FUNimation Dragon Box Z #1 (In-Hands) Discussion

SHINOBI-03 · Post by **SHINOBI-03** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 3:59 pm

For me, I see the recaps a part of the episodes just like the next episode previews and eyecatchers. And so, I don't skip them.

NeptuneKai · Post by **NeptuneKai** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:04 pm

I just really don't want to hear about an episode I watched literally 20 minutes ago. Then again I'll probably be skipping past the episode recaps and opening and endings if I buy this product so maybe I'm just not "hardcore" enough.

SonGokuGT · Post by **SonGokuGT** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:05 pm

MajinVejitaXV wrote:
ShinRogafuken wrote:
John wrote:Has anybody spotted this release in a local Best Buy or FYE or any retailer yet? I havent'... Grr...
You're 10 days early...
If it's shipping (from more than one retailer at that), it stands to reason that stores have it. It's just a matter of whether they'll abide by the street date.

-Corey

Unfortunately for us Best Buy has gotten a lot better about street date violations. The only instances I've seen of it are them putting catalog Blu-ray releases out early.

jjgp1112 · Post by **jjgp1112** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:14 pm

Hey SonGoku, didn't you say you had the Japanese Dragon Box, right? Well, do you mind posting comparisons to Haseowolf's caps? Just go to his album:

http://s93.photobucket.com/albums/l59/Haseowolf/

Krakabeast · Post by **Krakabeast** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:20 pm

ShinRogafuken wrote:
Krakabeast wrote:I am not sure if this was asked of before, but is there any audio on the main menu, and if so, what is it?

EDIT: No Jon Jon, I never found it funny either.
Yeah. It's the Ginyu Tokusentai Theme.

Thanks. Good choice FUNi.

EDIT: From the screencaps I've seen, the new font looks so much clearer than the season sets' blurry and blocky lettering.

Haseowolf · Post by **Haseowolf** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:25 pm

I'm actually working on reposting them to ImageShack since I ran out of bandwidth on Photobucket and I don't think I'm gonna pay 25 bucks to host screen caps. Just looking into other options. Don't worry, I do love you guys so I'm not gonna leave you high and dry.

EDIT:

I've fixed all the links as well as updated the first page's first post by me to reflect as much as I can. If you see anything missing, feel free to let me know and I'll edit it and amend the post again.

GizmoKSX · Post by **GizmoKSX** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 5:09 pm

Just watched the first episode! A few assorted thoughts on the audio issue:
As has been stated, the Japanese track is 96 kbps mono. That's one channel at 96 kbps, which, going by godofchaos' breakdown back on page 13, is a respectable job. By comparison, the season set used a 192 kbps 2.0 track. As far as I can tell, that boils down to exactly the same quality with different encoding. (Can someone wiser confirm or debunk that?)

Encoding being equal, the Japanese track on the Funi Dragon Box is clearer than that on their season sets. This is immediately evident when listening to the opening and closing themes. They're clear enough that I wonder if they pulled the music from better masters and tagged them onto the episodes. Throughout the episode, dynamics and range sounded good. The farmer's truck kicked up a bit of bass from my sub (albeit not nearly as much as on the 5.1 English track, but that's hardly fair). By contrast, the season sets' mono track sounded a little boomier, but lacked the new clarity.

For those with home theater systems, consider your setup. On a default surround setting, all of the audio will be output through your center speaker and subwoofer. If, like in my case, your center speaker doesn't perfectly match your fronts, flip your receiver between stereo and surround settings and see what you prefer. In my case, using the fronts instead of the center speaker gives the sound a bit more warmth, noticeable in the bassline of "Head-Cha-La."

I am happy with the audio on this release (although I don't have the foreign versions' 448 kbps to compare), but I'm curious (just for the sake of being curious) if there was room on the discs for any higher quality. Can someone with access to the 448 kbps put up a WAV or FLAC sample comparison between that and the Funi set?

MajinVejitaXV · Post by **MajinVejitaXV** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 5:14 pm

SonGokuGT wrote:
MajinVejitaXV wrote:If it's shipping (from more than one retailer at that), it stands to reason that stores have it. It's just a matter of whether they'll abide by the street date.

-Corey
Unfortunately for us Best Buy has gotten a lot better about street date violations. The only instances I've seen of it are them putting catalog Blu-ray releases out early.

For me it was always FYE that broke street dates. And Best Buy actually has exclusivity deals with some studios, hence why those Blu-rays are being put out early.

In any case, I'm not sweating it. A week and change and then we'll all have it.

-Corey

DBZfan29 · Post by **DBZfan29** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 5:29 pm

GizmoKSX wrote:Can someone with access to the 448 kbps put up a WAV or FLAC sample comparison between that and the Funi set?

I have a .vob file (viewable on VLC Player) from a friend of episode 31 from the Dragon Box. It's the scene where Goku fires his attack and Vegeta counters it (Kamehameha vs. Gyarik-ho). Anyway, maybe you can test the audio from that.

Download link:
Dragon Ball Z - Episode 31 _Dragon Box Clip_.vob - 34.12MB

.:PoetikaL:. · Post by **.:PoetikaL:.** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 5:57 pm

Okay, with request from jjgp1112, I took some pics using VLC of non-movement scenes from Episode 30 only. So if I did something wrong, please let me know!

EDIT: These don't look right to me at all. I did the snapshot with VLC if anyone is wondering.

SonGokuGT · Post by **SonGokuGT** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:01 pm

I'm not quite sure about this, but I think that they said something about VLC snapshots not properly representing the image. I think I said something about playing the video and using print screen. I would've loved to have contributed some images from the Japanese sense but I'm still kind of fuzzy on how to correctly take a snapshot.

Haseowolf · Post by **Haseowolf** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:02 pm

I would use Media Player Classic and use the image taking feature there. You'll also probably have to edit the screen grabs to be the correct 620x480 resolution via PhotoShop or something similar.

MarcFBR · Post by **MarcFBR** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:21 pm

Sick in bed, so posting via iPhone.

Showed Haseo how to cap properly with what he has, outside of driver/hardware issues, should be fine.

VLC caps aren't as acceptable as they used to be, VLC has fallen behind on specific things.

As for print screen... meh, just meh

'rolls back over to pillow and TV' Cmon Morimoto, smack that dude with wasabi.

SonGokuGT · Post by **SonGokuGT** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:28 pm

2,000th post spectacular!!!!

So what is the best way to go about screencapping? I have VLC and PowerDVD. Where do I get Media Player Classic if need be? We need a standardized process to make sure we get perfect quality and caps that are on-par with each other for proper comparisons.

.:PoetikaL:. · Post by **.:PoetikaL:.** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:34 pm

The programs I have that are specifically for movies only:
MPC
VLC
PowerDVD

All of them have a snapshot feature, so I guess it's trial and error to get the right things.

As for you GT, I have the link for MPC:
http://www.mpcstar.com/

MarcFBR · Post by **MarcFBR** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:47 pm

My current method (I switch around a bit), is the following

Clean system, no added codecs, etc.
Drivers checked for updates.
Install CCCP (which takes care of codecs, and puts on the modern replacement for MPC, MPC-HC.)

Load up MPC-HC.
I go into settings and set it to capture to whatever folder I use.
I then set numpad0 to capture.
I then save a single image manually thru the menu as a .PNG (MPC-HC has some issues switching capture formats, doing this switches it to .PNG properly.)
Then you watch, tapping numpad0 to capture whenever you want.
When you are done, you load them all up into your image editor (instructions here are for CS3, CS4, and the Gimp.)
In your image viewer, go to to the 'Image Size' option. Set it to not 'force' the same aspect ratio, and have the resolution be 640x480. You will be able to choose a resizing filter (generally called 'resampling'.) Having tried many, I find the ones that come closest to 'viewing quality' are the following by editor:

CS4- Bicubic (sometimes labeled with a 'Best for Smooth Gradients' in parenthesis after Bicubic, so it can be easy to find.)
The Gimp- Linear (also, in The Gimp, image size is called 'Scale Image' it has a 'Cubic' filter, which may be the same as Bicubic in CS4, I haven't used the Gimp normally in a long time, so I never actually looked...)
CS3- I don't recall what it's called here actually, look at my CS4 and Gimp instructions and try and figure out what yours is.)

You generally gotta be careful, because some of the resampling filters will actually add their own noise reduction, or artificially try and sharpen the image, so you may want to play around, as the only one I've used anytime recently is CS4.

These instructions are only for if you take the caps the way I specificied, if you take a cap in VLC and it comes out at 540p incorrectly, shrinking it down with this method isn't what you want, you want to retake the caps properly.)

elchoaro · Post by **elchoaro** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:50 pm

The reason some of you are getting black when you try to print screen is because your video player is using hardware acceleration.

This means that the video rendering is being done by your video card, and not your operating system. The operating system throws a near-black color in the video area, and lets your video card put the actual image there. Since print screen is an operating system function, you only get the black color that the operating system put there, not the image that your video card is putting there.

Different media players allow you to do this in different ways, but you can turn off the hardware acceleration. Then print screen will work for you.

jjgp1112 · Post by **jjgp1112** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:52 pm

That's strange, your screencaps are 720X540 but they should be 640x480.

Is my VLC the only one working properly or some shit? It was having problems before, but I downloaded some bugfix that they kept telling me to download and it works just fine now.

MarcFBR · Post by **MarcFBR** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:54 pm

jjgp1112 wrote: Is my VLC the only one working properly or some shit? It was having problems before, but I downloaded some bugfix that they ept telling me to download and it works just fine now.

VLC has been having more and more issues lately, which is part of why... well... unless you have to because of issues (and I know someone who does)... don't use VLC as your 'normal' player (I'll admit the added DVD controls are nice, but more and more it's not outputting shit right.)

.:PoetikaL:. · Post by **.:PoetikaL:.** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:55 pm

godofchaos wrote:My current method (I switch around a bit), is the following

Clean system, no added codecs, etc.
Drivers checked for updates.
Install CCCP (which takes care of codecs, and puts on the modern replacement for MPC, MPC-HC.)

Load up MPC-HC.
I go into settings and set it to capture to whatever folder I use.
I then set numpad0 to capture.
I then save a single image manually thru the menu as a .PNG (MPC-HC has some issues switching capture formats, doing this switches it to .PNG properly.)
Then you watch, tapping numpad0 to capture whenever you want.
When you are done, you load them all up into your image editor (instructions here are for CS3, CS4, and the Gimp.)
In your image viewer, go to to the 'Image Size' option. Set it to not 'force' the same aspect ratio, and have the resolution be 640x480. You will be able to choose a resizing filter (generally called 'resampling'.) Having tried many, I find the ones that come closest to 'viewing quality' are the following by editor:

CS4- Bicubic (sometimes labeled with a 'Best for Smooth Gradients' in parenthesis after Bicubic, so it can be easy to find.)
The Gimp- Linear (also, in The Gimp, image size is called 'Scale Image' it has a 'Cubic' filter, which may be the same as Bicubic in CS4, I haven't used the Gimp normally in a long time, so I never actually looked...)
CS3- I don't recall what it's called here actually, look at my CS4 and Gimp instructions and try and figure out what yours is.)

You generally gotta be careful, because some of the resampling filters will actually add their own noise reduction, or artificially try and sharpen the image, so you may want to play around, as the only one I've used anytime recently is CS4.

These instructions are only for if you take the caps the way I specificied, if you take a cap in VLC and it comes out at 540p incorrectly, shrinking it down with this method isn't what you want, you want to retake the caps properly.)

Thank you very much man, I really appreciate all this information. I'm using CS4, so thanks a lot for the warnings as well.