Color Correcting the Dragon Box - 3 Part Spectacular

[Zestanor]

Why do you resize the image horizontally to cover the black bars?

DVD follows the standards of the DV videotape format. It stores video footage in 720x480, which is shown on TV in 10:11 pixel aspect ratio. 704 out of 720 horizontal pixels are actually visualized, so the eight pixels on each side are redundant and not meant to be shown on TV. You can get proper 4:3 footage by cropping 16 pixels horizontally before resizing DVD footage to 4:3 screen aspect ratio. A lot of videos and images available online are resized incorrectly by not cropping these redundant pixels, so they are slightly squashed. In other words, don't directly resize 720x480 footage to 4:3 resolutions like 720x540. If you don't want to lose these pixels, resize it to resolutions based on 10:11 pixel aspect ratio such as 720x528 (720x1=720, 480x1.1=528).

Ah, I remember this. Thank you. I guess it makes sense that DVD was made to be as compatible as possible with older equipment.

Do HDTVs generally honor the 10:11 pixel aspect ratio? I know that software media players generally don’t, because the whole 720x480 image is mapped to a 4:3 box.

If a DVD does not have 8 pixels of black on each side, is it more likely that it it will display slightly squashed on older TV sets, or that they included a picture slighty wider than 4:3?

[kei17]

DVD follows the standards of the DV videotape format. It stores video footage in 720x480, which is shown on TV in 10:11 pixel aspect ratio. 704 out of 720 horizontal pixels are actually visualized, so the eight pixels on each side are redundant and not meant to be shown on TV. You can get proper 4:3 footage by cropping 16 pixels horizontally before resizing DVD footage to 4:3 screen aspect ratio. A lot of videos and images available online are resized incorrectly by not cropping these redundant pixels, so they are slightly squashed. In other words, don't directly resize 720x480 footage to 4:3 resolutions like 720x540. If you don't want to lose these pixels, resize it to resolutions based on 10:11 pixel aspect ratio such as 720x528 (720x1=720, 480x1.1=528).

Ah, I remember this. Thank you. I guess it makes sense that DVD was made to be as compatible as possible with older equipment.

Do HDTVs generally honor the 10:11 pixel aspect ratio? I know that software media players generally don’t, because the whole 720x480 image is mapped to a 4:3 box.

My Toshiba Blu-ray recorder seems not to honer the pixel aspect ratio. Maybe it's different when it comes to other companies'.

If a DVD does not have 8 pixels of black on each side, is it more likely that it it will display slightly squashed on older TV sets, or that they included a picture slighty wider than 4:3?

I fail to grasp the reason why they chose to add 8 pixels on each side because it's got very technically complicated backgrounds, but I think it has something to do with technically round numbers suitable for D/A conversions. When converted to analog signals, 704 out of 720 pixels are fit into each effective scanning line, so it's shown in the correct 4:3 screen aspect ratio on CRT TVs.

[ect5150]

Why do you resize the image horizontally to cover the black bars?

DVD follows the standards of the DV videotape format. It stores video footage in 720x480, which is shown on TV in 10:11 pixel aspect ratio. 704 out of 720 horizontal pixels are actually visualized, so the eight pixels on each side are redundant and not meant to be shown on TV. You can get proper 4:3 footage by cropping 16 pixels horizontally before resizing DVD footage to 4:3 screen aspect ratio. A lot of videos and images available online are resized incorrectly by not cropping these redundant pixels, so they are slightly squashed. In other words, don't directly resize 720x480 footage to 4:3 resolutions like 720x540. If you don't want to lose these pixels, resize it to resolutions based on 10:11 pixel aspect ratio such as 720x528 (720x1=720, 480x1.1=528).

Here is an indepth guide on why the bars exist and how you were never really meant to see them.

Also, if memory serves, we get closer to the intended display signal by cropping 18 pixels (9 on each side) and then resizing to a 4:3 ratio. Will you see a difference in 18 pixels and 16 pixels? Probably not, but I swear another member of the forums and I tested it out and the 18 pixels is correct for Dragon Box footage. It's also worth mentioning some software out there won't crop in odd numbers, only even... leaving 8 as your best option. (NOTE: 8 pixels per side or 9 pixels per side, the actual measurement is between 8 and 9, so we are dealing with rounding error moving it either way).

[Zestanor]

Here is an indepth guide

Now THAT is a webpage I haven’t visited in like 8 years. Thanks for the link; I think a link on DaizEx brought me there the first time.

[kei17]

Here is an indepth guide on why the bars exist and how you were never really meant to see them.

Also, if memory serves, we get closer to the intended display signal by cropping 18 pixels (9 on each side) and then resizing to a 4:3 ratio. Will you see a difference in 18 pixels and 16 pixels? Probably not, but I swear another member of the forums and I tested it out and the 18 pixels is correct for Dragon Box footage. It's also worth mentioning some software out there won't crop in odd numbers, only even... leaving 8 as your best option. (NOTE: 8 pixels per side or 9 pixels per side, the actual measurement is between 8 and 9, so we are dealing with rounding error moving it either way).

I seriously suck at dealing with numbers and reading that page gives me a headache, but thanks anyway. I think that some software do not crop in odd numbers because of 4:2:2/4:2:0 chroma subsampling.

Sorry for getting off-topic, but this reminded me of the case of the GT anime comic serialized in Saikyo Jump. When I saw a few panels from the Tankobon release, I noticed that they were all vertically squashed. I compared them with the DBox and it turned out that they had used screencaps taken from the DBox masters and edited them in the square pixel aspect ratio. In December last year, I contacted Kisôsha, the company credited for editing, and they answered that they had absolutely no idea about the pixel aspect ratio of the DigiBeta masters they were provided with by Shueisha. They also said that we had no worries anymore because they're now using MOV files for the on-going Dark Dragon Ball arc and resizing them from 720x486 to 720x540 when taking screencaps. I pointed out that they're still wrong and should resize them in the 10:11 pixel aspect ratio. They seemed to have finally understood what they were doing and promised to do everything right from that point onwards. I was amazed by their incompetence, really.

[Zestanor]

720x540 is basically good enough; it’s only 2.3% wider than it should be, and that’s assuming the Dragon Boxes have 10:11 pixels. I don’t think the GT Dboxes have black bars, do they?

[ect5150]

I seriously suck at dealing with numbers and reading that page gives me a headache, but thanks anyway. I think that some software do not crop in odd numbers because of 4:2:2/4:2:0 chroma subsampling.

I believe that this is exactly correct. In my expierence, I had to alter the color space in order to crop with odd numbers (then change the color space back for encoding purposes).

Sorry for getting off-topic, but this reminded me of the case of the GT anime comic serialized in Saikyo Jump. When I saw a few panels from the Tankobon release, I noticed that they were all vertically squashed. I compared them with the DBox and it turned out that they had used screencaps taken from the DBox masters and edited them in the square pixel aspect ratio. In December last year, I contacted Kisôsha, the company credited for editing, and they answered that they had absolutely no idea about the pixel aspect ratio of the DigiBeta masters they were provided with by Shueisha. They also said that we had no worries anymore because they're now using MOV files for the on-going Dark Dragon Ball arc and resizing them from 720x486 to 720x540 when taking screencaps. I pointed out that they're still wrong and should resize them in the 10:11 pixel aspect ratio. They seemed to have finally understood what they were doing and promised to do everything right from that point onwards. I was amazed by their incompetence, really.

Apparently it's just not well known because it's "oldschool" and many people aren't familiar (or don't study) the old analogue signals these shows used to be broadcast over.

Also (for information purposes or people that are interested), when I mentioned me testing this stuff on the Dragon Box footage, the test was done via a circle. The idea is we need something to compare and test and measure on the screen to see if the footage in back to it's true shape. Unless we have a specific reference, it's very difficult to do on a random show. Luckily for us, we have dragon ball seems to have a few things that were supposed to be circles.

(NOTE: Just found my old screencaps to show) The test was done on the opening. Here we can see the circle best fits the crop of 9 pixels and then resizing it to a 4:3 ratio. Side note: I might not have tested the 8 pixels on each side versus the 9 pixels on each side. But I do remember spending the time to do the math given the info of the website linked in the above posts to come to the answer of 9 pixels on each side. Anyways... here were the results (or what I actually kept).

Below: Cropping 9 pixels and then resizing to a 4:3 ratio



Below: Only resizing to a 4:3 ratio, without cropping any pixels


The blur circle was an actual circle. We can see it doesn't fit in the bottom image, but does in the top. Apparently this is a good test without a proper reference because sometimes the aspect ratio isn't always encoded properly into the video stream because of the lack of it's knowledge.

[Trachta10]

Sharing my new findings on color sources. I have been looking for Dragon Ball cel for the past month, however I think I'm 15 years late to this because the price is beyond ridiculous now. Any random cel costed at least $200 and any cel with Goku easily exceeded $1,000.

I did grab a few 30 cels from other animations for cheap, though not DBZ, they still share some common cel color characteristics that are worth noting, such as the range from black to white. The darkest black I have seen from my scans is RGB(23, 26, 26), typically they are at around RGB(30, 30, 30). The white paint on the cels are around RGB(250, 247, 237), with the red value always be the highest and the blue the lowest. And there is no white that is in the 250s.

I also compared my color accurate scan to the one taken from iphone, such as this:

Spoiler:

As expected, the color by the phone is way off. This is a prove of my assumption that cel taken by phone under insufficient light source (99.99% of the time) is inaccurate and cannot be use as color reference.

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Beside getting on hand with the actual cel, I have found another way that may be the color source we need. I had came into this blog post about a trip to the Sekaido store in Tokyo, and this store happens to be selling cel paint produced by Toei Animation, all with number labeled. Now I'm not sure if the color label is matching to the one on dbz cel sketches since we only have one photo of it. But if they do, this is going to be a game changer. And the cost for those all the cel paints is probably be less than the cost of one Goku cel. This is still a long shot though since we'll need to have someone actually going there to confirm it first.

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I also tried the approach on getting color from the dbz carddass. The vibrant color is pretty good and looks right, however the darker color is very inconsistent, sometime blueish sometime greenish. I'm suspecting this to be caused by the screen printed on the cards and I still couldn't figure out a way to fix it. See in this example, all the color looks right except for Goku's black hair:

Spoiler:

some cel scans for color reference

Spoiler:

[lansing]

some cel scans for color reference

Spoiler:

Where are these coming from? How do you know they are accurate scan?

[Metalwario64]

some cel scans for color reference

Spoiler:

Where are these coming from? How do you know they are accurate scan?

They're from Toei's VOD service. I couldn't access the site because it's region locked, but Ajay had a link to an image from there earlier in the thread that I was able to alter to get lots of the other scans myself. They're actually a bit inconsistent, so I wonder about using them as references myself.

[Trachta10]

some cel scans for color reference

Spoiler:

Where are these coming from? How do you know they are accurate scan?

come from Toei's website
http://lineup.toei-anim.co.jp/ja/tv/dragonz/episode/99/

Spoiler:

[Metalwario64]

come from Toei's website
http://lineup.toei-anim.co.jp/ja/tv/dragonz/episode/99/

Oh! Thanks for that link! I found mine through Toei's VOD site, and those are much lower resolution. This will help me for some personal projects, so thank you!

[ArmenianPepsi]

some cel scans for color reference

Spoiler:

Jeez, from watching DB and Z from the Dragon Box sets, then looking at the original cels, I'm blown away. Looks so crisp. Something i'd frame in a gallery.

[lansing]

some cel scans for color reference

Spoiler:

Where are these coming from? How do you know they are accurate scan?

They're from Toei's VOD service. I couldn't access the site because it's region locked, but Ajay had a link to an image from there earlier in the thread that I was able to alter to get lots of the other scans myself. They're actually a bit inconsistent, so I wonder about using them as references myself.

I do have those but I don't recall them being so much higher in resolution? Did you upscaled them?

[Metalwario64]

Where are these coming from? How do you know they are accurate scan?

They're from Toei's VOD service. I couldn't access the site because it's region locked, but Ajay had a link to an image from there earlier in the thread that I was able to alter to get lots of the other scans myself. They're actually a bit inconsistent, so I wonder about using them as references myself.

I do have those but I don't recall them being so much higher in resolution? Did you upscaled them?

No, I checked again earlier. I was looking an another device and I thought the resolution was higher.

Still, it's much more convenient to find what I want with your link.

[Zestanor]

Dang. The process of photography somehow adds a lot of depth to those otherwise flat looking cels.

[ArmenianPepsi]

Dang. The process of photography somehow adds a lot of depth to those otherwise flat looking cels.

I got that seem feeling too. Maybe it's the background? The colors? Or maybe just that we aren't used to seeing these particular frames of animation in such clarity and quality that's throwing us off?

Here is what the frame of General Blue looks like from the DBox (I think it's right, Episode 55 right?) (480p)

https://i.gyazo.com/0c88c28650bd0caa2a ... a7360.png

And just for convenience here is the nice HD version again.

https://i.imgur.com/zCiVuz1.png

[Trachta10]

Where are these coming from? How do you know they are accurate scan?

I'm not sure, but I think they are accurate
The problem is that it seems that Toei tried to make a color correction of some of them to make them look better

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

I don't remember where I got the color corrected version but I think they are from the twitter

[Zestanor]

Dang. The process of photography somehow adds a lot of depth to those otherwise flat looking cels.

I got that seem feeling too. Maybe it's the background? The colors? Or maybe just that we aren't used to seeing these particular frames of animation in such clarity and quality that's throwing us off?

Here is what the frame of General Blue looks like from the DBox (I think it's right, Episode 55 right?) (480p)

https://i.gyazo.com/0c88c28650bd0caa2a ... a7360.png

And just for convenience here is the nice HD version again.

https://i.imgur.com/zCiVuz1.png

Tenshinhan vs Yamcha looks more like I would expect: using a variety of lines widths and pressures, with rough boundaries between cels. Either it's just the case that many episodes were animated with invariable fat lines, or some of these have been inconsistently "touched up"; perhaps carefully digitally traced. Tenshinhan vs Tsurusennin is very soft. Cell and 16 looks like Kai.

But Tenshinhan vs Yamcha looks very good.

[ArmenianPepsi]

Dang. The process of photography somehow adds a lot of depth to those otherwise flat looking cels.

I got that seem feeling too. Maybe it's the background? The colors? Or maybe just that we aren't used to seeing these particular frames of animation in such clarity and quality that's throwing us off?

Here is what the frame of General Blue looks like from the DBox (I think it's right, Episode 55 right?) (480p)

https://i.gyazo.com/0c88c28650bd0caa2a ... a7360.png

And just for convenience here is the nice HD version again.

https://i.imgur.com/zCiVuz1.png

Tenshinhan vs Yamcha looks more like I would expect: using a variety of lines widths and pressures, with rough boundaries between cels. Either it's just the case that many episodes were animated with invariable fat lines, or some of these have been inconsistently "touched up"; perhaps carefully digitally traced. Tenshinhan vs Tsurusennin is very soft. Cell and 16 looks like Kai.

But Tenshinhan vs Yamcha looks very good.

Not sure about any digital cleanup. I don't think they'd bother with the effort it would take to do for hundreds or thousands of cels. I think that they just did a quick and clean high-res scan before returning them to whatever vault these cels are archived. Perhaps the cels are just in immaculate shape?