Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

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Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by Levlik » Tue Mar 15, 2011 4:39 am

Just a strange oddity I noticed when extracting audio for an experiment involving removing sound effects and music from the Japanese version. I ripped the sound/music channels off the 5.1 track from the Season Sets as well as the Japanese mono track of that respective scene. And here's the results from the scene where Trunks kills Freeza:

The original audio
The 5.1 sound/music track
Sounds about right, doesn't it? So then I combined them...
Combined audio (Japanese on the right, sound/music track on the left)
After about 15 minutes of trying to get it to sound perfect I noticed something; whenever I synched them by music, the sound effects would be off, and likewise if I synched them by sound effects. At first I thought I was going crazy or maybe the audio files got screwed up, like one was slower than the other, but then I noticed something weird. The sound effects were indeed off, not because of my extraction methods, but because that's exactly how they are on the track.

Here's a sample of what I mean. The Japanese version is first, and the English second. Listen closely to when the "slash" sound starts. On the Japanese version, this sound plays midway into the second note. However, in the English track, the sound plays midway into the FOURTH note, having roughly a half-second difference between the original.

Now, I haven't done this with any other scene (Or any other show, such as Dragon Ball or GT, for that matter) but this is really odd. I was under the assumption that whenever they got the audio of the show to dub over, they just got a single tape of all the music and sound synched up and ready to go. That's just my guess, though, I don't know exactly how dubbing TV shows really works. So what would cause the sound effects to be off like this? It's a half-second difference, so it's borderline nitpicking, but an oddity nevertheless. I'm just slightly annoyed I couldn't do what I wanted to do in the first place, which was to replace "Battle Point Unlimited" with Propaganda's "The Murder of Love", "P-Machinery", and "The Chase", the three songs that essentially make up Kenji Yamamoto's so-called "inspiration" for "Battle Point Unlimited".
Last edited by Levlik on Sun Dec 30, 2012 11:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by kei17 » Tue Mar 15, 2011 10:36 am

Well, this is slightly off topic, but I can't help but want to ask you all. Why doesn't anyone here complain about the audio of the Japanese DBOXes that is completely out of synch in every episode throughout the entire DB series? I really wonder why. In all the episodes in DB, DBZ, and DBGT on the Japanese DVD releases, sound effects always play about 0.2 seconds after something happens in the footage. It's not like that on any broadcast (original run, re-run on Fuji TV/BS Fuji/Tokyo MX/Animax), and it's obviously nothing but a serious error. It annoys me as much as how the audio sounds bad.

Levlik wrote: I was under the assumption that whenever they got the audio of the show to dub over, they just got a single tape of all the music and sound synched up and ready to go. That's just my guess, though, I don't know exactly how dubbing TV shows really works.
Funi used separate BGM-only and sound-effects-only tapes for the 5.1ch track. They didn't use them in some episodes such as early episodes until around the arrival of Vegeta & Nappa and episodes around the fight of SSJ2 Gohan vs Cell. It's probably because of the non-existence of separate audio tapes around these episodes.

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by jpdbzrulz4sure » Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:00 am

kei17 wrote:Why doesn't anyone here complain about the audio of the Japanese DBOXes that is completely out of synch in every episode throughout the entire DB series?
Probably because nobody here knew about that.
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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by CODii » Tue Mar 15, 2011 12:36 pm

kei17 wrote:Well, this is slightly off topic, but I can't help but want to ask you all. Why doesn't anyone here complain about the audio of the Japanese DBOXes that is completely out of synch in every episode throughout the entire DB series? I really wonder why. In all the episodes in DB, DBZ, and DBGT on the Japanese DVD releases, sound effects always play about 0.2 seconds after something happens in the footage. It's not like that on any broadcast (original run, re-run on Fuji TV/BS Fuji/Tokyo MX/Animax), and it's obviously nothing but a serious error. It annoys me as much as how the audio sounds bad.

Levlik wrote: I was under the assumption that whenever they got the audio of the show to dub over, they just got a single tape of all the music and sound synched up and ready to go. That's just my guess, though, I don't know exactly how dubbing TV shows really works.
Funi used separate BGM-only and sound-effects-only tapes for the 5.1ch track. They didn't use them in some episodes such as early episodes until around the arrival of Vegeta & Nappa and episodes around the fight of SSJ2 Gohan vs Cell. It's probably because of the non-existence of separate audio tapes around these episodes.
Honestly I never noticed that while watching my DVDs.

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by Cipher » Tue Mar 15, 2011 3:09 pm

I've noticed what kei17 pointed out, actually (assuming it applies to the Region 1 Dragon Boxes as well). However, I assumed that was how it originally was, with Japanese animation being more liberal about matching lip flaps than Western animation. I just couldn't imagine it was an actual error across all the sets.

But yeah. It's not unwatchable. But it's definitely noticeable.

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by Turtle Marked Stone » Tue Mar 15, 2011 3:30 pm

I think it did carry over. I remember a couple Youtubers bringing that exact issue up after the 1st or 2nd sets release. It's no biggie really in my opinion but yeah it is noticeable. I had forgotten about that thread but upon a subsequent rewatch of the boxes I did notice some sound effects or lip flaps lagging in the dub at least.

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by jpdbzrulz4sure » Tue Mar 15, 2011 3:48 pm

I've noticed a few instances of questionable synching, just barely. However, I don't find it difficult to just tune it out and enjoy the show, especially since I usually sit a car-length away from my TV.

Okay, I think we're getting a bit off-topic. I'm done. Carry on. :)
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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by jjgp1112 » Tue Mar 15, 2011 4:28 pm

kei17 wrote: Funi used separate BGM-only and sound-effects-only tapes for the 5.1ch track. They didn't use them in some episodes such as early episodes until around the arrival of Vegeta & Nappa and episodes around the fight of SSJ2 Gohan vs Cell. It's probably because of the non-existence of separate audio tapes around these episodes.
That might explain why the music sounded really unusual in those episodes. What tapes did they use for those ones?
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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by kei17 » Wed Mar 16, 2011 4:40 am

Cipher wrote:However, I assumed that was how it originally was, with Japanese animation being more liberal about matching lip flaps than Western animation. I just couldn't imagine it was an actual error across all the sets.
No, it is definitely not how it originally was. As I said, none of TV broadcasts of the DB series has the off-synch audio. Lip synchs aside, sound effects are to be synchronized strictly with the footage also in the Japanese animes. If it's not, that is an error.

Here is a sample from the original run.

jjgp1112 wrote:That might explain why the music sounded really unusual in those episodes. What tapes did they use for those ones?
I guess they used the voice-less tapes called "ME tape".

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by SonEric84 » Thu Mar 17, 2011 7:33 pm

While not too noticeable, I find it a little depressing that the "definitive release" has an error like that. :?
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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by ThunderPX » Thu Mar 17, 2011 7:57 pm

Yeah, but the "definitive release" also has inferior audio quality to twenty-year-old VHS tapes.
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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by GotenDaisuki » Thu Mar 17, 2011 7:59 pm

SonEric84 wrote:While not too noticeable, I find it a little depressing that the "definitive release" has an error like that. :?
Well, the errors were originally present on the Orange Bricks, and since the Dragon Box used the exact same audio source as those sets, it was inevitable that the same error would be present in the Dragon Box as well.
So mondo lame.

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by SonEric84 » Thu Mar 17, 2011 8:07 pm

ThunderPX wrote:Yeah, but the "definitive release" also has inferior audio quality to twenty-year-old VHS tapes.
The series was recorded in mono though, wasn't it? So there isn't really much to do about that, right?

GotenDaisuki wrote:
SonEric84 wrote:While not too noticeable, I find it a little depressing that the "definitive release" has an error like that. :?
Well, the errors were originally present on the Orange Bricks, and since the Dragon Box used the exact same audio source as those sets, it was inevitable that the same error would be present in the Dragon Box as well.

I thought kei meant the Japanese boxes too? And those existed before the bricks so..
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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by GotenDaisuki » Thu Mar 17, 2011 8:11 pm

SonEric84 wrote:I thought kei meant the Japanese boxes too? And those existed before the bricks so..
I was referring to the dub errors where the sound affects were delayed horribly.
The Japanese boxes have errors, but not as close as noticeable as the dub errors.
So mondo lame.

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by SonEric84 » Thu Mar 17, 2011 8:13 pm

GotenDaisuki wrote:
SonEric84 wrote:I thought kei meant the Japanese boxes too? And those existed before the bricks so..
I was referring to the dub errors where the sound affects were delayed horribly.
The Japanese boxes have errors, but not as close as noticeable as the dub errors.

Oh okay. So I imagine on the American D-Boxes it's about the same as the Japanese.
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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by GotenDaisuki » Thu Mar 17, 2011 8:16 pm

SonEric84 wrote:Oh okay. So I imagine on the American D-Boxes it's about the same as the Japanese.
Yes, since they use the same audio as the Japanese ones did (ignoring the 1-ch/2-ch difference).
So mondo lame.

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by xzero » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:22 pm

I never noticed the sound effects being off with the Japanese version's audio, but this is probably because the lip-synching on that version is sometimes just plain terrible. I assumed the Japanese version doesn't care about that sort of thing. That's one thing the Funi dub has been getting right since the beginning: the lip sync has been consistently good.

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by kei17 » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:54 pm

xzero wrote:I never noticed the sound effects being off with the Japanese version's audio, but this is probably because the lip-synching on that version is sometimes just plain terrible. I assumed the Japanese version doesn't care about that sort of thing.
Lip synching has nothing to do with sound effect synchronization. We never mind the lip-synching at all, but do care the sound effects. I have never seen any Japanese DVD release of anime that has terribly off-sync audio except the DBOXes.

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by xzero » Fri Mar 18, 2011 8:26 am

kei17 wrote:
xzero wrote:I never noticed the sound effects being off with the Japanese version's audio, but this is probably because the lip-synching on that version is sometimes just plain terrible. I assumed the Japanese version doesn't care about that sort of thing.
<BR sab="679">Lip synching has nothing to do with sound effect synchronization. We never mind the lip-synching at all, but do care the sound effects. I have never seen any Japanese DVD release of anime that has terribly off-sync audio except the DBOXes.
I should clarify that I thought both were related issues, and that the whole thing was just off by a bit. Though I don't remember if this was an issue in the American Singles Funi released from 2000 to 2005.

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Re: Sound effects out of synch in FUNi's dub?

Post by ThunderPX » Fri Mar 18, 2011 10:36 am

SonEric84 wrote:
ThunderPX wrote:Yeah, but the "definitive release" also has inferior audio quality to twenty-year-old VHS tapes.
The series was recorded in mono though, wasn't it? So there isn't really much to do about that, right?
No, I'm referring to this debacle.
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