, your screenshots are nowhere near as natural-looking as these DB eps. You sharpened...EVERYONE knows how to sharpen video, one way or another--stop acting like you showed us something special.

And then no, where did I say it was a HD transfer? I just said higher than SD (640x480). Also, film scanning is a more complex process than just specifying "give me one boneless 640x480 pixels scan". I'm sure usually the metric specified is DPI and I'm no expert in understanding that stuff but it's within common sense to know 640x480 is wayyy too small for any scan.

My point is, this doesn't look like an "avisynth job" like you're rambling on about. I even said in my first post it's possible it was a very smart sharpening tool used on the DBox. OR, if it's official and what the Netflix stuff actually look like, then Toei provided video before it underwent DVD compression and downscaling.

Also...your point about Hokuto no Ken...I already know, you're like 5 years late. The reason why Hokuto no Ken and Kai 1.0 look alike, not just in terms of blurriness, but also colour correction, is because they were done by Q-tec. That is Q-tec's method of remastering. It's irrelevant to anything in this conversation.

Also, you guys need to focus on the lack of chroma bleeding in these episodes than the DBox. I don't know how that arised. I myself know how to accomplish chroma bleeding removal, but from what I remember, it wouldn't look as good as this.

And Ashura, could you talk a bit more about what you mean regarding the eyes looking hazy? I assume you mean the "haziness" that arises from sharpening, because of artifacting. But, I zoomed in a lot and it looks perfectly soft (no arifacting).
[spoiler][/spoiler]

If you correctly read all my post enigmo 'i Saïd i have thé same Line as him artificially not i have exactly thé same result tas i am not an expert in encode....added to that i was showing that it is à "fake" if you go to thé torrent website where it was upload and search "df68" which is thé uploader (darkfire) you ll read that hé say to someone that it is from amazon prime and not an upscale (so if itis not an upscale it s à native 960x720 résolution) if you go on amazon japan you ll see it s à lie so it s à fake anyway it should look differrent ...i even Saïd that it is à very good encode far beyond what i can do but i hâte liars.

[tellyzbad1]

If you correctly read all my post enigmo 'i Saïd i have thé same Line as him artificially not i have exactly thé same result tas i am not an expert in encode....added to that i was showing that it is à "fake" if you go to thé torrent website where it was upload and search "df68" which is thé uploader (darkfire) you ll read that hé say to someone that it is from amazon prime and not an upscale (so if itis not an upscale it s à native 960x720 résolution) if you go on amazon japan you ll see it s à lie so it s à fake anyway it should look differrent ...i even Saïd that it is à very good encode far beyond what i can do but i hâte liars.

Well, genjosanzo8/shinobiningen, that's the whole point though...your picture isn't showing AT ALL what's going on in these DB eps. That's like sharpening the dragon box with a shit-tonne of artifacting and saying "look, funimation didn't do a HD film transfer for the level sets, they just sharpenned DBox as much as I did but they know how to get rid of the artifacting and haloing".

Btw, your lines look NOTHING like these DB eps. Trust me, I've been messing with edge-enhancement and line darkening filtering for 5-6 years now.

Kei17 seemed to be the only person in Japan with more than just the first seven episodes of the original series with the broadcast audio.

Unfortunately, the recordings of the original series weren't any better than the optical audio found on the Dragon Boxes.

I'm only seeing this now and want to reply to it, but I don't want to take this thread off topic. Is there a general broadcast audio discussion thread anyhwere? If not can somebody start one, or I will myself in a few hours when I can