Comparison shots from every single DBZ release

[Robo4900]

and as KBABZ says, it'd all get some weird filtering to motion-approximate to 60fps...

Which is REALLY hypocritical considering how many people shat all over the intended 48fps of The Hobbit Trilogy. What so it's fine if it's 24fps in the theater but at home you think the Fuller House looks is what's intended??

Hate is always louder. Remember that.

The Last Jedi is a film just as well-liked, profitable, and critically well-received as any other in its saga. And yet, the hate online seems universal.

[linkdude20002001]

No.

TVs display it at whatever resolution the TV can upscale it to while maintaining the intended aspect ratio.

The source resolution is 720x480. Your TV upscales that to 1440x1080 for a 1080p monitor.

On a CRT, it would natively display it at 720x480, but shape the pixels such that it was a 4:3 image shape.

So, I suggest either 720x540 -- since then you're not losing detail by squashing it down -- or just upscale any smaller images to fit the size of the largest image.
Personally, the route I go is to take the Funi-provided raw film scan images as-is, and then down/up-scale anything else to fit that.

I'm pretty sure popping in a DVD with 720x480 data store'd inside it would would result in the DVD player converting that to 640x480. Or interlaced 320×240. I would think that 720x540 would cause scanline issues becuz you'd be changing the height.

[Robo4900]

No.

TVs display it at whatever resolution the TV can upscale it to while maintaining the intended aspect ratio.

The source resolution is 720x480. Your TV upscales that to 1440x1080 for a 1080p monitor.

On a CRT, it would natively display it at 720x480, but shape the pixels such that it was a 4:3 image shape.

So, I suggest either 720x540 -- since then you're not losing detail by squashing it down -- or just upscale any smaller images to fit the size of the largest image.
Personally, the route I go is to take the Funi-provided raw film scan images as-is, and then down/up-scale anything else to fit that.

I'm pretty sure popping in a DVD with 720x480 data store'd inside it would would result in the DVD player converting that to 640x480. Or interlaced 320×240. I would think that 720x540 would cause scanline issues becuz you'd be changing the height.

... No. That's not even remotely how that works.

Every DVD is either 720x480 or 720x576. Your DVD player sends that data as-is to your TV. Your TV then either upscales it to whatever resolution it displays at, likely 1080p, and takes the correct aspect ratio into account, stretching it out or squashing it in as a part of the upscaling. It goes directly from 720x480 to 1440x1080 for 4:3 content.
Naturally, along the way, there's probably a deinterlacing step; assuming the DVD is interlaced, the TV will probably use some clever deinterlacing algorithm to fill in the blanks to get proper progressive output from the interlaced source, at whatever framerate was intended.
Granted, these days it's basically never your TV that does this, since a HD playback device like a PS3, a Blu-ray player, etc. will have rather nice upscaling/deinterlacing algorithms that they'll apply, and just send the data to your TV at 1080p like that.
And on your PC, your media player will just deinterlace, then resize it directly out from 720x480/720x576 to whatever size your screen or player window is, with the resizer taking the correct aspect ratio into account; chances are if you're playing it in a window, it'll automatically go to 720x540 for an NTSC DVD, and 768x576 for a PAL DVD.

And of course, CRTs work a bit differently; they literally just display the 720x480 or 720x576 image as-is, and adjust the size of the pixels to fit (this is actually a bit more complicated, since CRTs don't really use pixels... Think of it like the CRT essentially projects the image, and just physically stretches that image out), and they natively display in interlaced format.
CRTs don't enter into it much, I suppose, but it's worth noting this was a thing at one point.

Also, "interlaced 320x240" is not a thing in the way you think it is.

[KBABZ]

Your TV then either upscales it to whatever resolution it displays at

Is there a difference between upscaling and, well, "enlarging" like in Photoshop?

[Robo4900]

Your TV then either upscales it to whatever resolution it displays at

Is there a difference between upscaling and, well, "enlarging" like in Photoshop?

No.

Well... Yes and no. It depends.

Basically, you have two kinds of upscaling...

First, You have the normal upscaling that your TV, your Blu-ray player, your PC's media player, etc. will do, which works like a Photoshop enlarge type affair (in fact, while I don't know about Photoshop for sure, if you use GIMP, one of the upscaling types it lets you pick is Lanczos3, which is most likely what the media player on your PC will use to upscale, if it uses a software filter); it spreads the picture out across more pixels to fit a larger frame size, turning a 720x480 DVD image into a 1440x1080 HD image. Or indeed the reverse, or indeed some other weird operation of a similar kind, including downscaling a 1920x1080 full HD image to a 1280x720 HD image.
Any commercially-released upscale Blu-ray will have done the same thing.

Then you have fancy upscalers like Waifu, which try to actually fake the image being higher-detail. I'll be honest, on a digital anime production, this can work surprisingly well; a straight upscale of the original will still look better, as Waifu and other such things tend to destroy subtlety in images, give an overall smeary look, etc... But it can work on digital animation, I'll admit.
Literally anything else, these fancy upscalers will just not work. A best case scenario would have it look something like Funi's DBZ Blu-rays.

There is at least one exception, I will admit; there's a somewhat-popular machine learning-based upscaling algorithm that's somewhat commonly-used for upscaling video game textures in the modding community. It's no-where near perfect, but I've heard it does tend to give better results than a standard upscale, so it's quite impressive.

But as far as upscaling video content from DVDs, or indeed for home media upscales, you'll really only have the standard upscaling algorithms, or the awful crap like Waifu that doesn't work, but people parade it around for some reason.

I suppose it is also worth noting, as an aside, that some of the more clever versions of a standard upscaler will involve "Super-resolution", which is a very fancy way of saying "it looks at previous and following frames to try to determine more detail than just upscaling an individual frame on its own", but this really isn't any kind of fancy, new trickery; my family's TV from like 2002 had super-resolution involved in its upscaling; that was one of the big things the marketing team bragged about on the box.
Basically "Super-resolution" is just a way of making a standard upscaling process look a bit better. It's not going to suddenly make your standard-def DVD from 1999 look like a Blu-ray release from last year, but it will certainly improve the process.
I imagine some of the stupid fancy ones like Waifu will involve super resolution at some point in its process, but really, I've never cared much to dig into exactly how and why Waifu works (or, more accurately, doesn't work. Again, to be fair, it can work for digital productions, but in the context we're talking in, it doesn't).

[KBABZ]

Your TV then either upscales it to whatever resolution it displays at

Is there a difference between upscaling and, well, "enlarging" like in Photoshop?

No.

Well... Yes and no. It depends.

Basically, you have two kinds of upscaling...

Ah, thanks! I figured it was just two words for the same thing. I consider Waifu and its ilk to be of a separate category, where they do a bit of "remastering" along the way.

[Robo4900]

Is there a difference between upscaling and, well, "enlarging" like in Photoshop?

No.

Well... Yes and no. It depends.

Basically, you have two kinds of upscaling...

Ah, thanks! I figured it was just two words for the same thing. I consider Waifu and its ilk to be of a separate category, where they do a bit of "remastering" along the way.

Right, exactly. Couldn't have (and certainly didn't) put it better myself.

[SuperSaiyanPan]

Well here you go Kbabz, I only did the first episode because it was late and I was tired.

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EFCJNNNU Crowd
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EF2CNNNU Goku Gohan
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EF2MNNNU Farmer
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/GKPPNNNX Radditz

It would appear the zoom on the 30th isn't too much more in certain shots and areas at least than the UUE itself. I will do the others when I have the free time.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Well here you go Kbabz, I only did the first episode because it was late and I was tired.

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EFCJNNNU Crowd
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EF2CNNNU Goku Gohan
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EF2MNNNU Farmer
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/GKPPNNNX Radditz

It would appear the zoom on the 30th isn't too much more in certain shots and areas at least than the UUE itself. I will do the others when I have the free time.

Yeah, it appears judging by those shots that there is just a little more of zooming in on the image than the Ultimate Uncut Edition.

[Tylerman29]

Well here you go Kbabz, I only did the first episode because it was late and I was tired.

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EFCJNNNU Crowd
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EF2CNNNU Goku Gohan
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EF2MNNNU Farmer
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/GKPPNNNX Radditz

It would appear the zoom on the 30th isn't too much more in certain shots and areas at least than the UUE itself. I will do the others when I have the free time.

Yeah, it appears judging by those shots that there is just a little more of zooming in on the image than the Ultimate Uncut Edition.

As far as we know the zooming is only on the first episode?

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Well here you go Kbabz, I only did the first episode because it was late and I was tired.

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EFCJNNNU Crowd
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EF2CNNNU Goku Gohan
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EF2MNNNU Farmer
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/GKPPNNNX Radditz

It would appear the zoom on the 30th isn't too much more in certain shots and areas at least than the UUE itself. I will do the others when I have the free time.

Yeah, it appears judging by those shots that there is just a little more of zooming in on the image than the Ultimate Uncut Edition.

As far as we know the zooming is only on the first episode?

Yeah, i think past that it's more or less the same amount of overall image and framing as the Dragon Boxes apparently based on the shots i've seen of later episodes.

[SuperSaiyanPan]

Yeah, it appears judging by those shots that there is just a little more of zooming in on the image than the Ultimate Uncut Edition.

As far as we know the zooming is only on the first episode?

Yeah, i think past that it's more or less the same amount of overall image and framing as the Dragon Boxes apparently based on the shots i've seen of later episodes.

Someone said the first episode is a lot more zoomed because of damage but the rest of them are fairly okay.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

As far as we know the zooming is only on the first episode?

Yeah, i think past that it's more or less the same amount of overall image and framing as the Dragon Boxes apparently based on the shots i've seen of later episodes.

Someone said the first episode is a lot more zoomed because of damage but the rest of them are fairly okay.

I had heard that's because the master that FUNi has for it apparently is by far much worse looking than the rest of the episodes.

[JohnnyCashKami]

Well, if it's really damaged then we'd perhaps have seen evidence of it on the Level Set version and on the RAW screenshots that were shared.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Well, if it's really damaged then we'd perhaps have seen evidence of it on the Level Set version and on the RAW screenshots that were shared.

I just know it has been brought up before, i believe some mentions of it were made on the Dragon Box episodes of the podcast and perhaps also the one about the Level set from back in 2011.

[KBABZ]

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/EF2CNNNU Goku Gohan

IMO this is the best visual for why such heavy DNR is bad for DBZ. It erases the finer parts of the Nimbus lines and also removes details from the background art such as the cloud shading, the hills and especially in the leaves of the tree.

[TheGreatness25]

So, I've gone ahead and compiled images of every US release of Dragon Ball Z for comparison purposes. I'm using the "raw" and 30th anniversary images from the link provided earlier, as references.

Now, for the Pioneer singles and the Rock the Dragon set, that particular scene did not exist; it was cut out. So I used the closest scene to it, which should reflect their color choices. Also, the orange brick screen was condensed to be 4:3 automatically when I took the screencap, so I artificially extended it to look as it was intended (in widescreen).

Hope you guys enjoy.

Spoiler:

Raw Cel



Funimation's 30th Anniversary Release



Pioneer Single



Rock the Dragon



Ultimate Uncut



Season Set [DVD]



Toei's Dragon Box



Funimation's Dragon Box



Season Set [Blu-ray]



Level 1.1



Dragon Ball Z Kai [Blu-ray]

On a side note -- I never really understood the hate for the Blu-ray season sets (outside of the obvious cropping)... until now. They are super, duper bright.

[KBABZ]

So, I've gone ahead and compiled images of every US release of Dragon Ball Z for comparison purposes. I'm using the "raw" and 30th anniversary images from the link provided earlier, as references.

Now, for the Pioneer singles and the Rock the Dragon set, that particular scene did not exist; it was cut out. So I used the closest scene to it, which should reflect their color choices. Also, the orange brick screen was condensed to be 4:3 automatically when I took the screencap, so I artificially extended it to look as it was intended (in widescreen).

Hope you guys enjoy.

LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! I've always wanted to have some sort of resource like this to compare every conceivable release of the show, considering how comparison-happy this fandom is due to how many releases there have been over there years. It's a shame there isn't really a good website for collating that many images.

As a note, I think you should call the Raw Cell "Raw Funimation Cell", since it's ultimately a third-gen print of the original master. It's a small thing but it'll help with future proofing and making it clear just where that image is from!

On a side note -- I never really understood the hate for the Blu-ray season sets (outside of the obvious cropping)... until now. They are super, duper bright.

It's as if Funimation was trying to make it HDR ten years before it'd come to market!

[TheGreatness25]

Thanks, KBABZ! I mean, I spent all this money to have every version of the series that I could have access to; might as well throw up comparison shots. That's probably my favorite thing to do with them lol

I can't believe that the cropping for the Japanese and US Dragon Boxes is a smidge different. With regard to the grain removal, I can kind of see their logic. When you put pen to paper, you don't expect there to be grain, dirt, and dust. New animes certainly don't have that; they're very clean and streamlined. So with that in mind, I don't really see the necessity for grain (I mean as long as removing the grain doesn't remove detail that is), but the colors are a little hard to look at, especially by comparison. On its own, I never really had a problem with watching those Blu-rays. But by comparison, yeah, the best choices weren't made.

[KBABZ]

With regard to the grain removal, I can kind of see their logic. When you put pen to paper, you don't expect there to be grain, dirt, and dust. New animes certainly don't have that; they're very clean and streamlined. So with that in mind, I don't really see the necessity for grain (I mean as long as removing the grain doesn't remove detail that is), but the colors are a little hard to look at, especially by comparison. On its own, I never really had a problem with watching those Blu-rays. But by comparison, yeah, the best choices weren't made.

I've been of the opinion that yeah, you wouldn't want grain on your film footage unless you the director find it aethetically pleasing, so I understand the DESIRE to remove it. However it's well-established by now that taking the grain away actually removes the detail you're trying so desperately to reveal, so unless it's very light, there's no point using DNR, especially if you want it to look as squeaky-clean as modern digitally-animated anime. It's better to accept the product's age.