Color Correcting the Dragon Box - 3 Part Spectacular

[Pokewhiz7]

Damn, the corrected ones look so much better. Good job.

[superrayman3]

Found a different way to manipulate the hues than what is stated in the guide in the first post.

Can I get a few eyes/opinions on these before-&-after shots since my eyes sometimes miss coloring issues (I've focused on a way to minimize the artifacts mentioned in the guide that come about from playing around with the hues, but I think I've found the source of the artifacts and I'm able to compensate for the bulk of it).

Thanks in advance and as always, click to enlarge:

Looks fine to me.

[AnimeMaakuo]

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[ect5150]

Everytime I see an animation cel, or a picture from somewhere, Bulma has the tortoise hair. Not blue.

Something more like this?



I might be pushing the hue a bit too much blue... it's something to consider.

[biohazard]

It's just a theory but... Maybe there are a few colours that can't been bring back to its original tone without screwing up some other colours?
That Bulma's hair is an example. The sky blue aged into a cyan/tortoise tone similar to Bulma's hair, but the hair colour didn't get alterate so much because of the nature of the colour and the film on which it is "printed". If you bring back the sky colour to its original blue, its almost impossible to keep Bulma's hair colour intact.
I'm assuming this effect will occur with other colours, not just Bulma's hair/sky greenish tones.
(Sorry for my English. I'm sure I made some mistakes )

[Attitudefan]

With expensive programs and time put into correcting colours, you can correct each area to the correct colours.

[ect5150]

Everytime I see an animation cel, or a picture from somewhere, Bulma has the tortoise hair. Not blue.

Oh wow AnimeMaakuo... looking at the two pictures and the animation cel, I used to think the "corrected" one looked better.




But I ran all three of those through photoshop and looked at the Hue values for Bulma's hair for all three. And the hue values for the uncorrected frame the animation cel are almost identical. A difference of 1 value exists... one was 166 and the other was 167. Now, the saturation and brightness levels were different, but it gives evidence that the color in the uncorrected DBox image is correct and it might just need the color mask removed only.

I'm going to analyze this with a few other scans of cels I've found online and pick the same scenes as the cels and see if we get the same results.

[AnimeMaakuo]

Everytime I see an animation cel, or a picture from somewhere, Bulma has the tortoise hair. Not blue.

Oh wow AnimeMaakuo... looking at the two pictures and the animation cel, I used to think the "corrected" one looked better.

But I ran all three of those through photoshop and looked at the Hue values for Bulma's hair for all three. And the hue values for the uncorrected frame the animation cel are almost identical. A difference of 1 value exists... one was 166 and the other was 167. Now, the saturation and brightness levels were different, but it gives evidence that the color in the uncorrected DBox image is correct and it might just need the color mask removed only.

I'm going to analyze this with a few other scans of cels I've found online and pick the same scenes as the cels and see if we get the same results.

[Saiyajin no Tatsujin]

Awesome guide! I wish there was a guide to help me color correct the DBoxes on my TV. Now THAT would be even more awesomer.

[KiddoCabbusses]

It's just a theory but... Maybe there are a few colours that can't been bring back to its original tone without screwing up some other colours?
That Bulma's hair is an example. The sky blue aged into a cyan/tortoise tone similar to Bulma's hair, but the hair colour didn't get alterate so much because of the nature of the colour and the film on which it is "printed". If you bring back the sky colour to its original blue, its almost impossible to keep Bulma's hair colour intact.
I'm assuming this effect will occur with other colours, not just Bulma's hair/sky greenish tones.
(Sorry for my English. I'm sure I made some mistakes )

Are there any good screens with Bulma + Daylight sky, particularly DBox "Green Sky", for reference?

[kei17]

It's just a theory but... Maybe there are a few colours that can't been bring back to its original tone without screwing up some other colours?
That Bulma's hair is an example. The sky blue aged into a cyan/tortoise tone similar to Bulma's hair, but the hair colour didn't get alterate so much because of the nature of the colour and the film on which it is "printed". If you bring back the sky colour to its original blue, its almost impossible to keep Bulma's hair colour intact.
I'm assuming this effect will occur with other colours, not just Bulma's hair/sky greenish tones.
(Sorry for my English. I'm sure I made some mistakes )

Yeah, that is why masking is always needed when it comes to strict color correction during remastering process.

[ect5150]

Yeah, that is why masking is always needed when it comes to strict color correction during remastering process.

That's essentially what I've been doing (somewhat) in removing the artifacts, but it's very slow at times. If you don't do this though, you'll turn the green sky to blue, but at the same time turn Vegeta's uniform from blue to purple.

I've found a few ways to speed it up, but I don't see much software out there that is able to streamline it to save time. It's one thing if an episode is uniform, but sometimes it appears as if different scenes need their own adjustment (at that point it becomes too time consuming unless you are getting paid to do it as a job).

[Ashura]

Yeah, that is why masking is always needed when it comes to strict color correction during remastering process.

Pretty much. What I've done on episodes has been a little more advanced compared to what I set up here (and this guide is pretty advanced on its own.) I've done a lot of stuff to try to clamp Bulma's hair by clamping the blue level in gradiation curves. You can get good results doing that.

I've found a few ways to speed it up, but I don't see much software out there that is able to streamline it to save time. It's one thing if an episode is uniform, but sometimes it appears as if different scenes need their own adjustment (at that point it becomes too time consuming unless you are getting paid to do it as a job).

ect5150, great to see you're experimenting! I'm curious what your "new" method is/entails? Did you find a better, more native hue/saturation adjustment tool? I wish there was a gui tool that worked for a lot of the internal AVISynth plugins, since I'd rather do things as native as possible.

[Haseowolf]

First off I've gotta say that your guide and process is spectacular, Ashura. You've done a fantastic job! It's a shame it took me this long to finally sit down and play with the colors myself!

I'm interested to see your encoding on the fly AVISynth stuff, that's for sure!

Now, I'm quite the VirtualDub/AVISynth noob, so I'm hoping you can answer some questions here for me. What would be the best process for exporting these bad boys with audio? Also, I guess, exporting in general? I've tried "File -> Save as AVI" and it finishes the process, but the resulting video has what appears to be vertical scan lines, is in B&W, and has two videos playing side by side, much as it does for showing original and processed video in VD, but the right hand one is only half showing. Any tips on that?

Thanks again and I can't say enough about your awesome work!

[ect5150]

Now, I'm quite the VirtualDub/AVISynth noob, so I'm hoping you can answer some questions here for me. What would be the best process for exporting these bad boys with audio? Also, I guess, exporting in general? I've tried "File -> Save as AVI" and it finishes the process, but the resulting video has what appears to be vertical scan lines, is in B&W, and has two videos playing side by side, much as it does for showing original and processed video in VD, but the right hand one is only half showing. Any tips on that?

It sounds like you didn't specify a proper Video codec maybe? Or your Video player doesn't know how to deal with the raw color space? Either way, I think it's more an an issue of the video player than the encoding process.

As far as the audio, VDub has a menu where you can import a steam of sorts... just specify the audio file.

That said, I'm in the boat of people that recommends you move away from AVI files as your video files, and move to something like MP4 or MKV files. Google the differences or PM me for other help on that though.

[Haseowolf]

Now, I'm quite the VirtualDub/AVISynth noob, so I'm hoping you can answer some questions here for me. What would be the best process for exporting these bad boys with audio? Also, I guess, exporting in general? I've tried "File -> Save as AVI" and it finishes the process, but the resulting video has what appears to be vertical scan lines, is in B&W, and has two videos playing side by side, much as it does for showing original and processed video in VD, but the right hand one is only half showing. Any tips on that?

It sounds like you didn't specify a proper Video codec maybe? Or your Video player doesn't know how to deal with the raw color space? Either way, I think it's more an an issue of the video player than the encoding process.

As far as the audio, VDub has a menu where you can import a steam of sorts... just specify the audio file.

That said, I'm in the boat of people that recommends you move away from AVI files as your video files, and move to something like MP4 or MKV files. Google the differences or PM me for other help on that though.

Alright, cool I'll root around a bit and find import the audio file.

Oh man, I would LOVE to export as MP4 for this. How can I export my video from VirtualDub as something other than AVI? I couldn't find the options >.<.

Thank ya kindly!

[Haseowolf]

While I'm still working on exporting and all that, I've got my curves and filter settings right where I want them. So, here I'll share some screencaps. Let me know what you all think.

[overdrive80]

Hi, thanks for your manual but if someone is interesting in the same with pro tools, here a manual for removing color cast http://www.creativecow.net/interstitial ... 1%2F1&id=0

Its really easy. ^^

[Zestanor]

Alright, cool I'll root around a bit and find import the audio file.

Oh man, I would LOVE to export as MP4 for this. How can I export my video from VirtualDub as something other than AVI? I couldn't find the options >.<.

Thank ya kindly!

The regular Vdub only does AVIs as output, and its compression codecs are out of date. AVI is an old container; some popular new codecs (like H.264 and MPEG4 video) don't always work on it.

Hopefully you did your corrections in Avisynth, because most encoders accept Avisynth scripts as an input. Find an encoder that suits you. If you want to use the MP4 container, you'll have encode to an MPEG4 codec (H.264, AAC, or regular old MPEG4 video). MKV is a good container for anything else.

[eledoremassis02]

I want the dragon box movies so bad!! Color correction looks awesome