Seed of Might: Dragon Ball Z Color Correction trailer

[The Dark Knight]

Okay... this is something that legitimately disappoints me... I don't know if they used Toei's BD release for movie 8, or if the streaming versions also "corrected" the animation errors too, but seeing the animation error where Piccolo's left hand was not drawn not being intact... kinda is a bit disappointing to me on a preservation standpoint.

Can you post an image of the uncorrected version of this scene ?

[Metalwario64]

This whole shot consistently has the paint incomplete on his left hand. It looks bad but's the original animation.

[The Dark Knight]

My understanding is that Seed of Might used the Japanese Blu-Ray and streaming versions for their color correct, which clearly fixed this error. The problem is that every other release that doesn't have this correction has other issues that prevented them from being a good base for the color correcting. I personally don't have an issue with this, as not only did I not know about it before you brought it up, but it's so insignificant that you'll miss it if you blink. Anime companies correct certain parts of animation all the time (just look at Super), so this isn't anything new to me. Censorship is a far bigger issue for me than certain frames here and there getting corrected, and thankfully nothing Seed of Might put out is censored from the original releases.

[Metalwario64]

If the streaming versions corrected it too, I won't complain. I don't like it, but in that case Seed of Might had no option.

[Scsigs]

Okay... this is something that legitimately disappoints me... I don't know if they used Toei's BD release for movie 8, or if the streaming versions also "corrected" the animation errors too, but seeing the animation error where Piccolo's left hand was not drawn not being intact... kinda is a bit disappointing to me on a preservation standpoint.

I think you'd be better off tracking down the US Blu-Rays or the old DBox DVD transfers because the corrected versions are the only ones Toei released themselves as far as I know.

[jjgp1112]

All I read from this yap was just gatekeeping because you don't like criticism and therefore are discounting whatever you don't like.

If you want to do all that mental gymnastics that's fine, I've presented my case and this just reads you're upset because I'm providing a valid criticism of a release that is noted as a top release for DBZ and how many people might not get access to it.

Brother you can't gatekeep something that's FREE. As has been the case when sticks and rocks and leaves were the only products around, YOUR capacity is YOUR problem, not the problem of the one handing it out. Anybody who wants what this release was intended to be either has the space or is willing to make it.

"You put it out in the best quality possible" isn't a critique.

If shrinking this down to something less then what it is soooo easy, then get off here and look at the final frame of a Nike ad if youre unsure of step 2.

This is literally gatekeeping in a nutshell, and a strawman fallacy to add to boot. All I did was say this is too much of a size problem, y'all attacked me for it. I'm just here defending my viewpoint meanwhile you guys have done nothing to prove me wrong other than ad hominem or cherrypicking and gatekeeping.

Size is a huge issue in general, there are others outside of this echo chamber that have said the same thing.

If you can't handle criticism of something that isn't even yours, maybe you should consider whether the internet is for you.

Its not a strawman - that is quite literally what your complaint boils down to. Your "criticisms" have nothing to do with the quality of the release and entirely with access, you keep either ignoring or handwaving everybody that keeps telling you that h264 is a better option for this footage - like, what part of "Highest quality possible" aren't you getting? You say h265 isnt "butchering it" but why should a fan group focus on anything less than the best release they can pull off with the limited resources that they have? It's not on them to make a lower quality encode when they had no obligation to even make this in the first place. Like Julie said, this is a color correction of a 40 year old anime that has more releases that the average person can count, only sickos even know or care that this exists - and like, if a fan as been following these releases since the Dragon Ball CC, they've BEEN known the file sizes are massive and had some sort of estimate of what a 291 episode series would take. When I first heard this was due to come out at the end of 2025, you know what I did? I bought a new hard drive. I'm no expert or nothing, but I'm pretty sure it's hard to sail the seas without first having the right boat.

If your idea of a critique is complaining about the only way your fellow fans can put this out in a quality that fulfills the entire purpose of the project to begin with, there's a better phrase for that - hating from outside the club. If it's too far from you, get a ride. Nobody's stopping you.

[Diccolo-420]

Brother you can't gatekeep something that's FREE. As has been the case when sticks and rocks and leaves were the only products around, YOUR capacity is YOUR problem, not the problem of the one handing it out. Anybody who wants what this release was intended to be either has the space or is willing to make it.

"You put it out in the best quality possible" isn't a critique.

If shrinking this down to something less then what it is soooo easy, then get off here and look at the final frame of a Nike ad if youre unsure of step 2.

This is literally gatekeeping in a nutshell, and a strawman fallacy to add to boot. All I did was say this is too much of a size problem, y'all attacked me for it. I'm just here defending my viewpoint meanwhile you guys have done nothing to prove me wrong other than ad hominem or cherrypicking and gatekeeping.

Size is a huge issue in general, there are others outside of this echo chamber that have said the same thing.

If you can't handle criticism of something that isn't even yours, maybe you should consider whether the internet is for you.

Its not a strawman - that is quite literally what your complaint boils down to. Your "criticisms" have nothing to do with the quality of the release and entirely with access, you keep either ignoring or handwaving everybody that keeps telling you that h264 is a better option for this footage - like, what part of "Highest quality possible" aren't you getting? You say h265 isnt "butchering it" but why should a fan group focus on anything less than the best release they can pull off with the limited resources that they have? It's not on them to make a lower quality encode when they had no obligation to even make this in the first place. Like Julie said, this is a color correction of a 40 year old anime that has more releases that the average person can count, only sickos even know or care that this exists - and like, if a fan as been following these releases since the Dragon Ball CC, they've BEEN known the file sizes are massive and had some sort of estimate of what a 291 episode series would take. When I first heard this was due to come out at the end of 2025, you know what I did? I bought a new hard drive. I'm no expert or nothing, but I'm pretty sure it's hard to sail the seas without first having the right boat.

If your idea of a critique is complaining about the only way your fellow fans can put this out in a quality that fulfills the entire purpose of the project to begin with, there's a better phrase for that - hating from outside the club. If it's too far from you, get a ride. Nobody's stopping you.

It pretty much is a straw man my guy, you not liking me calling you out for what it is doesn't change facts.

If you're going the exclusionary route then go ahead, thanks for proving my point. You getting worked about it also reinforces what I'm saying. Regardless, those are a lot of assumptions you're making about a product when it's getting a lot of attention by a general audience, pretty sure this is a slippery slope fallacy

LMAO at how you think the average person can just bust out the money for another drive, let alone we should bother doing it. Congratulations on having the money? Not all of us are as loaded as you, and not everyone thinks the way you do.

What I'm saying is that by not having an x265 encode they are missing out on plenty of people who are interested but don't have the space. If they can spare a tb of hosting for x264, they can probably do for less with the x265 encode. Your own need to justify this doesn't change that this is a simple fix, and it's quite funny how you're going to this extreme to defend something that a. isn't yours, b. is something that's fairly simple to address.

I suggest reading what I'm saying to get the context right, including possibly with a calmer viewpoint because from what I see you're getting needlessly emotional here.

[jjgp1112]

This is literally gatekeeping in a nutshell, and a strawman fallacy to add to boot. All I did was say this is too much of a size problem, y'all attacked me for it. I'm just here defending my viewpoint meanwhile you guys have done nothing to prove me wrong other than ad hominem or cherrypicking and gatekeeping.

Size is a huge issue in general, there are others outside of this echo chamber that have said the same thing.

If you can't handle criticism of something that isn't even yours, maybe you should consider whether the internet is for you.

Its not a strawman - that is quite literally what your complaint boils down to. Your "criticisms" have nothing to do with the quality of the release and entirely with access, you keep either ignoring or handwaving everybody that keeps telling you that h264 is a better option for this footage - like, what part of "Highest quality possible" aren't you getting? You say h265 isnt "butchering it" but why should a fan group focus on anything less than the best release they can pull off with the limited resources that they have? It's not on them to make a lower quality encode when they had no obligation to even make this in the first place. Like Julie said, this is a color correction of a 40 year old anime that has more releases that the average person can count, only sickos even know or care that this exists - and like, if a fan as been following these releases since the Dragon Ball CC, they've BEEN known the file sizes are massive and had some sort of estimate of what a 291 episode series would take. When I first heard this was due to come out at the end of 2025, you know what I did? I bought a new hard drive. I'm no expert or nothing, but I'm pretty sure it's hard to sail the seas without first having the right boat.

If your idea of a critique is complaining about the only way your fellow fans can put this out in a quality that fulfills the entire purpose of the project to begin with, there's a better phrase for that - hating from outside the club. If it's too far from you, get a ride. Nobody's stopping you.

It pretty much is a straw man my guy, you not liking me calling you out for what it is doesn't change facts.

If you're going the exclusionary route then go ahead, thanks for proving my point. You getting worked about it also reinforces what I'm saying.

Its not exclusionary, it is a basic expectation of owning anything. I can't own Spider-Man 2 if I dont have a PS5, right? I cant own a TV if I dont have a room to put it in. Everything has a barrier of entry and the only thing keeping anybody from this release is another hard drive; which if they're doing this particular thing, they ought to be prepared to need another one should they run out of space. Thats life.

And as it has already been said - other people are going to re encode this and make it more easily accessible anyway, and they only have the means to do that because Seed of Might gave them the highest possible starting point. Its not an indictment on them for releasing it without compromise, and its certainly not laziness. What you are looking at is a basic functioning ecosystem and community. Fans make stuff for other fans, other fans take that and do with it what they will. And some of them complain. It is utterly ludicrous to accuse them of dumping the extra work on fans because THEY are fans doing extra work. Nobody has to do any of this - they're not asking anybody to do anything, they are simply doing what they can. If you have critiques of the actual product, go right ahead, but your own inability to download it is solely on you. None of us own Dragon Ball, none of us our entitled to it, so we dont get to dictate how other fans deliver extra material to us. Especially when, For all intents and purpose, owning this is as simple as getting a bigger hard drive if you don't already have one.

They set out to make an alternative to the official release that exceeds them in quality, and that's what they did. The file size is the file size. Period. If you want the Dragon Ball anime through nefarious means instead of supporting the official release, those are the breaks.

[Scsigs]

So, I finally finished downloading & compressing the episodes down, as well as the color corrected movies & I gotta say, like, holy fuck, is this so much better. Going from over 1TB for the series to 98GB for the series & from 442GB to 37 is great considering I wanted them on a flash drive for watching on my TV. I can now do my rewatch of OG DB, not mind as much watching Z, suffer through GT, & rewatch the movies & specials.

I have to say after thinking about it that it's really dumb to argue if they should've compressed them before uploading them. I think it would've been nice to have the option since 1TB is WAY too much for 1 TV show that's not even HD & has 291 episodes, but other people will be doing that in the near future. The movies, though, considering they're in HD with a lot of detail in the transfers, though, I don't understand not compressing them & offering that as an option from the jump.

[ThunderMite42]

This is literally gatekeeping in a nutshell, and a strawman fallacy to add to boot. All I did was say this is too much of a size problem, y'all attacked me for it. I'm just here defending my viewpoint meanwhile you guys have done nothing to prove me wrong other than ad hominem or cherrypicking and gatekeeping.

Size is a huge issue in general, there are others outside of this echo chamber that have said the same thing.

If you can't handle criticism of something that isn't even yours, maybe you should consider whether the internet is for you.

Its not a strawman - that is quite literally what your complaint boils down to. Your "criticisms" have nothing to do with the quality of the release and entirely with access, you keep either ignoring or handwaving everybody that keeps telling you that h264 is a better option for this footage - like, what part of "Highest quality possible" aren't you getting? You say h265 isnt "butchering it" but why should a fan group focus on anything less than the best release they can pull off with the limited resources that they have? It's not on them to make a lower quality encode when they had no obligation to even make this in the first place. Like Julie said, this is a color correction of a 40 year old anime that has more releases that the average person can count, only sickos even know or care that this exists - and like, if a fan as been following these releases since the Dragon Ball CC, they've BEEN known the file sizes are massive and had some sort of estimate of what a 291 episode series would take. When I first heard this was due to come out at the end of 2025, you know what I did? I bought a new hard drive. I'm no expert or nothing, but I'm pretty sure it's hard to sail the seas without first having the right boat.

If your idea of a critique is complaining about the only way your fellow fans can put this out in a quality that fulfills the entire purpose of the project to begin with, there's a better phrase for that - hating from outside the club. If it's too far from you, get a ride. Nobody's stopping you.

It pretty much is a straw man my guy, you not liking me calling you out for what it is doesn't change facts.

If you're going the exclusionary route then go ahead, thanks for proving my point. You getting worked about it also reinforces what I'm saying. Regardless, those are a lot of assumptions you're making about a product when it's getting a lot of attention by a general audience, pretty sure this is a slippery slope fallacy

LMAO at how you think the average person can just bust out the money for another drive, let alone we should bother doing it. Congratulations on having the money? Not all of us are as loaded as you, and not everyone thinks the way you do.

What I'm saying is that by not having an x265 encode they are missing out on plenty of people who are interested but don't have the space. If they can spare a tb of hosting for x264, they can probably do for less with the x265 encode. Your own need to justify this doesn't change that this is a simple fix, and it's quite funny how you're going to this extreme to defend something that a. isn't yours, b. is something that's fairly simple to address.

I suggest reading what I'm saying to get the context right, including possibly with a calmer viewpoint because from what I see you're getting needlessly emotional here.

I am gonna put in words even you can understand. Compressing the encodes are waste of time. How long you gonna compress, the files are with jysze. Have you seen the fate of Crunchyroll recent releases. The fans liked the webrip and they are streaming kids, They even liked the ac3 more than flac. Cause they are adopted to cell phones and direct downloads. Quick and compact all it matters. Even if you compress DBZ you gonna make the show end it like animetime in 500 mb or 300 mb. The Disney movies have you seen from 1940s movie like Fantasia or Pinnochia. They are famous not for the today's x265 standard, The fantasia has Epic music and pinnochia has good story. Similarly, Dragon ball and Z are famous for the hype and the chi (Scientist even today known it's benifit but couldn't figured it out) A real story where a a kid bitten by honey bees survived, the reason he said he felt like Vegeta.
I say stop being perfect, let the chips fall where they may. Som really stepped up with the color corrections, they need to keep up. The troubleshooting question is how long they can keep up...?!

[Vegard Aune]

I have to say after thinking about it that it's really dumb to argue if they should've compressed them before uploading them. I think it would've been nice to have the option since 1TB is WAY too much for 1 TV show that's not even HD & has 291 episodes, but other people will be doing that in the near future. The movies, though, considering they're in HD with a lot of detail in the transfers, though, I don't understand not compressing them & offering that as an option from the jump.

This really should be the start and end of the discussion. And I say that as someone who also looked at the 1TB file size and said "Yeah no way am I saving all that."

[Diccolo-420]

Its not a strawman - that is quite literally what your complaint boils down to. Your "criticisms" have nothing to do with the quality of the release and entirely with access, you keep either ignoring or handwaving everybody that keeps telling you that h264 is a better option for this footage - like, what part of "Highest quality possible" aren't you getting? You say h265 isnt "butchering it" but why should a fan group focus on anything less than the best release they can pull off with the limited resources that they have? It's not on them to make a lower quality encode when they had no obligation to even make this in the first place. Like Julie said, this is a color correction of a 40 year old anime that has more releases that the average person can count, only sickos even know or care that this exists - and like, if a fan as been following these releases since the Dragon Ball CC, they've BEEN known the file sizes are massive and had some sort of estimate of what a 291 episode series would take. When I first heard this was due to come out at the end of 2025, you know what I did? I bought a new hard drive. I'm no expert or nothing, but I'm pretty sure it's hard to sail the seas without first having the right boat.

If your idea of a critique is complaining about the only way your fellow fans can put this out in a quality that fulfills the entire purpose of the project to begin with, there's a better phrase for that - hating from outside the club. If it's too far from you, get a ride. Nobody's stopping you.

It pretty much is a straw man my guy, you not liking me calling you out for what it is doesn't change facts.

If you're going the exclusionary route then go ahead, thanks for proving my point. You getting worked about it also reinforces what I'm saying.

Its not exclusionary, it is a basic expectation of owning anything. I can't own Spider-Man 2 if I dont have a PS5, right? I cant own a TV if I dont have a room to put it in. Everything has a barrier of entry and the only thing keeping anybody from this release is another hard drive; which if they're doing this particular thing, they ought to be prepared to need another one should they run out of space. Thats life.

And as it has already been said - other people are going to re encode this and make it more easily accessible anyway, and they only have the means to do that because Seed of Might gave them the highest possible starting point. Its not an indictment on them for releasing it without compromise, and its certainly not laziness. What you are looking at is a basic functioning ecosystem and community. Fans make stuff for other fans, other fans take that and do with it what they will. And some of them complain. It is utterly ludicrous to accuse them of dumping the extra work on fans because THEY are fans doing extra work. Nobody has to do any of this - they're not asking anybody to do anything, they are simply doing what they can. If you have critiques of the actual product, go right ahead, but your own inability to download it is solely on you. None of us own Dragon Ball, none of us our entitled to it, so we dont get to dictate how other fans deliver extra material to us. Especially when, For all intents and purpose, owning this is as simple as getting a bigger hard drive if you don't already have one.

They set out to make an alternative to the official release that exceeds them in quality, and that's what they did. The file size is the file size. Period. If you want the Dragon Ball anime through nefarious means instead of supporting the official release, those are the breaks.

Yawn another wall of text.

You can't just say it's not exclusionary when also saying it's not for certain people. You're literally gatekeeping once again.

Yeah sure, because we all have a spare few hundred dollars for another hard drive on hand, how ignorant are you dude?

Again, it's not that hard to make a separate encode of x265 for those who can't handle the size, at this point you're just making pointless excuses here all because you're afraid of being wrong.

[Diccolo-420]

Its not a strawman - that is quite literally what your complaint boils down to. Your "criticisms" have nothing to do with the quality of the release and entirely with access, you keep either ignoring or handwaving everybody that keeps telling you that h264 is a better option for this footage - like, what part of "Highest quality possible" aren't you getting? You say h265 isnt "butchering it" but why should a fan group focus on anything less than the best release they can pull off with the limited resources that they have? It's not on them to make a lower quality encode when they had no obligation to even make this in the first place. Like Julie said, this is a color correction of a 40 year old anime that has more releases that the average person can count, only sickos even know or care that this exists - and like, if a fan as been following these releases since the Dragon Ball CC, they've BEEN known the file sizes are massive and had some sort of estimate of what a 291 episode series would take. When I first heard this was due to come out at the end of 2025, you know what I did? I bought a new hard drive. I'm no expert or nothing, but I'm pretty sure it's hard to sail the seas without first having the right boat.

If your idea of a critique is complaining about the only way your fellow fans can put this out in a quality that fulfills the entire purpose of the project to begin with, there's a better phrase for that - hating from outside the club. If it's too far from you, get a ride. Nobody's stopping you.

It pretty much is a straw man my guy, you not liking me calling you out for what it is doesn't change facts.

If you're going the exclusionary route then go ahead, thanks for proving my point. You getting worked about it also reinforces what I'm saying. Regardless, those are a lot of assumptions you're making about a product when it's getting a lot of attention by a general audience, pretty sure this is a slippery slope fallacy

LMAO at how you think the average person can just bust out the money for another drive, let alone we should bother doing it. Congratulations on having the money? Not all of us are as loaded as you, and not everyone thinks the way you do.

What I'm saying is that by not having an x265 encode they are missing out on plenty of people who are interested but don't have the space. If they can spare a tb of hosting for x264, they can probably do for less with the x265 encode. Your own need to justify this doesn't change that this is a simple fix, and it's quite funny how you're going to this extreme to defend something that a. isn't yours, b. is something that's fairly simple to address.

I suggest reading what I'm saying to get the context right, including possibly with a calmer viewpoint because from what I see you're getting needlessly emotional here.

I am gonna put in words even you can understand. Compressing the encodes are waste of time. How long you gonna compress, the files are with jysze. Have you seen the fate of Crunchyroll recent releases. The fans liked the webrip and they are streaming kids, They even liked the ac3 more than flac. Cause they are adopted to cell phones and direct downloads. Quick and compact all it matters. Even if you compress DBZ you gonna make the show end it like animetime in 500 mb or 300 mb. The Disney movies have you seen from 1940s movie like Fantasia or Pinnochia. They are famous not for the today's x265 standard, The fantasia has Epic music and pinnochia has good story. Similarly, Dragon ball and Z are famous for the hype and the chi (Scientist even today known it's benifit but couldn't figured it out) A real story where a a kid bitten by honey bees survived, the reason he said he felt like Vegeta.
I say stop being perfect, let the chips fall where they may. Som really stepped up with the color corrections, they need to keep up. The troubleshooting question is how long they can keep up...?!

Thanks for at least trying to be condescending buddy, you're not really helping here. Ironically you pretty much contradicted yourself in that entire yap and didn't really prove what you set out to.

A smaller encode of this is entirely possible while still preserving most of the quality, the excuses here are just laziness.

[JulieYBM]

Somebody will eventually make a smaller encode. Be patient.

[Scsigs]

I have to say after thinking about it that it's really dumb to argue if they should've compressed them before uploading them. I think it would've been nice to have the option since 1TB is WAY too much for 1 TV show that's not even HD & has 291 episodes, but other people will be doing that in the near future. The movies, though, considering they're in HD with a lot of detail in the transfers, though, I don't understand not compressing them & offering that as an option from the jump.

This really should be the start and end of the discussion. And I say that as someone who also looked at the 1TB file size and said "Yeah no way am I saving all that."

I just realized I put "though" twice in the same sentence because I was tired & didn't notice.

I agree, but some people are gonna continue it anyways. Like, I think the point has been made about how big the file sizes are & how they could've been cut down by now, but, speaking as someone who gets this way too, people are gonna be argumentative fucks. In the world of fan projects & remasters, beggers can't be choosers most of the time.

[jjgp1112]

Yawn another wall of text.

You can't just say it's not exclusionary when also saying it's not for certain people. You're literally gatekeeping once again.

Yeah sure, because we all have a spare few hundred dollars for another hard drive on hand, how ignorant are you dude?

Again, it's not that hard to make a separate encode of x265 for those who can't handle the size, at this point you're just making pointless excuses here all because you're afraid of being wrong.

If you're in the business of downloading entire TV shows one would assume you'd be prepared to have to buy an extra hard drive at some point. Welcome to life. By your logic everything that requires you to buy something to make it work is exclusionary lmao. (You can get a 2TB hard drive for the price of a video game anyway.)

As they always say, beggars can't be choosers.

[VegettoEX]

This post comes both from a personal and administrative standpoint, and should be considered the final statement on the matter (unless any Seed of Might team members externally contact me and wish to engage with the recommendations that I specifically outline in the "should be discussed" section). As such, I am locking the thread (for now).

-----------------------------------------

WHAT THIS IS

For starters, let's not beat around the bush: the subject of conversation here is technically a product of complete, wholesale piracy. The editors know it, we all know it, and there's no need to pretend otherwise. It simply is what it is! This necessitates a few pieces of communal understanding:

• The actual product itself cannot and will not be directly distributed here. I appreciate everyone's compliance with this! Kanzenshuu as an entity does not condone or partake in this kind of widescale pirated distribution that completely replaces an actively-for-sale product.
• That said, this is a real thing that exists and therefore is subject to conversation. There is an allowance (even an expectation) to talk ABOUT things at all levels, without actually distributing them.

So let's talk!

THE ENCODING DECISION

It has been explained by (presumably) SoM team members(?) (I don't know any of you!) what exactly this release is and what its goals are. In fact, it's been done repeatedly. I don't need to go on to then repeat this all myself. I'll assume in good faith that you/we have actually read that material, and likewise in good faith believe it to be true.

Some of the community's challenges have been directly addressed -- most specifically, the 264 encoding choice. In fact, an EXTENSIVE breakdown of this encoding method and its relevance to this project was provided. I have seen little-to-no reaction to this explanation, other than an "I disagree with the live-action image choice provided in the explanation," which ITSELF THEN ALSO GOT a very specific and in-depth response/counter.

Therefore, from my perspective, I do not see any reasonable counter to the encoding choice: we all have read and agree that the goal was to provide a comprehensive, no-compromises, long-term, archival-quality product. Those goals were achieved, and the rational was provided.

At this point, folks have been given a fine whiskey, and they want a cocktail made with it. (I don't know man, I'm not the best with analogies. Just ride with me.) That's cool! You can make cocktails with fine whiskey! You can also make them with cheaper whiskey. You might not be able to tell the difference, and like it that way. Other people can and don't, though... and they're the ones who made the whiskey (or distilled it? I lost the analogy thread here).

So let's move on to address the "storage space" and "can't tell the difference" arguments:

STORAGE, QUALITY, AND TECH

If these are H/x264 MP4 video files, these are video files that can play on a toaster without needing dedicated hardware support. You do not need to store them on your expensive M2 drive. You can store these files on an ancient spinning disk hard drive. External options are plentiful, and thankfully have not been completely devastated by the AI market the way RAM and video cards have been.

I can have a 1TB Seagate drive at my door by 10pm today for $60.

OK, I get it: maybe $60 is a tough sell on your wallet right now, and you likewise are of the "I can't tell the difference with 265 encoding" variety. Well, for $30 I can have a 500GB Maxone drive at my door by 10pm. What you could do is download a smaller portion of the files (a quarter? batches of 20?), reencode them to your liking, delete the originals, and move on.

When I read posts here about "hosting" and "data caps", it leads me to believe that some of you actually have no idea how this all works. There is no singular "website" "hosting" these videos that you right-click and download. This is all being distributed via peer-to-peer connection technology (torrents), direct from user to user. Data caps on your personal internet connection from your internet provider? OK, well... make a friend! You grab half, they grab half! Split it up across weeks or months.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND REALITY

Those last few items culminate in my main takeaway from reading this thread: just how doggone HELPLESS people come across as. You're posting on a forum! On a traditional website! You can read words! You (presumably) LIKE reading words! If you don't already know how to compress files... read and learn!

...and some of you proclaim to already know how, so... just go ahead and do it? Kanzenshuu's unofficial mantra is thanos-do-it-myself.gif. Most of the things that exists on this website are things that one or two of us site admins wanted, didn't exist, and decided to just make for ourselves (see above: make a friend). While I cannot and would never get involved with this kind of project, I truly jive with the reasons behind it -- they align with my feelings and work ethic entirely.

There's also a lot of making-up-a-guy to be worried about, specifically "but think about the person that finds this and can't get it!" That... clearly HAS been considered, and it's been explained!

The ultimate answer here, however, is: you aren't owed any of this. Just because this exists, you do not have a god-given right to have it. That exists for official products, and that exists for pirated products. Sometimes the chips just don't fall where we want, and you can't have all the nice things you want. That's life, my dude.

WHAT SHOULD BE DISCUSSED INSTEAD

Looping back around to the beginning of my post, we are allowed and encouraged to discuss anything and everything Dragon Ball -- that includes official products, that includes fan projects, and everything in between. That includes praise, and that includes critque.

Particularly when it comes to fan projects, however, what I believe it should ideally include is conversation about what we learned along the way. What were some of the creative choices? Hurdles? Lessons learned? Neat findings?

I think back to my never-complete Bardock super cut. (I say "my" but it was actually at the suggestion of another forum user! See again: make friends.) My goal was to make a cool project, but what I got out of it even more (as seen by it never getting done!) was sharing the progress and asking for thoughts along the way.

That, however, would require input from the actual SoM team members. Perhaps it's because the SoM team members wish to remain anonymous (maybe you're not, but I have no idea!)... which, in the case of a wholesale piece of piracy like this, yeah, makes sense. Maybe this conversation from the SoM team exists (and exists elsewhere online)... but it's not here. Unfortunately, that then gives the rest of the community very little to discuss otherwise, which is perhaps why this exact conversation devolved in the exact way it did.

I specifically did not want to get personally involved, since I make a concerted effort to have no input or real public opinion on these kinds of piracy projects, but I'm completely drained by the large-scale unwilllingness to learn and unwillingness to truly engage.