Dragon Ball Movies HD Remaster - Amazon Video/Netflix Japan - Discussion Thread

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Dragon Ball Movies HD Remaster - Amazon Video/Netflix Japan - Discussion Thread

Post by Robo4900 » Thu Jul 26, 2018 1:52 pm

Many of you may already be aware of this from Ajay's Twitter, but for those unaware...
Colours look nice, picture overall is really good... This just looks really great to me. :)
Plus, it's the authentic 1.85:1 cinema ratio instead of the inauthentic 1.78:1(Or, 16:9 in conventional terms) that all the previous widescreen releases I'm aware of have had. Despite my usual preference for the open-matte 4:3 versions of the movies, these are some really nice masters, and I really hope they do Blu-Rays that other companies like Funi and MangaUK import. Seeing the movies like this would be really nice IMO. :D

Thoughts, all?
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by Kuwabara » Thu Jul 26, 2018 1:59 pm

Looks great! I can't wait to see more pics.
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by sintzu » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:00 pm

They look pretty good. Is there any chance they'll release these on Blu-Ray, possibly in the west as well ?
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by Robo4900 » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:02 pm

sintzu wrote:They look pretty good. Is there any chance they'll release these on Blu-Ray, possibly in the west as well ?
God I hope so.
Kuwabara wrote:Looks great! I can't wait to see more pics.
Keep an eye on Ajay's Twitter! He's posting tons of pics, and even a few videos!!
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by Ajay » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:03 pm

I'm pretty ecstatic. From what I've seen, colour-wise they're not perfect, but what is? On the whole, what I'm seeing so far is an improvement over every other release. Competent work, for sure.

The only negative is that they're currently using optical audio on the streams, rather than the high quality audio available on the Dragon Boxes. Hopefully that's fixed for the inevitable home release.

Some more shots:

[spoiler]Dynamic range is significantly improved. See Garlic Jr's face here.
Image
Image

Image
Image

Image
Image

Image
Image[/spoiler]

Keep in mind, all of these shots are coming from extra-compressed sources, rather than direct streams, so the quality is naturally not going be as good as it really is.
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by Robo4900 » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:08 pm

Ajay wrote:I'm pretty ecstatic. From what I've seen, colour-wise they're not perfect, but what is? On the whole, what I'm seeing so far is an improvement over every other release. Competent work, for sure.

The only negative is that they're currently using optical audio on the streams, rather than the high quality audio available on the Dragon Boxes. Hopefully that's fixed for the inevitable home release.
Toei still have the original cinetape mag tracks for all the movies, so there should be no doubt that they'll fix the audio. The real question is whether they'll uncover some of the mysterious stereo mixes(Well, semi-stereo anyway... Since everything until about Z movie 13 was mixed in mono, the "Stereo mixes" of the ones before that that are known use stereo music, but mono SFX + voices), like that one of DBZ movie 11 that's made the rounds.

As for the colours, yeah, as you say, not perfect, but goddamn is it beautiful. It looks like they're not bending over backwards to try to make it looks like the cels, they're respecting the film texture, and the original cel photography, and just trying to get a really nice look out of it, and it looks astounding. :D
Ajay wrote:Some more shots: [snip]
GAHHH! SO PRETTY!!

Any chance we can get some shots from DB movie 2 aswell? :)
Ajay wrote:Keep in mind, all of these shots are coming from extra-compressed sources, rather than direct streams, so the quality is naturally not going be as good as it really is.
Yeah. I can tell there's some detail that's not being represented here that would be in the source files; I think there's probably a lot more grain on the source files, judging from the way the background in the DBZ movie 1 video you uploaded jitters slightly with compression.
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by sintzu » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:13 pm

Ajay wrote:Hopefully that's fixed for the inevitable home release.
If it's inevitable then hopefully Funimation will get their hands on it as well. I've been holding off on buying their current Blu-Rays in hopes of something better and this looks as good as it'll ever get. Do you think there's any chance of Toei remastering the original DB for streaming as well ?
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by Kuwabara » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:26 pm

Who on Earth did Toei work with on these? I usually :sick: at their HD releases, but these pretty much hit all of the bases for what I would want in a new restoration. Any complaints I would have about color correction would be extremely minor.
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by Robo4900 » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:48 pm

sintzu wrote:
Ajay wrote:Hopefully that's fixed for the inevitable home release.
If it's inevitable then hopefully Funimation will get their hands on it as well. I've been holding off on buying their current Blu-Rays in hopes of something better and this looks as good as it'll ever get. Do you think there's any chance of Toei remastering the original DB for streaming as well ?
Yeah, I've been holding off on the current release too; Funi's BDs just aren't quite there for me. Optical Japanese audio + no Ocean dub on Z movies 1-3 = not really my bag.
This master changes things. :D

I think the next logical step if this master of the movies does well enough is that they'll start work on remastering the series. I just hope we get that far, that it's done in 4:3, that it covers all three original series, and that they use the broadcast audio Funimation has.
But, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, I think the main thing for now is drooling at this beautiful HD master of all the movies... I hope Funi import it, because I would buy the ever-living crap out of a 20-movie boxset with masters like these. :D :D :D :D
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by Big Boss » Thu Jul 26, 2018 3:15 pm

Did the movies have very little grain to begin with? Not seeing much on these shots, they seem very smooth. I guess I'm too used to the TV DBox.

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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by Kuwabara » Thu Jul 26, 2018 3:19 pm

Big Boss wrote:Did the movies have very little grain to begin with? Not seeing much on these shots, they seem very smooth. I guess I'm too used to the TV DBox.
The films were shot on 35mm, so grain tends to not be as severe compared to the 16mm film used for the various Dragon Ball TV shows.
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by KBABZ » Thu Jul 26, 2018 3:39 pm

Robo4900 wrote:I think the next logical step if this master of the movies does well enough is that they'll start work on remastering the series. I just hope we get that far, that it's done in 4:3, that it covers all three original series, and that they use the broadcast audio Funimation has.
I'm shaking just at the vague idea of OG DB being released on Blu-Ray.

I've never seen any of the original movies, so I'd consider picking up a Blu-Ray release if the price is right to see what they're all about!

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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by jjgp1112 » Thu Jul 26, 2018 4:14 pm

These are pretty fantastic. Hopefully they see a stateside release!
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by Ajay » Thu Jul 26, 2018 4:37 pm

Just looking at things in closer detail. Movie 9 has quite a strong orange tint, but it's easily fixable.

Slowly working my way through these. They're much grainier than the original low quality screenshots suggested, but it's a subtle grain. They look very nice on the whole.

I'll update with more thoughts once I finish looking through the rest of them. The difference in dark detail is doing all kinds of things to me.
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Re: Dragon Ball Movies HD Remaster - Amazon Video/Netflix Japan - Discussion Thread

Post by Big Boss » Thu Jul 26, 2018 5:12 pm

What are the odds of Toei doing this for the TV series, or do they consider the Funimation Blu-Rays "good enough"? Are JP fans really stuck with importing those awful cropped BDs?

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Re: Dragon Ball Movies HD Remaster - Amazon Video/Netflix Japan - Discussion Thread

Post by Ajay » Thu Jul 26, 2018 5:29 pm

I could actually cry. Movie 3's treatment is just... unreal. Wow.

[spoiler]Image
Image

Image
Image


Image
Image
Image
Image[/spoiler]

The dark detail, the colours. I'm in heaven.
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Re: Dragon Ball Movies HD Remaster - Amazon Video/Netflix Japan - Discussion Thread

Post by sintzu » Thu Jul 26, 2018 5:38 pm

Big Boss wrote:What are the odds of Toei doing this for the TV series, or do they consider the Funimation Blu-Rays "good enough"? Are JP fans really stuck with importing those awful cropped BDs?
If Funimation's version was good enough they wouldn't have done these movies so they clearly don't take international releases into account. I think the shows getting a remaster like this will depend (or partly depend) on how well these do in terms of views and sales (assuming they get released on Blu-Ray).
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Re: New HD Scan Of The Movies From Toei?!

Post by Robo4900 » Thu Jul 26, 2018 6:14 pm

Kuwabara wrote:
Big Boss wrote:Did the movies have very little grain to begin with? Not seeing much on these shots, they seem very smooth. I guess I'm too used to the TV DBox.
The films were shot on 35mm, so grain tends to not be as severe compared to the 16mm film used for the various Dragon Ball TV shows.
The grain should still be more present than we see here; it will have been DNR'd to a degree, and the streamed versions we're getting screenshots from will lose a lot due to the lower bitrate.
35mm is fairly low-grain compared to 16mm, though, and the DNR they've put on it will mean we'll get probably equivalent levels of grain to what we saw on the Dragon Boxes if they were done in HD.
sintzu wrote:
Big Boss wrote:What are the odds of Toei doing this for the TV series, or do they consider the Funimation Blu-Rays "good enough"? Are JP fans really stuck with importing those awful cropped BDs?
If Funimation's version was good enough they wouldn't have done these movies so they clearly don't take international releases into account. I think the shows getting a remaster like this will depend (or partly depend) on how well these do in terms of views and sales (assuming they get released on Blu-Ray).
Yeah, if Funi's masters of the movies aren't good enough(And remember, their scan of the movies isn't something to be scoffed at, even though they do fall flat compared to this new Toei master, even using a fairly low-quality screenshot from Toei's), then Funi's masters of the series will be considered utter crap.
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Re: Dragon Ball Movies HD Remaster - Amazon Video/Netflix Japan - Discussion Thread

Post by Sin » Thu Jul 26, 2018 6:36 pm

Wow, this is everything I have wanted from a DB/Z Movie release...

Sadly I'm not convinced they will see an international physical release, let alone push for a series remaster. But that's the pessimist in me talking, there is still a chance for Toei to take their shot at HD, and if this is anything to go by...

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Re: Dragon Ball Movies HD Remaster - Amazon Video/Netflix Japan - Discussion Thread

Post by Robo4900 » Thu Jul 26, 2018 7:32 pm

Not exactly the same frames, but here are some comparisons of the Toei HD master to Funi's HD master: 1, 2, 3.
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